If you can easily find a door to the pool at North Carroll High School, don't try to sneak in for a dip. You'll crash into a cinder block wall.
It's a mural.
Legend has it that a pool was part of the original building but is no longer used. Seniors tell that to freshman, and challenge them to find it.
There might be a pool in the building or there might not be, but it is not as easily found as Stacey Krumrine's legacy to the school -- a door painted on a wall in the hallway next to the weight room. The door appears to open just enough to reveal a neglected pool with a crack in its wall and a spider hanging above it.
Every year, a few student artists earn the privilege of making their mark on the walls of North Carroll High School. Murals throughout the halls and in some classrooms have been a tradition in the school since it opened 20 years ago.
"The first thing I said when I walked in was, 'It's just too sterile. We need art on the walls,' " recalled art department chairwoman Jan Halman.
The next target is the wall around the guidance office. But inspiration for the project is elusive for seniors Matt Kutrick and Chris Price and junior Jeff Zipprian. Ms. Halman won't approve just anything.
"We were going to paint big sunshine-happy things, but they didn't want that," Chris said.
They're stuck, but Ms. Halman told them to keep thinking.
"I really have pushed for originality," she said.
Meanwhile, Ms. Halman plans to let another group of students paint over one of the oldest murals, the 10-year-old mural in the "Panther Pit," the part of the building below the cafeteria, where the art rooms are.
The mural depicts a row of figures, starting with an American Indian on the left and ending with an astronaut on the right. Females seem to notice a problem with the mural.
"It's the history of man," Ms. Halman said. "No women."
CBut the main reason she'll let students paint over it is that it is beginning to deteriorate.
"We've been looking at it a long time," she said.
The artwork in the rest of the building includes functional graphics, such as the large painted block letters that denote the girls' and boys' locker rooms, the "Panther Power" letters in the cafeteria and other homages to the school's feline mascot.
But much of it is fun, such as Principal Gregory Eckles' favorite, Ms. Krumrine's trompe l'oeil (French for "trick of the eye") of a door leading to a pool.
That door is a trick -- nothing on the other side but a custodian's closet -- but Dr. Eckles won't say whether the pool is as much a fabrication.
Another of Dr. Eckles' favorites is a painting on the underside of a set of stairs, dedicated to "Seniors." The colorful work was painted with airbrushes by Eric Lambert and Kerstin Neteler when they were 12th-graders in 1988.
Head custodian Bill Shafer built scaffolding so the two artists could reach their surface.
Dr. Eckles approves all the projects before they can go up. He doesn't have to say no very often, because Ms. Halman screens them.
The latest work in progress is a symmetrical art-nouveau mural of two black panthers, painted by senior Shannon Differs, junior Wendy Davis and sophomore Sarah McFalls.
"When you walk by, those eyes grab you," Dr. Eckles said of the yellow eyes, completed on one of the animals, but still to be filled in on the other.
Dr. Eckles said it is rare for a sophomore such as Sarah to get to paint a mural; usually seniors, and some juniors, earn the honor.
But the main requirement is that what goes up is good, and he liked the black panther idea and knew that Sarah would be able to carry it off.
Ms. Halman said the school's schedule of four 90-minute class periods a day with courses lasting one semester -- unique in the county -- allows students such as Sarah to take more art classes earlier, and more classes by the time they graduate.
Just as with students, not all the walls qualify.
The portable vinyl paneled walls can't be painted, so student art is limited to the latex-covered cinder blocks.
The artists also use latex.
"They were latex paints we bought as cheaply as we could at Ames or Wal-Mart and those kinds of stores," Ms. Halman said.
The students try to make the painting reflect the area of the school.
For example, a colorful mural of forest animals decorates the child-development room.
A floral design with a bird tending a nest decorates the home economics department. A space shuttle is painted on the wall in the technology classroom. A muscular arm lifting a barbell extends from the door of the weight room.
The projects Ms. Halman rejects usually involve cartoon-like depictions, she said.
"Or they want to say funny things about the food in the cafeteria. We don't allow that."