By Nick Pecora ’21
THE ROUNDUP
The AP Studio Art class, along with faculty members Mr. Cooper Davis ’10 and Mr. Marc Kelly ’86, have begun painting a mural in the Quiet Room located off the Steele Activities Center.
The mural, which is being painted as part of Brophy’s Day of Democracy, heavily features the colors red, white, and blue along with the phrase “WE THE PEOPLE” written in large text.
The class has been working on the mural since about 8:00 Tuesday morning.
The mural was initially intended to be relatively small in size, but plans changed and it will instead occupy the entire north wall of the Quiet Room.
This project is slated to be the first of many similar projects in the future. “The long term plan is to have murals all through Keating,” Mr. Davis said. “This one is really a proof of concept for us that we can pull this off.”
Mr. Davis explained the decision to have AP Studio Art students tackle this first mural. “We’ve limited today’s bunch to just guys in AP Studio Art with the hopes that they would be the most capable of pulling this off and thus far that seems to be the case.”
Painting a mural on campus is an idea that has been percolating in the minds of Brophy artists for a while. “We’ve been talking about doing murals on campus for years,” Mr. Davis said.
Therefore, when the opportunity to participate in an art project during the Day of Democracy presented itself, Mr. Davis immediately decided that his class should paint a mural.
Students in his AP Studio Art class were asked to submit design ideas for the murals. Ultimately the design chosen was one spearheaded by class member Biplove Baral ’21. “It seemed like a bunch of guys collaborated on this design that was [Baral’s] idea,” Mr. Davis said.
The class will not be finishing the mural today, and plans to add to it over the next couple of weeks. “Believe it or not, once we paint all of it [today] it will be like 30% done,” Baral said.
“This isn’t a mural just supporting voting. This is a mural supporting individual voice … Because that’s what voting is, it’s the freedom of individual expression,” said Nathan Zonn ’21, another member of the Studio Art class who is helping with the mural project.
“‘We the People’ kind of encapsulates that community effort, that individual voice, that’s so important to American democracy,” Zonn said.
