A Seattle-area high school student is among five finalists in the national Doodle for Google Contest. Her artwork will be displayed on Google's homepage on April 28.
Kameirah Johnson, a senior at Lakeside High School in North Seattle, created a digital painting of three Black girls lying in a field surrounded by golden bursts of fireflies. Their hair — puffy and braided — spells “Google.”
Johnson’s work was chosen out of tens of thousands of submissions Google received from students across the country.
Google asked K-12 students to create a drawing that depicts their superpower. For Johnson, that is her “magical” hair.
“The power that we experience through our hair and the way that our hair has been used, like throughout history, as a form of resistance — I thought to draw hair for a superpower," she said.
The people depicted in Johnson’s painting represent her mother, her sister and herself. Growing up, Johnson said she had a new hairstyle every week thanks to her mom, Simone Johnson.
“I'm very, very thankful for her and the time that she's put into that,” she said. “So yeah, just honoring my family and my mom.”
Johnson has been sketching since 2016, but she started painting seriously during high school and after the start of the pandemic, learning mostly from YouTube videos. Johnson’s mother, Simone, said she remembers seeing Kameirah’s artwork for the first time during her freshman year.
“We're always extremely impressed, floored, amazed — like, we're in awe. It's just like, ‘Oh my gosh. How did you do that?’” Simone said she had asked her daughter. “And she said, ‘Mom, I just turned on my gospel music, and I do my thing.’”
Simone and her husband are pastors. She referred to a passage in the Bible about where a person’s gift can take them.
“Kameirah’s gift is making room for her in the art spaces, and her work will be viewed and seen by the masses. And so it's amazing. We're just overjoyed and thrilled and in awe,” Simone said.
During our interview, Simone asked Kameirah where she thought her art would take her in the future.
Kameirah is ambitious. She wants to own her own gallery, be an artist in residence at museums and mentor young artists of color.
"But honestly, I'd say the list is endless. There's so much that I want to do with my art to impact people,” Kameirah told her mother. “There's so much philanthropy that I want to do, along with just leaving my mark on the world and leaving my statement."
Kameirah has been accepted to New York University, where she will study art and economics.
Voting for the contest is open until April 29 and the winner will receive a $55,000 scholarship. That person’s school will also receive $50,000 to go toward buying new technology.
