IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY'S PARKS LIBRARY TO DEDICATE 'PRAIRIE SKY'

AMES, Iowa -- A new mural celebrating the legacy of W. Robert Parks, president of Iowa State University from 1965 to1986, will be dedicated on Friday, May 21 at 4 p.m., upper rotunda, Parks Library. The public is invited toattend.

Iowa State University President Gregory Geoffroy, Library Services Dean Olivia M.A. Madison, artist Kurt Anderson, andReid Crawford, former ISU vice president for external affairs and friend of the Parks family, will speak at the event.Members of the Parks family, including daughter Andrea Parks Van Houweling, will attend.

The oil-on-canvas mural, "Prairie Sky," depicts the expansive Iowa landscape and the moods of Iowa sky and weather,says the artist, Kurt Anderson.

"At dusk a storm passes across an expansive rural setting. The immense power and threat of nature is depicted withbillowing thunderhead clouds that throw off lightning and cast a dark pall over the land. But as is often the case inIowa, the storm quickly passes. In its wake the sky appears especially tranquil and beautiful, as the scattering cloudscapture the last rays of the setting sun," Anderson notes in an artist's statement.

Parks passed away last July 13. He was 87. When he retired in 1986, he was one of the nation's longest-servinguniversity presidents, and is remembered as a visionary leader who changed the landscape of the university.

The mural was funded in part through memorials following Dr. Parks' death. It is on display on the first floor, ParksLibrary. Anderson, of Tucson, Ariz., also painted a commissioned portrait of Parks and his wife, Ellen Sorge Parks, in1999. That painting remains on display in Parks Library.