Fun With Fungi: The Mushroom Murals of Dabney House

Aelin Hunt (BS ’23) served as Dabney House president—and its unofficial painter—before they graduated last summer. They fell in love with making murals during their first year at Caltech after taking a class with drawing, painting, and silkscreen art director Jim Barry. Hunt, who graduated with a degree in materials science and chemistry in June 2023, explains the peace they found while adorning several walls in Dabney House, and why it is so fun to paint mushrooms.

“I learned to do watercolors and then a little bit of acrylic painting. Over the next couple of years, I had the chance to do more acrylic painting. Then, when I became president of Dabney House, I had the chance to approve murals. The fun part is getting into the flow of a few hours of painting and listening to music. It’s a good time, and it was therapeutic also. Coming back from COVID, we had just returned to the house, and the mural policy was being revamped. Being able to paint something on the wall was, I don’t know, sort of poetic. ...

“I like mycology, and I think mushrooms look cool. I spent most of my summers in Maine in the woods where there is quite the variety of mushrooms, and I was also a summer camp counselor teaching campers how to survive in the woods. A lot of the counselors knew things about mushrooms and could identify them, so I picked things up along the way. I’ve done a lot of mushroom art. I painted this over winter break in 2022–23. It’s a pretty tall stairwell, and it was quite challenging to get a ladder to fit into it properly. I had to build a small platform so that I could balance the ladder between the stairs and the platform, and then stand carefully on the ladder to paint the top. It was a pretty involved project but one that I found to be a fun challenge.”