With the pull of a cord, the curtain fell to reveal the product of more than half of a year’s work to the crowd gathered around the wall of DeCicco Family Markets in the village. Its artists, members of the SHS National Arts Honors Society (NAHS) chapter, beamed proudly as people began posing in front of the colorful wings for pictures.

Dubbed Wing the Dale, the giant mural was the result of a collaboration that started just after school started for the year in September 2018. The Acceleration Project, a consulting firm that “leverages the untapped potential of professional women to accelerate local economic development” (theaccelerationproject.org),  reached out to NAHS members at SHS about creating a mural for the village. The hope was to beautify Scarsdale village with art and thus foster a stronger sense of community. SHS students in the club were immediately on board and soon began brainstorming ideas.

A group of around ten students, along with club advisor and SHS Art Teacher Janna Johnsen, sketched wing designs and later collectively voted on their favorite. While juggling a host of other projects, the students traced the outline onto wooden boards and then painted the wings with a mixture of blues, white, and gold.

The students thoroughly enjoyed the project-making process. “When we first transferred the silhouette of the wing design onto the wooden panels months ago, it would have been hard to believe that the finished product would look as incredible as it does now,” remarked Magan Chin ’20, co-president of NAHS. The artists worked on the wings as a group but enhanced the impressive effect of the piece by incorporating their own creative flourishes. “The saying of ‘the beauty is in the details’ is so true, because when we added the smaller details, the entire painting seemed much more coherent and life-like. If you look closely, you can see some swirling designs on the ends of the feathers. These were really fun to make,” said Lucy Du ’20, another co-president of NAHS.

The mural will remain a permanent fixture on 54 East Parkway, displayed across the street from the train station for commuters and Scarsdale citizens to see. Already, dozens of people, ranging from young to old, have posed in front of the mural and posted on social media. Wing the Dale’s success and the enjoyment the students had in creating the project suggests that the town might see further installments of this public art initiative in the future.