onnor Wright has definitely done something wright. Penn freshman, Connor Wright, has been talked about on campus since he stepped on campus, and highlighted in the DP for his exquisite, meticulous, and revolutionary artwork. What started as a budding passion for drawing quickly turned into a mural-making magic show; one that has gotten attention from prominent figures and companies over the past year.
From his first mural made out of 5,968 Rubik’s Cubes for his senior thesis in high school, to his piece for the St. Louis Children’s Museum constructed from 305,000 crayons depicting the St. Louis skyline (a piece that broke the Guinness Book of World Records), Wright’s journey has only gone uphill. This past summer, the CFO of Facebook brought Wright to the campus in Palo Alto, hoping he would be inspired by something over his stay to create a mural for Facebook’s headquarters. Not disappointing, Wright constructed a one-of-a-kind mural depicting the father of computer science, Alan Turing, made from 10,000 Dominoes.
Just when we thought it couldn’t possibly get more impressive, Wright blew us away once again earlier this year in February. After casually meeting the sister of the vice president of makeup company, Maybelline, at a wedding this past fall, Wright was immediately asked to design a large mural that would be used as the backdrop for the company’s New York Fashion Week launch party. The mural was Wright’s first digital piece; the design was composed of only Maybelline lipstick labels, depicting the 9 faces of its spokesmodels.
“I matched every gray pixel in a black and white photo to a lipstick label that matched its luminance,” says Wright.
The mural was used as the backdrop for the models, the interviews, and all of the paparazzi photos at Maybelline’s launch party. Everyone, including the models illustrated in the mural, expressed amazement at Wright’s work. Well-known Victoria Secret Angel, Adriana Lima, was so impressed that she engaged Wright in a 30-minute conversation about his piece.
Wright with model Emily DiDonato
Wright used Photoshop to design the mural, completing the piece in only one week. The next step was sending the artwork to a printer where it was printed on a matte board.
After the success of yet another piece, Wright unsurprisingly signed on to do a piece using physical lipstick tubes for Maybeline’s fashion week this September.
We are proud to call Wright a member of our Penn community, and are eagerly awaiting his next masterpiece.
Images courtesy of Connor Wright and Zimbio.