Lucy Holloway, 11, a sixth-grader from Buffalo Grove, was so excited that she kept her eyes closed at first as her family pulled up to the Salt Shed to see how a drawing she made had been turned into a giant mural.

When she finally took a look, for “a minute, I didn’t really know what to say,” says Lucy, who saw her work transformed into a mural at the entertainment venue along the Kennedy Expressway as her prize for winning a student art contest sponsored by the Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ and Vocalo. “It was kind of crazy seeing it that big.”

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The mural — about 20 feet high and 100 feet across — is splashed across the north side of the Salt Shed. The mural space was donated by Wintrust Bank.

Lucy, who goes to Twin Groves Middle School in Buffalo Grove, says she figured “there’s no way I’m going to win, or anything, but, like, I’ll do it anyway because it’s just fun to make art.”

Her drawing is titled “All in Harmony” and includes hands of different colors, with hearts centered in the palms, floating in a night sky above a globe on which the Chicago skyline is perched. That’s in keeping with the theme of the contest, “Bringing Chicago’s Voices Together,” meant to celebrate diversity.

After a panel of judges selected her as the winner, her submission was enlarged, printed onto panels and transferred onto the outside wall at the Salt Shed, where it will remain up this month and next month.

“I’m definitely going to keep drawing,” Lucy says.