Monica Huckabay felt the frigid stucco with a white-gloved hand Saturday morning, the newly applied fuchsia paint already fused to the building.

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Area students paint a mural on the side of Recycled Books Records CDs on Saturday in Denton.

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“I think it’s dry,” she said.

The 17-year-old Denton High School student and fellow art club members sketched a brass horn between the hands of a two-dimensional Dentonite, while University of North Texas student Dawn Ramsey watched.

“Don’t forget — the right hand needs to be on top of the valves,” Ramsey said.

Students from UNT and Denton High recently converged on a downtown art project of enormous proportions: a mural measuring 28 feet wide and 17 1/2 feet tall on the side of the purple Opera House building, which houses Recycled Books Records CDs.

The students spent the last three weeks working on the project and hope to finish it today, said Megan Eakins, a UNT art student and one of the organizers of the project.

The finished mural — a skyline view of the Courthouse on the Square surrounded by several lighted trees — features a pair of Dentonites whose silhouettes contain scoops of ice cream inspired by Beth Marie’s Old-Fashioned Ice Cream and Soda Fountain, Jupiter House-style coffee, the sign of the Campus Theatre, and acronyms for DHS, UNT and Texas Woman’s University.

“I feel like, somehow, Denton is in two places — there’s the Denton community and then there’s the college [community]. This [mural] bridges that gap,” Eakins said.

The high school students came up with designs for the mural, Eakins said, while the UNT students helped combine the ideas and put finishing touches on them.

Huckabay designed the Dr. Seuss-esque tree landscape, while Erin Carr, 15, designed the two human characters.

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University of North Texas senior Justin Jones of Lewisville works on a mural being painted on the side of Recycled Books Records CDs on Saturday in Denton.

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The DHS students said it was the first time they had designed a mural.

The project cost a little more than $600 and will have taken about 300 hours to produce, Eakins said. About half of the funds were donated by UNT’s Multicultural Center and the College of Visual Arts and Design, she said, and the other half came from fundraisers by the UNT chapter of the National Art Educators Association. 

UNT’s Printmaking Association of North Texas also participated in the project.

For the high school, the mural project helped create a buzz around the art club, with about 60 students signing up for the club this year — surpassing the usual eight to 10 artists — said James Rosin, an art teacher and art club advisor.

The mural, which was meant to capture the Denton community, will help put the DHS art club on the map, he said.

“I told my students they would be immortalized here as long as the mural would be here,” Rosin said. “It was very important for my kids to participate.”

Many of the high school students grew up in Denton and don’t know how unusual it is for a community to gather for celebrations, with residents knowing each other well, Rosin said.

Rosin grew up in Carrollton and never felt a tie to that community, he said, like the strong ties in Denton.

“I don’t know if the students have grasped what they’ve created for Denton yet, but I’m looking forward to signing the strip at the bottom with them,” Rosin said.

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com.