[3] For the next six years, he served as a jet aircraft technician in the Air National Guard, 169th Cameron Squad, while working several different jobs to pay for college – including as a parade float builder, a layout artist, and a dance instructor, among others.
Upon moving back to Columbia in 1966, Sky worked as a draftsman and conceptual artist for Wilbur Smith & Associates before returning to USC for graduate school.
The bank refused to fund the project, but agreed to grant him permission to use the wall on the condition that he wasn't a communist (see: Diego Rivera).
Although the work is technically rendered in trompe-l'œil style, Sky intended the mural to have a spiritual impact as well: a "window" to transcendental reality.
Sky has restored and fully repainted the mural five times, and each version has featured at least one new element to extend the metaphor; for example, the most recent addition, a street sign which reads, "One Way."