Ekua Holmes is a painter and collagist who mixes brilliant and vibrant color sense with a keen observation of personal interactions and urban life. And today the Roxbury, Mass., artist is having a day like no other: She was selected to create the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Google Doodle, which greets millions of Web users as they use the search engine.
As the Boston Globe reports, the Google Doogle shows up about 40 times a year as a surprise to Google users, usually in celebration of a historically significant event or birthday. Today the Doodle depicts the civil rights leader arm in arm with his wife, Coretta Scott King, and others in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.
Google Doodle team leader Ryan Germick tells the Globe that they usually create the Doodles in-house but occasionally reach out for collaborators. Holmes, he says, was on his “running list of dream collaborators.”
It came as a shock to Holmes. When she got the call out of the blue from Germick commissioning her work, she told the Globe, “He said he found me somewhere on the Internet. Somewhere on the Internet? That’s like somewhere in the Himalayas.”
It is a dream opportunity for the Roxbury artist, whose stunning work may now receive more attention than she ever could have imagined.
Read more at the Boston Globe.