Sarah Tacey, background left, Jaime Schevalier, Rebecca Howard and Alexis Cornell (back to camera) work on their individual sketches that will be incorporated into the mural.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

COVENTRY — Coventry High School senior Sarah Tacey skillfully sketched an interpretation of a Rhode Island red and declared that the famous fowl never looked so good.

“This is the best chicken ever,” Sarah exclaimed to anyone who was listening. “Oh my God, I made the chicken crossed-eyed.”

On Tuesday, she and about a dozen of her friends in the school’s after-school art club worked busily on template designs of various landmarks and other icons of Rhode Island, their community and themselves, which will make up the blueprint design for a mural.

The mural, a community service project, will adorn a 5-foot-high, 19-foot-wide exterior wall of the Coventry Credit Union building on Nooseneck Hill Road. The project, the brainchild of the branch’s chief executive officer, is meant to celebrate the longtime relationship the credit union has had with the high school.

The Nooseneck Hill Road branch opened in 1989; the concrete side wall facing the road has always been bare. The bank is underwriting the cost of the mural.

“We had some open space there. We thought it would be nice to decorate it. It’s a little more interesting. It gives [the students] an opportunity to build their resumé and gives a little credit to some talent in the local community,” said Kelly Donahue, a marketing specialist at the credit union.

“We’ve always been a part of the community,” Donahue said. “We hold our annual meetings at the high school and teach some of the students in the business classes about the ABCs of financing and business ethics.”

About two dozen art students from all grades are participating in the project. The group expects to present plans to the bank later this month and to begin painting early next month, before it gets too cold, Donahue said.

Students began meeting about a week ago to brainstorm. They pored through history books about Coventry and searched the Internet for visual images of the state.

They came up with serious representations, such as the state flag, but also a few quirkier ones, such as Rhode Island red, the Del’s Lemonade logo and quahogs. For town images, choices included the Coventry Town Seal, the historic one-room Read Schoolhouse and a Route 117 sign — because the road runs the length of the community from east to west. There’s even a plug for the University of Rhode Island Rams sports teams.

Art teacher Linda Caparrelli said the students will probably assemble the images in a collage, and make something that resembles a map. She would like her students to do the mural in the style of local artist Maxwell Mays, who painted many cheerful landscapes and city and community scenes.

“We kind want it to overlap, so that it gels as one image. We don’t want it as a patchwork quilt,” Caparrelli said. “We want it to use the landscapes from different areas, like Carbuncle Pond. Coventry is almost all landscape and open space.”

The students will receive community service points toward their high school diplomas for the project, Caparrelli said. Many are excited to be working on a project that will benefit the community.

“We are actually going to do something that is bigger than our own murals,” Tacey said, referring to an art class requirement that some seniors are required to complete.

Kristen Prickett, 14, worked on a sketch of the one-room schoolhouse using a grid technique to draw the design to scale. She said she will feel proud knowing that she had a hand in the mural design.

“I think it’s just a good thing for Coventry High School students to be recognized,” she said.

lsparks@projo.com