GROVE CITY — Three interns with an eye for art soon will create a blast of color at the Guthrie Theater with a community mural to be done this summer.

The movie-theme mural will be painted on the side of the building near Festival Park on South Broad Street by the hands of not only the artists, but also by neighbors in the community.

Bryant Kuehner of Meadville is a student at Ithaca College and applied for the job after he saw an advertisement online. Kuehner said he and the other interns arrived last week and are visiting the community.

"We are going to a few functions in the next few weeks and are trying to organize our own meetings," Kuehner said.

Benjamin Pannell of Tallahassee, Fla., is a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and will handle the design of the mural. He is looking forward to gaining more community input and working on a larger scale.

"Usually in graduate school you hunker down and spend hours upon hours in the studio painting whatever you want and this is going to be great for me," Pannell said.

The third intern, Kurt Bachmann of Philadelphia, is a student at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Bachmann is a business major who found out about the project at a job fair. He is looking forward to spending the summer in a small town and learning how to paint.

"It seems like a tight-knit community," Bachmann said. "Everyone says 'hi' when you walk down the street; definitely different from Philly."

After the design is completed, it will be placed on a grid, drawn to actual size on canvas, and then cut into grid squares. The squares will be painted in a paint-by-number method, which will allow residents to participate in the project. Painting participants can come in all ages, from children to seniors.

A grant from the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful organization and the Pennsylvania Downtown Center is funding the 10-week project, which is being implemented by Olde Town Grove City.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful created the Community Enhancement Internship program three years ago. The economic impact to each community in the program is about $10,000, according to Lisa Pritchard, manager of Olde Town Grove City.

In addition to the mural, construction at Festival Park on South Broad Street is to begin in the next few weeks, said Vance Oakes, borough manager. Two donors, who each provided $75,000 cash, including Grove City native Joe Monteleone and George Junior Republic, are largely funding the $178,000 project.

The rest of the funding is provided by the Grove City Revitalization.

The park will be named the Joe Monteleone Youth Festival Park, Oakes said.

Oakes said the space has been used as a parking lot.

The contractors for the project will be the borough itself and the public works crew. A new 28-foot diameter gazebo will be built in the center of the park.

"We will also be putting in new curbs, sidewalks, lighting and planting trees," Oakes said.

Subcontractors will be hired for the curbs and the asphalt pavement work, Oakes said.

Oakes also said Olde Town Grove City will use the space for outdoor movies and concerts.

For information on how to get involved with the mural project, call Traci Turner, Olde Town administrative assistant, at 724-458-0301.