Next month, people will have the opportunity to see art created before their very eyes.

A trio of muralists will spend most of a week in August painting a mural outside the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design building at North Prince and West Chestnut streets.

The mural will illustrate with imagery the poem "All Times and All Tenses Alive in This Moment," by Mary Szybist.

Schon Wanner, one of the three artists who make up Root 222, said their work is usually free-form, with one artist painting in response to the work of another.

"We'll literally bob and weave and create imagery on the fly," Wanner said of himself, Deric Hettinger and Anthony Mark. The Reading-based artists are all alumni of the art school.

Often, such as on Music Fridays in downtown Lancaster on the third Friday of the month, the Root 222 artists will create an entire mural in two hours.

This project, however, is less improvisational than most Root 222 murals.

"In this case, there are so many cooks in the kitchen that we do start with a pretty good amount of planning," he said.

Along with the college and the artists, there also is the work of the poet to consider and the Poetry Paths project, which is organizing public poetry and art displays at the site and 14 others in the city. The project intends to weave poetry into the fabric of the city.

Each of the artists has started with sketched ideas. The best ones will be chosen and interwoven into the words of Szybist's poem, Wanner said.

And there are the logistics of painting the mural on the ceiling of the college building portico.

Wanner said passers-by can expect to see "three guys sweating profusely on scaffolding with aching necks." Along with the painting on the 16-foot-by-20-foot ceiling, elements of the mural will extend down onto the walls at the corner.

What he is hoping to see afterward are people drawn into the portico, looking upward and spinning as they read the poem and view the imagery. He is hoping for a quiet oasis of art on the downtown streetscape.

Helping with the rendering of the poem is that it was not written in a traditional form. Szybist, a Williamsport native who is now an English professor in Portland, Ore., presented her poem in a sunburst format with no linear beginning or end.

Her poem was chosen from as many as 50 submissions for the site, said Wanner, who was on the four-member selection committee.

Before the actual mural painting, preparation work on the portico must be done. Power washing, electrical work, tile flooring repair, sign installation, painting and drawing will start at the beginning of August, Mary Rankin Stadden, the college public relations director, said.

Custom-designed handrails also are being incorporated into the portico project. They are designed by PCA&D faculty member Jeremy Waak.

It remains unclear which week Root 222 actually will be painting the mural, Stadden said, but the entire project is expected to be completed by Aug. 30.

Wanner acknowledged that any ceiling mural automatically brings to mind Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel. He quickly dismissed any comparison.

He does, however, hope the portico mural will stand the test of time. Unlike most "street art," the mural is literally in a position where it should be protected. Wanner hopes it will be there a half-century from now.

"It's pretty neat and special, and it's really a big honor for us," he said of doing the only artwork on the art school exterior.

In addition to the portico, Poetry Paths projects are planned for Fulton Theatre, Lancaster County Public Library, Penn Square, Clipper Magazine Stadium, Shreiner-Concord Cemetery, Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster Amtrak station, Water Street Ministries, Bright Side Opportunities Center, Keystone Art & Culture Center, Spanish American Civic Association, Tabor Community Services and Conestoga Greenway.

bharris@lnpnews.com