Friendship Launch, after Katherine Johnson
LIA HALLORAN’S FRIENDSHIP LAUNCH, AFTER KATHERINE JOHNSON (2020) captures the historic launch of the spacecraft Friendship 7 which made John Glenn the first American to orbit Earth. Katherine Johnson’s integral role in calculating the equations that led to the success of this launch was recently popularized by the book and movie Hidden Figures. Johnson also worked on the Apollo lunar module, the Space Shuttle program, and other earth orbiting satellites. She was one of three Black students to integrate into the graduate math program at West Virginia University in 1939 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 for a lifetime of pioneering work. Halloran’s artistic practice often combines science, art, and history to explore concepts such as astrophysics, magnetism and gravity, and other natural processes while also highlighting the often-forgotten contributions of women scientists.
Halloran donated the proceeds from the sale of 50 editions of Friendship Launch, after Katherine Johnson to the Black Student Union at Chapman University and The Bail Project, a non-profit organization designed to combat mass incarceration by paying bail for tens of thousands of low-income Americans.