For 40 years, a hidden green-and-orange mural of tall plant stalks and geometric patterns with the initials “MPF82” has been underneath the Willard Building of Penn State’s University Park campus.

It’s in a dank, sometimes flooded tunnel, under some grating and surrounded by electrical equipment, writes James Engel for The Daily Collegian.

No one knew where the mural came from.

Until now.

The artist is from Holmes.

Detective work by James Engel and material in an Atlas Obscura article tracked the mural’s initials to an art education student in 1982—Mary Patricia Ford from Holmes.

Ford helped create the mural in the summer of 1982 under Penn State Professor Yar Chomicky.

“He loved it. He didn’t critique it at all,” Ford said. “He just said, ‘Nice work’ and walked away.”

Now a Fine Arts teacher at Pennsauken High School in New Jersey, Ford said she helped design the mural and did most of the painting based on Native American art.

Ford has since spent five summers on Alaskan fishing boats to pay back her college debt before starting her art education career.

And she’s still painting murals, this time in high school hallways.

Read more about Mary Patricia Ford and the hidden Penn State campus mural at The Daily Collegian.