Rocketdyne Mural, Lawrence Sanchez, 1963, Tempera on Panel

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The Rocketdyne Mural by Lawrence Sanchez is egg tempera paint on eight panels of Masonite that are fashioned together to form a work that is 32.75 feet long and 6 feet tall framed by a thin, brown frame of wood. Lawrence worked as a technical artist for Rocketdyne when he hand painted this mural in the plant's cafeteria in 1963 to depict the future of space - he flexed his technical artist skills with detailed renderings of futuristic space prototypes, which may have been influenced by NASA concepts, and illustrative imagination with his depiction of how things looked from Space, which was largely unknown in the early 60s.

Lawrence Sanchez graduated from Boston Museum School of Fine Arts after he spent 4.5 years serving in the Army post graduating high school. After graduation, he worked as a sign painter, eventually opening his own business. He later moved to technical illustration and relocated from Boston, MA to Neosho, MO to work for Rocketdyne.

In 1956 about 2,000 acres of the former Camp Crowder were sectioned off and transferred to the United States Air Force. That same year, Air Force Plant No. 65, which was a Rocketdyne run site, employing around 1,250 workers, opened. This was a government owned-contractor operated liquid propelled rocket engine manufacturing facility. Rocketdyne manufactured and tested rocket engines at the site, including rockets used in the Mercury and Gemini Space Programs.

Most famously, these workers built and tested the liquid-propellant rockets for space missiles Thor and Jupiter, the booster for Atlas rockets, and components of the Saturn V engine which brought Apollo 11 to the moon.

In 2013, the mural was relocated to the science department in Davidson Hall at Crowder College. In 2023, Neosho Arts Council funded the repair and restoration of the mural by a team of conservation specialists on site at Crowder College.

Location
Crowder College
Davidson Hall
601 Laclede Ave.
Neosho, MO 64850

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