Shanequa Gay had a tall task, and she conquered it.
The artist took on the challenge of painting a mural inside of Morehouse College’s new Google Annex Classroom. After the unveiling, rolling out spoke with her about her vision for the piece.
What was your vision behind this work and what was it like to see it come to fruition?
They gave me the Morehouse palette to work from, which I felt like it already had a lot of pop and color to it, which I really love.
I was looking for ways to create an intentional design and paired it with the leaders and figures who were really important in Morehouse’s science and technology.
I thought one of the most notable symbols I could think of was the atom. What I love about the atom is that even as a static image, it also looks like a flower, it also looks like a crown, I wanted to bring that to the forefront and have it hover over each figure.
What other elements are involved in this installation?
So there’s the intentional continuous motion with the atoms and then there’s Morehouse’s color theme. They also encouraged that I used Morehouse code, so they have a good amount of Easter eggs in the background of the piece. And there’s a quote by Dr. [Howard] Thurman that reads, “Over the heads of her students, Morehouse holds a crown that she challenges them to grow tall enough to wear.”
