Berry High School mural

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Berry High School mural

The Berry High School mural is a large-scale tile mosaic on a 20-foot x 42-foot previously-blank brick wall on what became known as the "Mural Building" at Berry High School.

The idea of decorating the wall, highly visible from Columbiana Road, with a mural was developed by Jefferson County Schools associate superintendent Alton Crews and the system's art supervisor George Ellis. The mural was designed by art student and senior class president Kerry Buckley, whose artwork was selected from among 20 student entries. Davis, Speake and Thrasher architects translated the drawing, with assistance from American Olean, into a buildable design. Principal Clyde Yeilding and art teacher Mary Charles Painter also assisted with the project.

The mural, completed in 1965, shows five variously-colored silhouetted human figures holding aloft symbols of specific fields of education: paints and palette (black) for the arts, a quill and scroll (green) for the humanities, a test tube and atomic symbol (red) for the sciences, a triangle (blue) for mathematics, and a laurel crown (yellow) for athletics. The figures are encircled by a thin cord looping out from the green figure's hand, and are arrayed around a floating torch, from which blaze geometrical beams of light.

1972 Berry graduate Daniel Moore once counted 138,480 tiles making up the mosaic. Hoover City Schools took over Berry from the county in 1988. The image of the torch from the Berry mural was adopted as part of the logo for Hoover's school system.

References

  • Drexel, Keysha (June 25, 2013) "Efforts Underway to Preserve Berry School Artwork." Over the Mountain Journal