Have you seen the new art display in Tattnall Square? This is how it came to be.

Patterned cloth dances in the wind on a tree stump at Tattnall Square Park as part of a new art display.

Craig Coleman, chair of the art department at Mercer University, said his fundamentals of color and design class is to blame.

“We got a basic idea to make some images that we would hang off the tree in someway,” Coleman said. “Through a series of, you know, working on the project and then rethinking the project about three times, we came up with the idea to print their images onto cloth and then hang them from poles that would be inserted into the tree.”

Coleman said Andrew Silver, chairman of Friends of Tattnall Square Park, reached out to him about creating an art project for Coleman’s class involving a tree stump in the park.

Coleman’s class walked out to look at the stump, and they decided to take on the project as part of their assignment involving patterns, he said.

Coleman said his students read a history of the park and used the park as inspiration for their patterns.

In the designs, there are multiple patterns that relate to the park including a map of the park, photos of different scenes, and images of owls.

“I always like to try to end the semester in that fundamentals of color and design class with some kind of larger project that is a group project, that is shown outside of the classroom so that ... students get the idea that whatever you make on the computer doesn’t have to stay on the computer or stay as a print,” Coleman said. “It can kind of go out into the world in some other way, in some other material, and be seen.”

The display will be taken down around Christmas, and although the fabric and ink are designed to withstand some weather, Coleman said he takes the display down when it rains to preserve the fabric. It was first installed Dec. 6.

He said the class received some outside help to complete the project. Marian Zielinski, a student of the class and a former theater professor, helped sew loops at the tops of the prints in order to slide them on the poles. Shelley Kuhen, who designs costumes for Mercer Theater, sewed the edges of the prints to keep the fabric from fraying, he said.

Coleman said it has been a few years since his students’ work was displayed in the park, and he wanted them to understand that they were producing art for the public.

“The park is a great place to ... use as a canvas and put art out there,” Coleman said. “It’s like an outdoor gallery.”