Most people think of a Rubik’s Cube as a three-dimensional challenging puzzle. Unlike most, a local St. Louis high school student saw it as a piece of art.  Utilizing an abundance of Rubik’s Cubes, Connor Wright, a senior at St. Louis Priory School, created a mural of St. Louis’ baseball legend Stan Musial.

Turning and twisting 5,980 Rubik’s cubes, Wright was able to make a 208-square-foot mural of Stan Musial.  

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Wright told the crowd [at the ceremony] Stan Musial represents the best of people and St. Louis. He said he met Musial once when he was 8 years old at the Missouri Athletic Club, and was forever impressed by his kindness and personable nature.

“He was just such a unique person and such a unique player,” Wright said.

Wright constructed the masterpiece for his senior thesis using pointillism. An art style in which a picture is formed by tiny dots of primary colors.  Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed and utilized the Pointillist style.

First Wright hand drew three portraits of Musial.  Then he converted the drawing to his computer and changed each pixel to the exact shades of the colors of the Rubik’s Cube (white, yellow, orange, red or blue) to create the colorful images.  He twisted each cube into a pattern, so the nine colored squares matched the pixels.  It took several weeks to construct the mural.

Using mathematics, Wright was able to figure out the number of Rubik’s Cubes needed to create the mural.  Unfortunately there were not enough Rubik’s Cubes in the United States for Wright’s mural, so he was forced to order a shipment Rubik’s Cubes from China.  The special shipment was extremely expensive, so Wright fundraised and sold hand drawn portraits to friends and family to cover the cost.  Once the Cardinals’ Organization heard about the art piece they made a contribution.

The Stan Musial mural stands on display at Ballpark Village and is a reminder of one the greatest player in Cardinals and baseball history.