Since graduating from Mount St. Mary’s University, Moriah Tyler, C’19, has been transforming blank walls into vibrant murals across Pennsylvania and Maryland. Now, as the executive director of Main Street Hanover, she is using the skills and drive for service she learned at the Mount to help revitalize a historic town.
Soon after commencement, Tyler joined the Carroll County Arts Council in Westminster, Maryland, as education and visual arts coordinator. There she managed gallery spaces, curated exhibitions, planned arts festivals and oversaw arts-related scholarships, gaining hands-on experience in public art and arts administration that would later inform her community-focused work in Hanover, Pennsylvania.
In June 2024 she became executive director of Main Street Hanover, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting and promoting downtown Hanover. As the organization’s sole full-time staff member, she markets more than 150 downtown businesses, connects shop owners with grant opportunities and advocates for them with local and state officials.
“I feel like this role is very much for somebody who’s a kind of Swiss Army knife, able to market, but also do accounting, but also look at the potential of a downtown space and think creatively about problem solving,” she said.
The Borough of Hanover approached her to design a large mural for the lobby of its new administrative office, a project that became her first major public art piece. The success of that project led directly to a commission from Toyota of Hanover, which had been searching for a design that could reflect both the dealership’s history and its hometown roots. The resulting mural incorporates Hanover icons alongside a central motif based on a photograph of the dealership owner and his daughter when the business opened in the 1990s.
Since then, Tyler has been approached by more local businesses wanting a mural of their own.
Beyond her murals and nonprofit work, Tyler serves as artist-in-residence for a Hampstead, Maryland, brewery, designing its beer labels and exploring new visual styles. She is also pursuing an online master’s degree in concept art for video game development, building on the strong traditional drawing and design fundamentals she developed at the Mount.
Tyler graduated from the Mount with a degree in fine arts in 2019, drawn to the university’s small classes and one-on-one instruction after being homeschooled through middle and high school. She credits the close-knit art community and the mentorship of Associate Professor and Department Chair Nick Hutchings, M.F.A. and Professor Elizabeth Holtry, M.F.A. with giving her both technical skill and the confidence to pursue an arts career in a competitive field.
“I’m really appreciative of my education at the Mount, and I feel very lucky to have gone through [the fine arts] program,” Tyler said. “My professors were so instrumental. I feel like I got a lot of hands-on experience behind the scenes.”