New Mural Adjacent to MASC Celebrates Sisterhood of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell

WSU Arts Assistant Professor Jiemei “Mei” Lin is painting a new mural of sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell in the hallway adjacent to Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) on the Terrell Library ground floor for the start of classes this fall.

According to Lin, the Virginia and Vanessa mural celebrates the creative lives and lasting influence of two remarkable women in the history of art and literature.

Woolf’s writing has served as a manifesto and source of inspiration for generations of artists, writers, activists, and women around the world, Lin said. Bell, in her own right, told stories through her paintings, prints, and illustrations, and through her visual responses to Woolf’s words, she expanded and reimagined them.

“This mural is inspired by the Virginia Woolf library collection at the WSU Libraries, a space that holds not just books, but traces of the sisters’ labor, imagination, and deep connection,” she said. “It honors their collaboration, their individual practices, and the powerful relationship that went beyond sisterhood.”

Lin has designed and executed large-scale public murals in the Pacific and Inland Northwest as a public artist. The murals function like vignettes or moments of stories, inviting the viewer into the scene to imagine possible narratives, she said.

Lin works with digital and traditional media to create paintings, murals, and illustrations. Her works frequently take on themes of individual and cultural identity with a particular emphasis on design and color.

She is an award-winning children’s book illustrator as well; her illustrated works represent and communicate with all audiences from underrepresented groups in her visual language.

WSU Libraries’ Interim Dean Trevor Bond said the project to paint the mural started after Lipi Turner-Rahman, former development director, saw a conference session on libraries that had murals made to celebrate their collections. Nancy Spitzer, who worked for 30 years at WSU Libraries as an administrative assistant to the director, associate director, and development coordinator, donated funds to purchase the supplies for the mural.

“In the spring, I reached out to Mei to see if she would be interested in developing a proposal,” he said. “She loves the Bloomsbury Group and Woolf and really enjoyed seeing Bell’s dust jacket designs for Virginia’s books. Mei’s design draws upon the iconography of Bell’s designs for her sister’s books.”

MASC has the finest collection of Leonard and Virginia Woolf books in the world, Bond said, including more than 9,900 books that were once part of the Woolfs’ personal library, as well as books inherited by Virginia and titles she and Leonard printed at their Hogarth Press.

“These outstanding collections are available for the public to view in the MASC reading room,” he added. “We continue to add to the Woolf collection thanks to generous support from Nancy Spitzer, WSU Virginia Woolf scholar and English professor emerita Diane Gillespie, and WSU alum, donor, and poet Mildred Bissinger.”