University Times

Oleg Gotchev with “Man and Scholarship”

Pitt-Bradford has added another mural to its campus. “Man and Scholarship” was painted during the spring term by Oleg Gotchev and his Mural Design class. Gotchev, who heads the mural department at the National Academy of Art in Sofia, Bulgaria, taught at UPB this spring as a Fulbright Scholar.

“I leave behind something done by my hand,” he said of the new mural in Swarts Hall, which houses the behavioral and social sciences, nursing, composition, writing, languages, English, business management and education programs. Tiled depictions of the different disciplines are incorporated into the mural.

“This is the symbolic figure of the thinker and creator,” Gotchev said. In the center of the woman’s figure, Gotchev painted “I think, therefore I create, therefore I am” in Latin, English and Bulgarian.

Kong Ho, associate professor in art, taught the Mural Design class that created the academic mural in Fisher Hall, Pitt-Bradford’s building for science and engineering. That mural depicts scenes of natural beauty in the area as well as mathematical patterns and elements of science. Ho led another group of students to create a mural depicting the arts in Blaisdell Hall.

Ho spent the spring 2010 term as a Fulbright fellow at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, where he met Gotchev.