The south-facing cinder block wall of Harvest Depot Restaurant in La Pine will be looking a lot less bleak soon thanks to a state grant for the arts.

Arts Central, an arts nonprofit in Bend, was awarded $7,000 from the Oregon Arts Commission to create a mural for the city. The theme: “Pride of La Pine.”

“La Pine is really working on sprucing themselves up,” Cate O’Hagan, Arts Central executive director said Friday. “(The mural) will face a major thoroughfare.”

Visitors and passers-by will be able to see the mural as they drive north on U.S. Highway 97. Harvest Depot is located on a triangular block situated between Highway 97 and Huntington Road.

“I’m just thrilled,” Mayor Ken Mulenex said Friday of the grant.

Local students will help plan and paint the mural, which is why, O’Hagan said, there’s no plan yet for how the theme “Pride of La Pine” will take shape.

Arts Central has already been working in La Pine Middle School, Mulenex and O’Hagan said. Students there will be involved in helping plan the mural, and create it, under the guidance of an artist in residence with Arts Central.

O’Hagan said she’s not sure yet which of the nonprofit’s artists it will be, but the person will have experience with large-scale work like this.

Mulenex said the mural will give the city, incorporated in 2006, a chance to improve itself.

“Being a new city like we are, we really have an opportunity to move ourselves forward,” Mulenex said. “Arts is such a strong quality-of-life issue, that I’ve felt for a long time we’ve needed it.”

Mulenex said the city will match some of the grant funding, and O’Hagan said community members have already stepped forward with donations, including paint, scaffolding and brushes, not to mention the side of the one-story building.

The partnership with Arts Central at the middle school and for the project isn’t the only step the city is taking to improve quality of life in La Pine through art.

“It’s the first step,” Mulenex said of the mural, “because we are working on appointing an arts commission at the city level, and that will just expand the arts opportunities we have.”

As Mulenex pointed out, arts in education is ramping back up from taking a side role: “Now they’re moving to calling it STEAM,” Mulenex said, explaining how the acronym of STEM for science, technology, engineering and math is now including an “A” for arts.

The planning process for the mural will begin in early spring.

“I’m hoping we can do a lot of this before the end of the school year,” O’Hagan said, adding painting won’t take place until the weather is clear.

O’Hagan, who explained Arts Central works hard to reach more rural communities with art, said this new mural for La Pine is “groundbreaking.” Residents there, she said, are excited about the partnership and project.

“It seemed to be a real fitting time to work with them, and they’re so enthusiastic,” O’Hagan said.

The Oregon Arts Commission awarded grants to two other Central Oregon entities: $5,000 to the Deschutes Public Library Foundation for A Novel Idea, its community reading program, and $7,000 to the High Desert Museum for its project “Art for a Nation: Inspiration from the Great Depression,” that includes an exhibit and community programs.

— Reporter: 541-383-0325,

kfisicaro@bendbulletin.com