WET PAINT:
Anderson New Technology High School student Elizabeth Jonas is helping to brighten the view for Critical Care Unit patients recovering at Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding. Other students also helped with the project organized by Christina Story and Axl McLeod.

Five students from Anderson New Technology High School are cheering up the view outside the intensive care unit at Shasta Regional Medical Center.

The windows that previously looked out onto a rather plain brown exterior wall of another part of the hospital are now the best places to see a brightly painted mural that is the senior project of Christina Story and Axl McLeod.

“The mural contains the essence of northern California,” said Story, a third-year art student at New Tech.

Designed by McLeod, the art work depicts older buildings in Redding, hills and trees, a bald eagle, Mt. Shasta, Lake Shasta and Shasta Dam.

Hospital officials approached three area high schools to help decorate the exterior walls of some buildings. Anderson New Tech students were the first to respond and was thus given the 60-foot wall on the second floor that can be seen by patients in the Critical Care Unit. The theme the students selected was a bird’s eye view of downtown Redding, said Suzie Wood, director of marketing and public relations at Shasta Regional.

“It is an aerial view of the whole area, capturing the major attractions of Redding and its surroundings,” Wood stated.

Also helping to paint the mural are fellow New Tech students Delaney Owens, Elizabeth Jonas and Briana Ayars. They expected to finish the mural this week.

Enterprise High School students are tackling a 15-foot wall opposite the hospital’s Emergency Room entrance. Foothills High School art students are undertaking a 30-foot mural in the center courtyard of the hospital, next to the infusion center.

The only instructions given the students were that the hospital’s name and new logo had to appear somewhere on each mural.