A sense of community pride has always been around for Sarrah Eggers.

But with a sense of pride comes a sense of purpose. The recent Elizabethton High School graduate decided to combine both traits while deciding a Bartleby Program project for the 2017-18 academic year. The final result? Painting Elizabethton.

During the previous school year, Eggers was able to organize the creation of two murals in downtown Elizabethton and as she prepares for college, the green light was given to begin work on number three.

With City of Elizabethton officials looking to revitalize efforts in downtown, Eggers stated she enjoys the area and wanted to do her part to encourage others to stop by and visit with the Painting Elizabethton project.

“Our mission is to fill downtown with inviting murals in order to create traffic in our shops and generate business to boost the overall town morale,” she said.

With Painting Elizabethton, Eggers is able to work with local artists that are wanting to add an extra artistic flair to the downtown area while also securing needed materials.

“Basically I realized that even though I think our downtown area is amazing and the people and shops are wonderful, not everyone does,” she said about the origin of the project. “I discovered that the appearance of virtually everything downtown was bland, brown and boring. I knew that some bigger and more popular cities had a big art community in their downtown areas and they were highly represented through murals. I had an idea to generate murals in our downtown area to not only attract people to the murals specifically, but all of the other great things we have to offer.”

Eggers was able to get traction going for the project through the Bartleby Program at EHS during her senior year. During Bartleby’s inaugural year, Eggers was part of a community involvement class that allowed students to select a community work project and to join alongside community members to accomplish the goal. Eggers was able to work with classmates, teachers and community partners to get the first two murals completed during the school year.

“The Bartleby class itself was just amazing,” Eggers said. “My teachers, Dustin Hensley and Daniel Proffitt, helped me so much when I was developing my project, and even now I receive support from them through all of my accomplishments.”

Eggers added the third mural will be callback to different aspects important to Elizabethton.

“The third mural is going to be another set of wings that are on the same wall as the original set,” she said. “One side will be full of Tennessee’s nature and the other will be filled with highlights of Elizabethton. They’ll be done in complete black and white and face upright, unlike the first pair.”

Don’t expect the drive to add color to downtown to go off course any time soon. Eggers added that the public can visit the Painting Elizabethton Facebook and Instagram accounts to learn more about upcoming work.

“That is also a good way for local artists or store owners to contact me if they wish to help create a mural or have one on their store,” she added.