When walking around Grayslake Central, you can clearly see the hard work put into the art prominently featured around the school. It seems that all the walls in the school are filled with colors and student spirit, but, if you’ve been by the cafeteria and annex you may have noticed bare walls displaying nothing except the daily announcements on the television mounted to the wall. This is soon to change, with the help of the National Arts Honor Society. The club is planning on painting the currently barren walls and making the space brighter, more colorful, and reflective of the Ram spirit.

There is an extensive process when making decisions on major art projects like school murals, but it all starts with an idea. The idea to paint a large mural in the cafeteria first came from Quest. The food and beverage supplier for Grayslake Central. Quest wanted the National Arts Honors Society to be the ones to tackle the project. When NAHS heard the idea, they not only wanted to do it, but they wanted to expand it to include the annex next to the cafeteria. After the idea was approved, Quest sent in an A.I. generated image to NAHS with the intent to provide inspiration for the mural. However, the use of the AI image upset some members of NAHS initially.

Junior Jenika Vachali, a member of NAHS said, “I think [AI]’s beneficial to an extent because now they don’t need to worry about paying the person or the artist to make it. But then, it is also kind of sad, considering that they didn’t ask an actual person’s opinion to come up with an actual idea.” Although this perspective is shared by some students within NAHS, Bonnie Shorr, the facility sponsor of NAHS, has a different perspective on the situation. Shorr said, “AI is just a tool, it’s like any app or tech tool. To me, it doesn’t replace art. People are so afraid it’s [going to] – it’s not going to replace art.”

The A.I. generated mural inspiration image stirred up reactions outside of NAHS and Mrs. Shoor, with self confessed “art nerd” Principal Dan Landry offering his own thoughts on the AI inspiration image. “I mean, the reason I didn’t like the AI [image] is, first, it wasn’t student generated, a student didn’t put in the searches, and the student didn’t do the thing.” Landry has always loved the art students create at Grayslake Central. Landry said “I am for student art, because some of the stuff is just crazy amazing. It really is. If you ever see me at the art show, I mean like, I am that nerd.”

As it stands at the time of publication, the cafeteria mural is still in its approval stage and NAHS students are in the process of creating designs for the annex’s future mural.