Ingrid Lilligren, professor of art and design at Iowa State, has created a mural titled “Patterns for Life” depicting the agricultural landscape of rural southwest Iowa.

The mural will be dedicated Monday in a special ceremony from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Wallace Foundation Learning and Outreach Center, which commissioned the work.

The center is located near Lewis, a two-hour drive from Ames.

Governor Terry Branstad, ISU President Martin Jischke, gubernatorial candidate Jim Ross Lightfoot and U.S. Representative Leonard Boswell will all be in attendance at Monday’s dedication, according to a press release.

The mural was specially designed for a curved wall in the center’s lobby. It is made primarily of ceramic tiles.

Lilligren designed the mural after she visited the center last year.

With the help of an aerial photograph of the Armstrong Farm, which showed a type of farming called strip-cropping, she built a small-scale version of the mural to present to the Wallace Foundation Board for its approval.

“Patterns for Life” is the first object that people see upon entering the building.

“It’s very large and striking. When people walk into the lobby, it’s the first thing that they see,” said Jill Euken of the Wallace Foundation, in a press release.

Lilligren, her husband and three ISU design students began working on the actual project last April.

The mural, which is 18 feet high and 15 feet wide, is made completely out of tiles and no two tiles are the same shape or size, she said.

The Wallace Foundation Learning and Outreach Center is part of the Armstrong Farm, which is operated by the ISU Experiment Station.

The foundation is a nonprofit, private corporation that supports rural development in southwest Iowa.

The center, located at 53020 Hitchcock Ave. in Lewis, houses offices for ISU Extension specialists and staff, office space for the Wallace Foundation and various other classrooms.

The foundation is named for Henry Wallace, an ISU graduate who later became vice president of the United States. His childhood home is located close to the center.