Thought-Provoking Mural Provides Glimpse of History

As Washington University students began a new school year they were greeted by a transformed South 40 Underpass thanks to the First Year Center's Director, Katherine Pei, and the Project Director and Supervisor, De'Joneiro Jones, who assembled a group of local artists to create a 2020 styled public art display on 22 massive panels. The work reflects each individual artist's creative process, design and style. Parts of the project can be described as a step beyond abstract expressionism to historical artistic activism. The mural subtly educates passersby to different movements throughout art history. The sphere, for example, used a technique of flowing paint untouched by brush or roller referred to as Color Field Painting.

The first panel is a Chadwick Boseman panel painted by Brock Seals. It quotes Boseman's timely message to the students, "The Struggles Along the Way Are Only Meant to Shape You for Your Purpose."

Next is a group of panels by Danny McGinnist, Jr. anchored on one side by a portrait of George Coleman Poage who was the first African-American track and field athlete to win Olympic medals in the 1904 on what is now Washington University's Francis Olympic Field. On the other side of the grouping is a portrait of former Civil Rights Leader and member of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Robert Lewis. On the middle panels the artist painted images from his "Roots and Petals Series" to emphasize rooted beginnings and the ability of plants to grow strong and weather any storm. The choice is meant to focus the viewer's attention on the commitment to a cause of George Poage and the "good trouble" of John Lewis.

Continuing through the walkway we encounter James Baldwin's quote and image painted by Brock Seals. Baldwin's words ring true today, "Not Everything That is Faced Can Be Changed But Nothing Can Be Changed Until It Is Faced." Continuing with this idea, the final panels on the west wall, also by Seals, are an artistic rendering of Matisse's The Dance. Here the dancers are painted red to symbolize the "blood being shed by black people" according to the artist.

On the east wall of the underpass are panels by Damon Addison. The first is representative of a black female athlete reaching for the stars. Addison says it is intended to be "simple in message and design." Next he has a collection of images that depict urban life in Saint Louis and is painted in a style reminiscent of the Ash Can School that represented art from before World War I that showed the good parts of city life and skipped the unpleasant nature of poverty. The work features leaders Homer G. Phillips and Annie Malone as well as tools to promote mental awareness and the need to draw attention to the importance of the basics of life such as eating healthy, resting, and love.

Abstract Expressionism appears on several panels in this middle section of the walkway painted by De'Joneiro Jones. He describes the mixture of paints in his work as "a cacophony of colors" and the words strategically placed on the art as "waterfalls of justice and humanity with the basic principles for how man treats his fellow man being unity, family, faith, and charity."

Roland Burrow designed and painted the panels at the south part of the east wall. They depict a unity of purpose between multiple races and beliefs with the American flag waving in the background. There is a meditating figure, half black and half white, transcending race and freeing the mind to a metaphysical state of consciousness. Burrow's next panels emphasize positivity with the portraits of a child reading and another writing. His art reflects the style and technique of a Precisionist and evokes the idealized views of Regionalists as opposed to Social Realist painters.

One panel of note on the east wall is a portrait of Robert Lee Williams II, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and founder and first director of the African and Afro-American studies at Washington University.

The mural can be viewed as a display of public art at the South 40 Underpass on the Danforth Campus of Washington University just south of Francis Olympic Field. As Katherine Pei stated, "You feel something when you walk through here. The emotion is so strong...when you walk through this space it gives you an opportunity to think differently than you did before." Documentarian and photographer of the project is Nicholas Coulter. A film of the project and a book will be released in the future.