Logan Dunn, 17, wonders if “too big a deal” is being made out of his mural, which meant to grace a wall at his Huntington Beach alma mater for years to come.
But modesty aside, Edison High staff gathered with Dunn and his family on Wednesday, June 30, for a reception celebrating his accomplishment.
“I think it’s a little overboard,” said Dunn, who graduated from Edison earlier this month. “But I’m glad nonetheless.”
Edison art teacher Jennie Roy-Atwood selected Dunn to paint the mural. And the entire senior student body selected the theme.
“They were given four different themes to choose from, and students overwhelming voted for the 1960s civil rights movement,” Roy-Atwood said.
This marks the tenth mural under Roy-Atwood’s patronage. “It’s become tradition,” she said. “We’ve painted murals in hallways outside the art, science, foreign language and English classrooms. We’ve been working our way to social studies.”
Dunn designed the mural himself, deciding on whom to feature and what colors to use. He landed on Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall.
“I thought civil rights was a good issue this year after George Floyd and everything that’s happened,” Dunn said. “It’s still fresh on people’s minds. Other than being cool art, hopefully the mural will familiarize students with civil rights leaders.”
The young artist spent a few hours a day for about five weeks sanding and priming the wall for the mural, which measures nine feet by seven feet. After viewing photographs to sketch his subjects on paper, he dove right in without first mapping out the huge canvass in grids.
“I messed around finding a good composition,” Dunn said. “And then I eyeballed it.”
Dunn plans to earn a four-year degree in art, starting that journey at Orange Coast College.
“He has a passion and a gift,” Roy-Atwood said.
As for any formal to-do over his achievement, Dunn humbly asserted that he was “glad to get it out of the way.”
“I’m more focused on where I’m going in the future than what did in high school,” he said. “Still, it’s really cool to be leaving my mark.”