Coined the “Critter Corner,” the scene of yellows, pinks, blues and greens, have brought a new energy into the alley behind the Charles St. Parking Garage, sandwiched between Buffalo Wild Wings and the Douglas J. Institute, a cosmetology school. 

Members of the arts programming and placemaking team for the City of East Lansing, Wendy Sylvester-Rowan and Sara McGirr, linked these organizations together for a cross-community and cross-generation collaboration. 

While the painting process may have begun just a couple weeks ago, the wheels for this project started turning early in the school year around September. 

Things really got moving during a December meeting between the groups, where the Girl Scouts were tasked with visualizing the three elements of the city. Brothers of the fraternity helped them develop the design concepts and feedback from Sylvester-Rowan and McGirr further steered the vision. 

Creative advertising senior and member of GET, Stephanie Monk, helped to create the design with the Girl Scouts. Working with younger children was something new for Monk, as she doesn’t have any siblings; however, the experience helped offer insight. 

“It was definitely a challenge at first for me,” Monk said. “I tend to accidentally use big words a lot, so sometimes when I'm saying things, they might go over one's head. But, they were actually super cool, super smart, just really creatively open to trying new things and trying to solve the creative problem of what to do for this mural. It was really cool to talk and meet them all.” 

The groundwork for the project came at the hands of many other organizations. The East Lansing Parking Services allowed the groups to paint on the parking garage and power-washed the walls in preparation. The East Lansing Public Works Department made sure the alleyways were closed for the volunteers to work, and the East Lansing Downtown Development Authority funded the paint and materials needed. 

“The students incorporated our ideas and what we were looking for in this alley, to kind of brighten the space,” McGirr said. “They felt it was important to represent that there were children involved in the ideation of it. So, hence, the name is 'Critter Corner,' and it's a childlike, fanciful interpretation of some of the animals that you might find around here.” 

Before the colors and animals covered the walls, it was an outline made up of numbers, letters and symbols, for a paint-by-number approach called a “doodle-grid.” Work on the mural began on April 16, and the mural took its shape in shifts that week and the next. However, sporadic rain and even snow slowed the group’s progress. 

Journalism sophomore and GET member Isabella Figueroa Nogueria worked on painting pink dots on the mural. 

“I really liked the design, I thought it was really cute that we were doing it with the Girl Scouts," Figueroa Nogueria said. "I think it's really important to have something like this, [it] definitely revamps [the space], and it's exciting that something like this could stay forever. I'm going to be a junior next year, so it's nice to think, even though I may not be in East Lansing, something I did will be.” 

Trained as a social science researcher, working in art spaces isn’t McGirr’s typical forte. In her second project with GET, after a digital mural collaboration with them last year, she found she could be very committed to what she called “community-based participatory work.” 

“It's been incredibly satisfying to contribute to [a] place where I live in a really physical way that will last over time,” McGirr said. “It's really fulfilling to spark the creativity of the Girl Scouts, also, to see the different drafts that the GET has produced, in terms of how they incorporate our feedback, but still maintain a strong, artistic voice. I feel really grateful to live in a community that rallies around building beautiful, vibrant spaces, to exist in public, and I feel really proud of our team, and all the groups that have come together to do this.” 

Aside from the last step of the sealant, painting for the mural wrapped up on April 30. 

The project wasn't complete until the Girl Scouts and GET members who worked on it signed their names at the bottom.  

Mindful of what she calls the “pedestrian experience,” Sylvester-Rowan is no stranger to Grand River. As a worker for the city, she constantly walks these streets and notices the infrastructure. 

“This [space] has activated this area, which used to be feel pretty dark, and made it so much more bright and welcoming. It’s a surprise, nobody's going to expect to see this mural coming around the corner of the parking garage. It’s such a feel good project, there were a lot of hands involved. Everybody adding their own touches to it is really meaningful. It brightens the city and everybody had a hand in doing so and that is lovely. Art brings people together.”