Self taught in art, student designs selfie wall

Corinna Lingle has only taken one art class in her life, and it was a short visit.

“I took one little art class my senior year of high school for two weeks. Then I was like, ‘You know what? I already know this stuff,'” said Lingle, a junior majoring in criminal justice at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Even without professional training, her love for making art led to designing and painting a pair of wings on the lobby wall in the UC Foundation Apartments. When students return for the fall semester, they can take selfies in front of the artwork, giving them wings.

“I just enjoy making the artwork,” said Lingle, a native of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. “If people take pictures by it, that’s awesome. That’s really great.”

The idea for a selfie wall originated with Carling Wilson, associate director of administrative services in UTC Housing.

“Mural artworks have always been popular,” Wilson said. “We were thinking we needed a mural, so we looked at what other schools have done.”

With a criminal justice major, minors in communication and political science and a desire to be a park ranger, Lingle wouldn’t seem like an artistic choice who jumps out at you.

When Wilson saw a large mural of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” that Lingle painted a few years ago, though, she knew she had her artist.

Lingle, who was 15 when she first painted the van Gogh replica on a wall in her mother’s house, was intrigued by the wall-wings concept.

“They talked to me and said, ‘We really want some wings for UCF. So I said, ‘OK, I’ll design some wings and put ’em up there.'”

Using a piece of lined notebook paper, she drew a sketch and gave it to Carling and others in Housing.

“They had originally shown me an idea of what they wanted, so I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to take this and make it my own,” Lingle said. “The inside part of the wings is my design.”

Within each wing are visual elements representing UTC and the city of Chattanooga. The Power C. The Chattanooga Choo Choo. “Mocs Fly Together” on a wing. Lookout Mountain, the Tennessee River and the Walnut Street Bridge. The pavilion on Chamberlain Field.

Another aspect of Lingle’s appeal, according to Wilson, is that she works as a resident assistant in West Campus Housing.

“One of the selling points of the mural was having one of our student workers do the painting,” she said.