Home improvement

Bob Handelman

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When students moved into Benjamin Franklin College last fall, they found large expanses of plain white wall in the basement activity spaces—which, to Sara Lewis ’21 and Julie Averbach ’21, looked a lot like an opportunity. The two spearheaded a project to fill the walls with colorful murals of a wide range of styles and subjects, including not only Benjamin Franklin but also DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin and singer Aretha Franklin. Some of the student artists had previous experience. But not all. “I’m a musician,” says Jerome Walker ’19, shown here in the early stages of his likeness of Aretha Franklin, “and this was a little out of my wheelhouse. But I love the idea of painting stuff.”