Bioscience Murals Offer Gateway To New Haven

Top: Terence Okwuosa. Bottom: Members of the mural class with professors Peter Bonadies and Vladimir Shpitalnik, chancellor Terrence Cheng, Dr. O. John Maduko, president of the Connecticut State Community College system, and Mayor Justin Elicker. Lucy Gellman Photos. 

Terence Okwuosa still remembers the day Professor Peter Bonadies asked him about the 10-story building going up across the street. Standing at a classroom window, the two imagined public art adorning the sides, turning College Street and MLK Boulevard into a vivid welcome to New Haven.

Okwuosa loved the idea, a bridge between town and gown in a city that was changing around him. But never did he dream that he would make history as one of the young people to bring it to fruition.

Thursday afternoon, Okwuosa joined Bonadies, sculptor Vladimir Shpitalnik, and dozens of CT State Gateway (formerly Gateway Community College) students and administrators at 101 College St., where two new student murals now adorn a soaring, $250 million bioscience tower from developer Carter Winstanley and his firm, Winstanley Enterprises. The result of a months-long, public-private partnership, the pieces seek to demystify some of the research taking place inside the building. 

While construction and installation of the murals has taken place largely over the past semester, both pieces have been in the works for 16 months. Read more about that in a previous Arts Paper article here.

Peter Bonadies with his son, Ethan. 

“This project offers them [students] a real-world experience in the changing community that they call home,” said Bonadies, speaking to attendees at an unveiling at 101 College Thursday afternoon. He turned to Winstanley as he spoke. “Thank you—that was a huge leap of faith.”

The murals, which feature motherboards, lab instruments and equipment, wooden panels, and over 100 hand-mixed colors, are the product of months of planning and unlikely collaboration. In 2022, Bonadies connected with Elkus Manfredi Architects, the Boston-based firm behind 101 College. They connected him with Winstanley, who liked the idea enough to cover tuition for the class and provide a stipend to students in lieu of lost wages.

Winstanley Enterprises also covered the cost of materials. Bonadies credited Ted DeSantos, senior vice president of development at Winstanley Enterprises, as a helpful liaison during the planning, making, and installation stages. 

Now, the murals give a glimpse into work going on inside the tower—and are helping knit the city back together with their presence. The building stands on the site of the former Route 34 Connector, often blasted as an ineffective and disastrous “highway to nowhere” for the way it ripped through a community and displaced thousands of people, and hundreds of businesses. It is now part of the city’s larger Downtown Crossing project, which aims to right some of the wrongs of urban renewal.

Bonadies and Shpitalnik.

Over a year ago, Bonadies and Shpitalnik began designing the murals, which face MLK Boulevard on the side and back of the building. As they came up with a blueprint—Bonadies credited Shpitalnik as the design brain—they thought about the life-altering, sometimes microscopically-focused work that would soon happen inside 101 College St. 

“The whole idea was to make windows” onto that work, Shpitalnik said. For him, it was a way to fuse science and art, from butter- and sunflower-yellow panels that match the building’s siding to test tubes and discarded centrifuge parts turned into starbursts and fireworks. Many of the materials (including several old Gateway computers) are recycled, meaning that objects bound for the trash heap are now getting a second life.

Meanwhile, the finished panels feature undulating lines and crisp U and S shapes, bright orange and yellow lines, and round green and blue shapes that resemble molecules and flagella-fringed cells. Taken all together, the patterns tell a story of discovery and ambition, of scientific breakthroughs, of trying to find answers that will save lives.

It is the best and most generous vision of science in America, rather than the privatized treatment that is often life-saving but economically prohibitive. 

As the project came to life, it also took on an added significance for Bonadies. The sculptor’s 7-year-old son, Ethan, has Neurofibromatosis I or NF1, a genetic disorder in which tumors can grow beneath the skin along a person’s nerves. Those tumors, called plexiform neurofibromas, can cause pain, mobility issues, internal organ damage and internal bleeding. While they are generally benign, they can also become cancerous, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“Our mission as artists is always to give students real-world experience,” Bonadies said. “This one, though, was like a double whammy. I was thinking about how I could be involved, as a parent, in finding a cure for Neurofibromatosis I.”

And then, something providential happened. As faculty and students worked on the mural project, Alexion—an arm of AstraZeneca that has a bioscience tower across College Street—received FDA approval for the only NF1 drug currently on the market. When Bonadies brought Ethan up to the stage during his remarks Thursday, it seemed that the whole room burst into tears at the same time.

“We hope this project can serve as a model for more to come,” Bonadies said.

Several students also found that it changed the way that they looked at the world—and the city—around them. Okwuosa, who is studying graphic design, remembered dedicating hours of his summer to the works, even though he wasn’t enrolled in an affiliated mural class. For him, it became a chance to reexamine how he understood both New Haven and his own artistic practice.

“He really had me look at art differently,” he said of Bonadies, who he first met in an introductory drawing class over a year ago. “I feel like  that’s the beauty of the whole project. It really shows how art can connect the community.”

It also became a kind of therapy, he added. Four years ago, Okwuosa started doing graphic design as a way to care for his mental health. It was mid-2020, and he had just graduated from high school in the first months of a global pandemic. At home in Georgia, “I was trying to figure out what to do,” he remembered. He was depressed and isolated; he could feel his social anxiety rising.

“I was trying to see what graphic design was all about,” and he found that it calmed him. It ultimately led him to found a brand, Open Mnds, around youth mental health awareness. After moving to New Haven from Georgia, Bonadies’ classes became that same safe haven for him. When Bonadies told him about the mural project, he jumped at the chance to help.

“It was amazing!” he said. “It was really therapeutic for me. I want to thank Peter—he’s a visionary. This acts as a reminder that we’re all connected. We all help each other in a way.”

Marisabel Sanchez: New Haven needs more public art!

That was also true for Marisabel Sanchez, a lifelong New Havener who used her time at Gateway to nurture an interest in art therapy. A newly minted Gateway alum, she intends to pursue a graduate degree in art therapy at Albertus Magnus College next year.

As someone who understands the emotional weight the arts can have, she said, she loved working with her peers on the murals. She called the project a model that other people, particularly developers who are new to the city, can follow.

“It felt amazing, to be a part of something that has never been created before, and to see that integration between a community college and a pharmaceutical building,” she said. “This also gave me the experience to work on community art and do murals at work.”

“I’m excited to see what other people do and develop in New Haven,” she added with a laugh. “I think New Haven needs more art!”

Top: Silva at one of the murals. Bottom: Terrence Cheng, chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system.

Ariana Silva, an art studies major who started at Gateway in 2022, echoed that excitement. Growing up in Hamden, Silva started drawing as a kid, interested in becoming an artist for as long as she can remember. So two years ago, she was delighted to meet Bonadies in a Sculpture I class, and then learn from him again when she took three-dimensional design.

“This was great!” she said, standing in front of one of the murals. As a resident of Fair Haven, she often gets a ride to school, and said she was excited for the bright, colorful works that will now greet her as she rolls into downtown and gets to class.     

Thursday, the work became a college-wide point of pride, with a press conference packed to the gills with over 100 students, parents, and Gateway faculty, as well as Wintsanley and several New Haven city officials. Dr. O. John Maduko, president of the Connecticut State Community College system, praised the project as the kind of trailblazing public-private partnership that there should be more of, excited to see what comes next.   

Terrence Cheng, chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system, lauded students not only for their work, but for putting their trust in a community college system. He reflected on his own work as a writer, then a teacher, of fiction. Nobody ever made him write: his craft came out of hard work and the urge to create. Now, he sees that same urge in the marriage of art and science.

“Art exists because we make it exist,” he said. “The human spirit, the conundrum of humanity, forces us to create.”

Angelica Mandumbwa, an art studies student who is going into her sophomore year, agreed with those words as she ushered people outside to see the murals for themselves. Raised in a family of artists in Botswana, Mandumbwa came to New Haven last year, following in the footsteps of an older sister who was studying at Yale.

She met Bonadies as a member of the school’s art club, of which he was an instant cheerleader. After hearing about the mural project from him, she was excited to join in. Thursday, her cheek seemed to glow in the sunlight as she took in the finished work. Pink and purple ribbons of color, pooled as if they were in a lava lamp, ran over her head as she spoke.

“It was absolutely a dream,” she said. “Coming from the background I did, I always appreciated art, but it didn’t always feel realistic [as a career]. Now, it feels more realistic.”

Up a flight of stairs, Shpitalnik had found a missing nail on one of the murals, and was leaning over to tinker in real time. Bonadies smiled, sun soaking the mural before him.

“There’s some sort of mitosis going on,” he said.