Sanjana Priyonti
Executive Editor
Don’t just call our campus beautiful; Lillian Boston (C’ 27) wants you to color it.
That’s why she’s spent the past three summers creating a coloring book that captures the best of the Mountain’s beloved traditions, buildings and people.
Proceeds from the chemistry major’s coloring book — Yea Sewanee Colors — will support free clinics in the South Cumberland region in collaboration with the South Cumberland Community Fund.
Initially, Boston said she imagined the drawings would become a small collection of prints for her own room. “I’ve always just really loved to draw,” Boston said. “And it’s always been something I kind of did for stress relief.” But as she continued adding illustrations, she “realized that it could be something bigger.”
That realization helped channel her personal creative endeavor into an effort to give back to the community that surrounds Sewanee. During her summers away from the Mountain, Boston created 15 illustrations, each accompanied by a written history explaining the significance of each subject.
Boston said the places, traditions and figures she chose represented different aspects of life on the Mountain. The resulting illustrations range from relatively simple designs to highly detailed architectural drawings. The first illustration in the book is of Stirling’s Coffeehouse. “I feel like you can’t think about Sewanee and not have Stirling’s,” she said. From there, the book moves through a collection of familiar and sometimes less obvious pieces of Sewanee culture.
Boston included the Bairnwick Women Center, where she lived for two academic years and developed an appreciation for the organization’s role on campus. She also included YSR and EQB, incorporating pennant flags featuring Sewanee-specific terminology that could help introduce some of the University’s traditions and language to those less familiar with Sewanee.
Other illustrations feature the Cross, a spray of daffodils perched in a Blundstone boot, a button-festooned academic gown, the Tiger mascot, a Sewanee Angel and All Saints’ Chapel. All Saints’ personally took Boston the longest because of the building’s extensive stonework. “I think having this one really detailed is important,” she said.
The project also gave Boston an opportunity to investigate stories behind things she had encountered during her time at Sewanee.
“I got curious when I was doing them all,” she said. “I was like, I wonder why we have the buildings that we have or why we have the traditions that we have.” That curiosity led her to research the histories behind each illustration and include those histories alongside the drawings.
One illustration is dedicated to legendary Sewanee football trainer Willie Six Sims, a figure Boston learned more about through her African-American history courses. Sims was beloved for his devotion to Sewanee athletic teams between 1909 and 1947. He died in 1950.
“I wanted to be able to uplift and bring to light someone who many people may not know about,” she said. Boston based the illustration of Sims’ jersey on a shirt she owned because, according to her research, photographs of the jersey itself were not readily available in the University archives.
The book also includes the University’s 13,000-acre Domain, represented through Abbo’s Alley – encouraged by an alumnus who worked in Abbo’s Alley, “He was like, ‘You have to include Abbo’s Alley. I have been tortured working as a work-study student there.’” Boston said. Then there are illustrations of the goats and the water tower, as well as a section dedicated to Greek life.
The book contains additional pages where readers can add their own Sewanee stories, as well as references for the historical information included throughout.
Along with celebrating Sewanee and its many traditions, Boston wanted the purpose of the book to have a positive impact for neighboring communities. Having grown up on the Cumberland Plateau – hailing from Crossville, TN – Boston said she has seen the healthcare challenges facing rural communities firsthand. She contrasts the healthcare access available to students and employees on the Mountain with what is available in nearby communities.
“If I got sick right now, I could go to UHS and get something to treat me for it,” she said. “Or if an emergency happened, I could go straight to the hospital.”
That level of accessibility, she said, is not necessarily available to people living only a short drive from campus. Boston said. “You know, we go 20 minutes down the road and Tracy City doesn’t have those same resources.”
This summer, Boston launched Yea Sewanee Colors, an instagram page displaying all the great artworks included in the book. In a subsequent LinkedIn post, she announced the release of her coloring book and her motivation to support the clinics in the nearby communities. Her social media was quickly flooded with comments of encouragement and excitement. Professors and students alike are ordering the coloring books and becoming a part of Lillian’s inspiring journey. The books are being sold for $17.99 and one professor ordered 25 copies already.
“People who love Sewanee know Sewanee is all about it,” she said. “I think this could really be a resource or a book that people are going to love, and to be able to use that love that people have for Sewanee for the greater area is really what I want to do with it.”
She is partnering with the South Cumberland Community Fund to direct proceeds from the coloring book to healthcare initiatives in the region, including the South Cumberland Community Clinic and Beersheba Springs Medical Clinic.
You can buy a copy of Yea Sewanee Colors at the link below : https://yeasewaneecolors.myshopify.com/password
You can also follow Yea Sewanee Colors on instagram @yea.sewanee.colors