By Maureen Quinlan, News Correspondent

The Arts and Design Superheroes, a group of art students, call the quote “Art happens here” their motivation for taking on a new project to design and create graphic murals outside the art studios in Ryder Hall.

“There is no expression when you go to the third and fourth floors of Ryder,” Arts and Design Superheroes President Wells Riley said. “Art students are there all the time, and the department didn’t focus on that. We wanted to make a place where students can create art and call it their own.”

The student group’s mission is to work on improvement projects, such as the Ryder murals.

“Arts and Design Superheroes is a student organization that seeks to enrich the community with art and design all across the creative spectrum,” Riley said.

The group designed black and white graphic murals made out of adhesive vinyl, a material commonly used in signage today, to cover the wall around the doorways of the art studios.

“The students initiated the idea, pursued it and I found a way to help the department support them,” Department of Art and Design Chair Russell Pensyl said. “We wanted an identity with characteristics that show off who we are.”

Each design will correspond with the types of learning going on in that studio.

The foundation’s design will focus on a foundation and a ‘theme’ for the building. The game design room will feature “old-school” game graphics. The graphic design mural will use visual language that is essential to graphic design. The animation studio will emit emotion through a two-dimensional medium, Art and Design members said.

Although the Superheroes originally planned to do the project in-house with Exacto knives and adhesive vinyl at minimal cost, their proposal helped to gain the support of the Art and Design Department and Northeastern Facilities Administration.

Pensyl said the department will support the cost of the supplies and Facilities will cover the production expenses. Facilities will also produce and apply the murals for the group.

The murals should be completed by the end of the semester, Riley said.

“We take the upper class experience and translate it to younger students,” Riley said. “These students are those who do things far above what they are learning in class.”