The stairwell from above: the two figures on the middle wall, with the bottom and upper walls running along the stairs on either side

Potential

Artist: Anastasiya, lead and designer
Place: Nikola Tesla STEM High School, Redmond, WA. One stairway, three walls.
Painted: April 1 to May 1, 2026
Medium: Sherwin-Williams paint
Design: Drawn on iPad Pro
Transfer: Traced onto the walls through a Meta Quest 2 headset
Team: 25 people from various grades
Funding: PTSA grant. Headset donated by a parent of a Tesla STEM student.

This mural was created in the hope of encapsulating the role that Tesla STEM serves as a catalyst in every student’s life, encouraging individuals to step beyond their boundaries, discover their true passions, and realize their full potential. This idea is reflected through the two figures at the center of the mural, representing every student at STEM as they look outward into the vastness of possibility.

The mural was also designed to bring greater color, warmth, and joy into the school environment, fostering a space that supports student well-being, inspiration, and morale.

The three walls, unfolded

Bottom wall

Middle wall

Upper wall

Final color drafts on iPad Pro, in the order you climb past them. Tap a wall to see how it was made.

The walls

Brainstorming Process

Sketchbook page: STEM mind map, Einstein portrait, planets, robots and an early stairwell color study

Sketchbook page: pen drawings of a rocket below a gravity well, and a DNA helix wrapped in flowers

Sketchbook page: two early long-wall layouts with an Einstein quote, two faces, rockets and equations

Original Drafts (Apple iPad Pro), when mural was expected to be one wall only

One-wall draft in color: the same composition on an ochre ground with green and blue details

Final Drafts, when mural had the option to be potentially three walls

Each wall from iPad to paint, in the order you climb past them.

Bottom wall

1Drawn on iPad Pro (time-lapse)
2Final color draft
3Traced in the headset
4Painted

Looking up the bottom flight: the cherry tree, globe and rocket run along the handrail toward the two figures

Bottom wall: a blossoming tree, a green field of binary, a globe and gears above the stairs

Detail: a globe, a test tube and a lightbulb along the flowing band

Detail: a blue and green rocket beside molecule hexagons

Middle wall

1Drawn on iPad Pro (time-lapse)
2Final color draft
3Traced in the headset
4Painted

Upper wall

1Drawn on iPad Pro (time-lapse)
2Final color draft
3Traced in the headset
4Painted

The upper flight: a compass, a neuron and the words Inspire, Educate, Innovate along the stairs

Upper wall: Inspire, Educate, Innovate with a blue dolphin and a DNA helix

Upper wall: a DNA helix, a trophy, music notes and a telescope beneath a green binary field

Detail: a music staff, a trophy, a planet and a DNA helix

Using the headset

Headset: Meta Quest 2, donated
Drawn on: iPad Pro
Clips: Step 3 of each wall

I've always been afraid that technology will take over art…with the rise of AI and other technological advances, it seems daunting. However, getting to use an Oculus, and utilize virtual reality with art, it was an unforgettable experience.

It was fun getting to learn how to use the device, and see my sketches come to life when the headset would snugly fit on my head. Being able to manipulate the sketches and make them form onto the wall I needed them to be, made me see how useful technology can be when used properly.

It gave me the opportunity to bridge digital and physical art. I created my art digitally on my personal iPad, uploaded it onto the Oculus, and was able to then physically trace and paint it.

Another benefit that virtual reality has is that it makes large-scale art more accessible. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to transfer my digital art from the iPad properly onto the large walls. However, the VR gave me a guide directly within the physical space, making that translation much more precise and time efficient.

It also gave me the freedom to experiment. While transferring the art onto the wall, I could change position and visualize elements before having to paint them in. Making mistakes at the beginning and fixing them was much better than making them with paint where it would have been really hard to fix.

The biggest realization for me was that through this practice I was able to combine STEM and creativity with my team. Technology and art are sometimes treated as separate disciplines that can't interact with one another. However, this hands-on experience demonstrated that engineering or design tools can actually enable creative expression.

Process of how the mural Potential came to be

It all started freshman year. When I was at freshman orientation for Nikola Tesla STEM High School, I was walking through one of the stairways. All the walls were a blank white, and it seemed so unwelcoming, cold, and unpleasant; my mind straight away thought, this is the perfect location for a mural.

With that idea in mind, I was going through freshman year, and one of my classes was Graphic Production. In the midst of all of my STEM focused classes, this class gave me the chance to recognize and see that art and STEM had the potential to be mixed, and create beautiful things.

Moving on to sophomore year, I started planning out how I can pitch my mural idea to the school, and who can be my potential mentor in the entirety of the process. Something that encouraged me, was when in my APES class, my teacher gave an assignment to create something that would help or change a community. I took this as an opportunity to pitch my mural project. It was the perfect run through, and motivated me to finish my first draft sketches of the potential mural.

At the end of sophomore year, I asked my graphic production teacher from freshman year, Karen Schaeffer, if she could assist me in the process, and help guide me through the entire thing. She has worked with murals before, so she was the perfect person to come to. She helped me stay on track with my sketch iterations, and helped arrange when I could pitch the project to the principal. She worked on setting a budget, and letting me know all of the materials that we would need to acquire for this project as well.

At the beginning of junior year, Ms. Schaeffer and I came together after summer break and continued working on the pitch details. We ended up pitching the idea around November of 2025. I presented a PowerPoint of the final sketches to the principal, as well as explaining the meaning behind the design, and why I think it's a positive addition to the school. Ms. Schaeffer explained what the budget would be, and what we would need to spend the necessary money on (paint, brushes, cleaning supplies etc.).

Thankfully, our wonderful principal, Ms. Karkainen, agreed to the mural and helped us by getting PTSA to grant the budget for the project. While waiting for PTSA's agreement, I refined the sketches, and acquired a VR Headset, Oculus Quest 2, that was donated by a parent of a student that also goes to Tesla STEM. I also got a team together, 25 people in total, from various different grades. Once we got the grant from the PTSA, Ms. Schaeffer and I visited Sherwin-Williams, to pick out the paint colors that matched the final sketches.

Starting the first of April, we began to degrease the walls and tape down the floors with paper, to have a clean canvas to start with, and to not get the school floors painted on during the process.

I started sketching the walls with the VR headset, and the team would paint what I would sketch. We coordinated shift hours through an Excel document that Ms. Schaeffer organized, and then I would make sure that the team would check in when they would work, and put in their hours.

We finished painting the first of May, so it took exactly one month to complete the process of actually painting the mural. The painting sessions would happen before school, sometimes during lunchtime, after school, and one weekend was dedicated to it as well.

I had to learn how to be not only a leader of a large team, but also learn to manage my time and communicate well to my mentor and the principal.

This project was not only the kickoff to the Room to Flourish Initiative, but it was also a personal project since this was happening at my home high school. This was also considered an internship for students that participated. Around 390 coordinated service hours collectively were provided in total during this opportunity for others and myself.

Painting, day by day

Sixteen clips, from wall prep to the final day. Tap a clip to play it. Sound removed.

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Outcome & Impact

The mural transformed what was once an ordinary school space into an environment designed to reflect the creativity, identity, and community of our school. After its completion, students and staff shared overwhelmingly positive feedback about the artwork and the way it changed the atmosphere of the space.

But it didn't end there.

For many members of the mural team, the project became an introduction to what is possible when art and technology intersect. By seeing tools like mixed reality used alongside traditional sketching and painting, team members became interested in exploring similar combinations of technology, design, and art in their own future work.

The project also inspired students to pursue creative projects of their own. Several team members expressed interest in creating similar work and continuing to transform spaces through art, allowing the impact of the original mural to extend beyond a single installation.

Most importantly, the mural became something the school community could share. Students watched it develop from blank walls into a piece created by their peers, and the positive responses we received reinforced the idea behind the project: the spaces around us matter, and students themselves can play a role in shaping them.

“The mural added so much life to a once drab and quite frankly boring staircase. It's now a landmark within the school, dubbed the ‘mural stairs’. The art transcends Anastasiya's time at STEM, she has created a legacy at STEM that [is] now permanently painted into its very walls.”

Sethmi

“The mural beautifully depicts Tesla STEM High School, portraying all the different subjects we learn in the school through the artistic talent of Anastasiya's team.”

Arthur Chen (mural team member)

“The mural is a wonderful reflection of the diverse community that Tesla STEM fosters.”

Anvie Sana (student)

“Whenever I go visit STEM to see my sister, I love seeing the pretty staircase, I like the big squiggle that goes in it.”

Sethmi's sister

The film

Credits

Design and lead: Anastasiya
Mentor: Karen Schaeffer, Graphic Production teacher
Principal: Ms. Karkainen
Painting team: Arthur Chen, Preetika Kaur, Shriya Chebolu, Kashvi Garg, Novyanna Bajracharya, Anoushka Gharat, Chinmayi Buddhavarapu, Mihika Kasamsetty, Lasyapriya Viswanadham, Sahana Kaliya, Mahathi Barrenkala, Joliz Karukayil, Gabriel Austen, Gopika Thiyagarajan, Siya Pande, Shreya Tundwal, Purab Bhupati
With help from: National Art Honor Society (8-10 members provided help as well)
Funding: PTSA grant. Headset donated by a parent of a Tesla STEM student.
Paint: Sherwin-Williams

Ms. Schaeffer: Graphic Production teacher at Nikola Tesla STEM High School

Ms. Schaeffer was personally my graphic production teacher freshman year, and agreed to mentor and help me with my first mural at the end of sophomore year. She helped me by teaching me how a mural should be planned out, sketched out and thought out. We talked a lot about how we wanted to transfer the sketches onto the wall, and she was the one who brought up the idea of using virtual reality. Ms. Schaeffer has painted murals before, so she also helped me by creating a budget and pitching the idea of the mural to the principal, Ms. Karkainen. During the actual painting process, she kept me on track, and pushed me to not only have fun during the process, but to also communicate well with my team, as well as with her and Ms. Karkainen. I am very grateful for her guidance, and her support is what led my team to finishing by the deadline, and executing it well.

Why Psychology Matters

The spaces we move through are more than just backgrounds. Schools, hallways, classrooms, libraries, and other public spaces become environments in which people learn, interact, think, and build relationships. Environmental psychology examines this relationship between people and their physical surroundings by investigating how color, visual design, nature, lighting, and spatial organization relate to our emotions, behavior, and well-being.

This research is central to our work. We don't want to create art simply to fill an empty wall. We want to think intentionally about how a space is experienced by the people who use it.

Read the research and references

Starting off with color. A 2025 systematic review by Jonauskaite and Mohr examined 132 peer-reviewed studies, more than 42,000 participants, and 64 countries to understand the relationship between color and emotion. The researchers found systematic associations between colors and emotional qualities. Lightness, saturation, and hue were all related to how people associated colors with different emotions.

Lighter colors, for example, were generally associated with more positive emotions, while blue, green, blue-green, and white were commonly associated with positive, lower-arousal emotions. Yellow and orange were more commonly associated with positive, higher-arousal emotions.

This relates to a 2022 study published in Psychophysiology, in which Bower and colleagues placed participants in immersive virtual environments while measuring their physiological and neurological responses. Participants experienced black, white, and blue environmental conditions. Researchers found differences in measures including skin conductance, respiration, and EEG activity associated with emotional processing between conditions.

The study was small, 18 participants, so it's not exactly proof that a particular wall color will produce a specific psychological outcome. However, it provides evidence that our brains and bodies can respond differently to characteristics of the environments around us.

Psychology also pushes the artist to question their work differently. Instead of focusing only on the aesthetics, an artist with a psychological lens would brainstorm how an environment can feel more intentional, welcoming and connected to the people who experience it; and only then, does the artist revolve the art around the initial psychological brainstorm.

References

Jonauskaite, D., & Mohr, C. (2025). Do we feel colours? A systematic review of 128 years of psychological research linking colours and emotions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02615-z
Bower, I. S., Clark, G. M., Tucker, R., Hill, A. T., Lum, J. A. G., Mortimer, M. A., & Enticott, P. G. (2022). Built environment color modulates autonomic and EEG indices of emotional response. Psychophysiology, 59(12), e14121. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14121
Bower, I., et al. (2019). Impact of built environment design on emotion measured via neurophysiological correlates and subjective indicators: A systematic review. Journal of Environmental Psychology. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249441930012X

And Why This Matters to Us

The Room to Flourish Initiative cares about environmental psychology, because it is the foundation for asking better design questions.

Questions that were asked before brainstorming for the Potential mural were:

How do we want people to experience this space?
What emotions should be triggered when seeing the art?
What saturation of the school colors should we use to create a comforting and joyful experience?
What elements in the art would connect the school community together?

With all of this, we are exploring how art and design can help turn the spaces that people pass through every day into places where they feel more connected, welcomed and represented.

Room to Flourish Initiative

We transform shared spaces through research-informed art and design, creating environments that support well-being, strengthen belonging, and bring communities together.

Our mission is to transform schools and public spaces into environments that positively shape how people feel, connect, and belong. Guided by research in environmental psychology, we use intentional choices in color, design, and art to create spaces that support well-being and make everyday environments more welcoming. But the impact extends beyond the finished artwork: the process of creating these spaces brings people together, encourages collaboration, and gives communities the opportunity to shape the environments they share.

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