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COMMUNITY
Advocacy Through Art
Aysha Pennerman’s murals send message of empowerment, hope
By Isadora Pennington
“I like to see my work as a form of
empowerment; I like for my personal work
to show the beauty of Black women,” said
artist Aysha Pennerman from her desk in
the Echo Contemporary artist studios. With
a portfolio that includes graphic design,
paintings, murals, and mixed media art,
Pennerman uses her art to send a message of
empowerment, hope, and inspiration.
Pennerman has always loved drawing
and painting. She moved frequently due to
her father’s Army career, with stints in Texas,
New Jersey and as far away as Germany. The
family eventually settled in Savannah after
her father retired.
6 | AUGUST 2023
As a young girl, she would doodle in
sketchbooks while her mother did her hair.
“Cartoon characters, dogs, random things,
and it just exploded from there,” said
Pennerman.
Between art classes at school and the
extracurricular art lessons her parents
afforded her, she explored her creative
passions. Despite an obvious love for art,
being a working artist didn’t really seem like
a viable career at the time. She didn’t see
many other Black women artists represented
in galleries and museums; the dream felt too
far out of reach.
She later enrolled at Georgia State
University where she started taking
graphic design classes. It was a good fit for
Pennerman. She had a knack for it.
“I started doing freelance work and
became the design editor for the GSU
newspaper, The Signal. I rebranded it and
we started winning awards. That’s when
I realized, ‘Okay, I’m pretty good at this
graphic design thing.’” She went on to
graduate in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in
visual arts.
When Pennerman began working with
the APEX Museum she took the first real
step towards a career in public art. APEX
Museum, Atlanta’s oldest Black Elistory
Museum, was founded in 1978 in Atlanta’s
Elistoric Sweet Auburn District. Pennerman
began creating book covers, flyers, and other
design collateral for the museum’s founder
Dan A. Moore, Sr.
“Ele would take me around Atlanta to
take pictures of public art pieces made by
Black artists, and that’s kind of when the seed
was planted for me with public art. I had
never known that was a possibility for me.”
Murals popped up again for Pennerman
during a phase of corporate work. She began
working as a designer for commercial real
estate brokers, creating their presentations
and promotional materials, and one of her
last clients enlisted her to lead a community
mural project.
“Each year they would do a community
service day and they figured out I could paint
through word of mouth, so they asked me to
lead this mural project,” said Pennerman.” I
did it, and I enjoyed it, so the next year I did
it again.”
Pennerman’s first murals were completed
on the walls of the Mary Hall Freedom
FFouse in 2017 and a men’s shelter, the
Gateway Evolution Center, in 2018.
“That’s when it clicked for me that I was
in the wrong place,” said Pennerman.
She recalls witnessing the expressions of
those who utilized these shelters, and hearing
how the murals brightened their lives. At the
end of 2018 she took a leap of faith and dove
full-time into art.
“I’m really grateful for the opportunities
I’ve had, and I’ve seen how public art can
transform lives. That has been my motivation
to continue to make art.”
Pennerman pulls from her own
experiences as a Black woman to inform
and inspire her artwork. Black women are
the main figures that appear time and again
in her work, their strong silhouettes often
framed — or obscured — by floral designs.
In her personal work, Pennerman has
been experimenting more with adding
3D elements to her paintings. In some, a
woman’s hair is given a dynamic texture with
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the careful application of thick paint strokes.
In others, raised patterns and florals seem to
beg to be touched.
“I am fascinated with the patterns and
textures on us,” explained Pennerman. “Like
our fingerprints. I think it’s fascinating that
we are all uniquely different. No one in
the world has the same fingerprint. I play
around with those thoughts in my figures,
using linework and patterns to play off of our
uniqueness while adding a twist of nature.”
Much of Pennerman’s most impactful
work is not painted in her studio. She
stays busy with murals and community art
projects.
One such project, a temporary tactical
walk lane, brought beauty alongside
intentional attention to protect pedestrians
in a neighborhood where there were no
sidewalks. Another mural on the side of
Staplehouse on Edgewood Avenue reads
“Vote Like Your Children’s Future Depends
On It.” The mural features portraits of her
two sons and four of their neighborhood
friends.
“I intentionally put six Black boys on
it,” said Pennerman. “We watch them in
our neighborhood. I look out for them and
I feel scared for them. They are growing up
in a society that views them as a threat. The
power I have is through my art, so I wanted
to put a message out there to encourage
people to protect these Black boys.”
“The only power that I have is through
my art, and so I wondered how I could put a
message out there to try to attempt to protect
these Black boys. One of those things that
I feel could help is voting, so it’s motivating
people to get out and vote, especially the
Black community.”
Pennerman has also found purpose
through education. Though she never saw
herself as an educator, and in fact considers
herself to be an introvert who is often
uncomfortable speaking in front of people,
she learned how to embrace the discomfort.
“I know it could change the path of one
of these kids’ lives, because you have to see
someone doing it,” said Pennerman. “I want
to be able to pass on knowledge and wisdom
that I’ve gained to make it better for them, to
make their path a bit easier.”
She told me about one such experience
when she was speaking with kids about
Terri’s FFeart, a mural that she recently
completed on the Southside Atlanta
BeltLine. The piece has deep meaning to
Pennerman, who used elephants as a motif
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