About the artwork
Dreaming of Educational Horizons, 2011
Acrylic on three canvas panels
Located in Smith Memorial Student Union, La Casa Latina, Room 229
The mural expresses the aspirations and the dreams of achieving higher education, like the role model José Hernandez whose goal of becoming an astronaut took him from the fields of California where he picked cucumbers, strawberries, and other crops to the NASA shuttle program. The astronaut is portrayed at the top right corner of the 3-panel mural. At the left side panel, the farmworkers march in direction of pursuing higher education from the fields, and the library of PSU is the core in which the knowledge emerges in the form of flying books becoming butterflies. The metamorphosis of the butterflies is also part of the transformation that students go under the process of education and becoming professionals. At the center of the mural, a couple holding hands represents the unity that is necessary to achieve the collective goal of aspiring higher studies and career accomplishments. Such accomplishment is represented in the flying hat that accompanies the shuttle and the image of Jose Hernandez, which remind us that the sky is the limit to our dreams in academia and careers of excellence
About the artists
Dreaming of Educational Horizons was created by Hector H Hernandez and the spring class of the Chicano/Latino Muralism and Public Art Class.
Banner image: Photo by Hector H Hernandez.