YSU Winning penguin features campus montage

The penguin will be on display at YSU's Kilcawley Center.
YOUNGSTOWN -- A design by a Youngstown State University senior that features new and old landmarks of the campus won the Last Penguin Standing contest.
The contest called for YSU students to develop designs for the last unpainted penguin statue remaining from last year's Penguin Parade public arts project. Penguin Parade featured 30, 5-foot-tall penguin sculptures decorated by local artists and auctioned to the public.
Erin Maloney's "Campus Core" design was selected the winner.
Kilcawley Center, YSU's student center, bought a blank penguin statue a year ago with the intention it be designed by a YSU student and displayed in the center.
Eighteen students submitted designs, and a panel of 15 judges chose Maloney's proposal, which includes an acrylic montage featuring YSU buildings such as Jones Hall and the new Andrews Student Recreation and Wellness Center and other campus highlights such as the fountain and "The Rock."
Maloney will receive $1,000 when the penguin is completed and returned to Kilcawley Center in August. The statue will be displayed in the Cafaro Lobby located inside Kilcawley's University Plaza main entrance.
Drawing interest
A 1997 graduate of Poland Seminary High School, Maloney said she has been drawing ever since she can remember and started doing commissioned work as a teenager, including drawings, paintings in all media and large-scale murals.
In 1998, she began working at Graphic Services in Kilcawley Center, and she will graduate Saturday with a bachelor's degree in graphic design.
"Working in Kilcawley Center has proved to be an invaluable experience," she said.
"Every day I come to work and interact with amazing students, faculty and staff that make up YSU.
Maloney said her design was inspired by the center, which she called the hub of student life at YSU.
"Students gather here to meet, interact, study, eat and relax while campus life continues all around," she said. "It is this surrounding campus landscape that will be represented in my design."