Nuart 2013 continues to engage and converse with people in Stavanger Norway as the big formal opening Saturday night was packed with guests and tours have begun around town with Gt Aamdal and Kristel Talv, who yesterday had a group of a hundred people following them around as they helped explain the new works that have been appearing and the artists who have been creating them.
Today we bring you some recent photos of works in progress shot by Gabija Grusaite and a brief interview with one of the artists this year at Nuart, Ernest Zacharevic from Lithuania, who has a pretty large following of ardent fans who dig his technique of interplay with mural and sculpture for an integrated third dimensional experience. By focusing on the spontaneity of children’s play, Zacharevic can tap into the original instincts of adult viewers who may have lost their ability to access their playful nature. His street work is unpretentious and sometimes ingenious, while steadily staying away from being cloying or overly sentimental.
Ernest took a few moments during a break from this weekends preparations to talk to BSA about his work.
Brooklyn Street Art:Many of your pieces include play and more specifically, children at play. How important is that theme for you and what attracts you to it? Ernest Zacharevic: Most of my work is photography based and site-specific, so I photograph my subjects and later choose angles for painting. Working with children allows more anonymity, I don’t consider my artworks to be portraits of a specific person, rather a universal experience. It is also easier to work with children – they are not self-concious and are not afraid to look stupid or ugly. So we play together and I take pictures that later translate into my artwork. I really like this unrestricted energy.
Brooklyn Street Art:You have been traveling a lot in the last year – where have you gone and can you talk about one of your favorite experiences on the street with your work? Ernest Zacharevic: I do travel a lot. Japan, Italy, Norway, Lithuania, Malaysia – to name few places I’ve been this year. At the moment I am based in Penang, Malaysia, but originally I come from Vilnius, Lithuania and I graduated from Middlesex University, London where I lived for 5 years. My artwork is heavily influenced by all these layers of geographical backgrounds.
Probably the most memorable project I’ve done so far is Mirrors George Town murals that I created for George Town Festival in 2012. The murals became so popular that they started having a life of it’s own – there are people lining up to take pictures with it and Malaysian Government recognized them as valuable tourist objects. Crazy! It was even copied by one Chinese town near Shanghai. It is really nice for an artist to realize that his piece of work means so much to other people.
Brooklyn Street Art:Many of your characters have mischief in their eyes and their actions. Are you getting into trouble in Stavanger? Ernest Zacharevic: I wish, but the weather is taking it’s toll. Stavanger is great! Everywhere you go there are traces of street art and amazing murals round the corner, places you would never expect to see it. It really inspires me to do a few smaller pieces if the Norwegian summer will be kind to me tomorrow.
Brooklyn Street Art:Can you talk about using wheeled forms of transportation in your vignettes – bicycles, shopping carts, rickshaws… do you use them to create a sense of movement? Ernest Zacharevic; Yes! It’s a part of play, but also a wider narrative about the continuous desire by human beings to travel, push forward, explore unknown horizons. Cars and bicycles and tricycles were invented because just walking is too slow to most of our imagination. That is way my main installation for Nuart 2013 will feature a car – half sliced – continuing the theme of my previous work.
Brooklyn Street Art:Sometimes you integrate something that is already on the street or the wall into your piece. Do you find yourself doing this mentally as you walk through the streets? Ernest Zacharevic: I find everyday objects to be fascinating. Signs that look like animals, doors that smile, little holes in the wall that look like part of a Tom & Jerry cartoon. It’s fun and I love to reveal this to other people just to make them smile.
First there was Labor Day, then the Jewish New Year, so it was easy to get a seat on the subway, and sometimes next to a model who’s here for Fashion Week and who got a room in Brooklyn on Air BnB (thinking BK is just steps away from Manhattan). Now everybody’s getting ready to vote in the mayoral primary on Tuesday and all the students are gearing up to start the new school year, and most people you meet on the street and on stoops are talking distrustfully/quizzically about O taking us to war in Syria. Meanwhile no humidity and lots of sunshine means every day seems nice for painting, pasting, or dissing somebody else’s work – depending on your frame of mind.
The big Calligraffiti show in Chelsea was packed Thursday night, where you could see some of your favorite artists in person like El Seed, Niels Shoe Meulman, Rostarr, and Olek, and you could catch work from Haring, Basquiat, and a room full of LAII. Out in Bushwick you could even catch Blek Le Rat, one of the originators of this kind of work, putting up some new pieces as he prepared for his opening last night at Jonathan Levine. And yesterday Faile started a monstrous new wall in Hells Kitchen that will create a swarm of fans and cameras on the street (more on that later). New York is spoiled, yo.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week including Bast, Bishop203, Blek le Rat, Dede, DZIA, El Kamino, Faile, GIJ Van Hee, Icy & Sot, Pastel, Palladino, QRST, Skuzz, Wonky Monky, and You Go Girl!.
“We’ve had terrible weather–rained most of the day today–so artists have been slow getting their walls done,” said Martha Cooper about the scene in Stavanger for Nuart 2013 on Friday. Today is looking much better, she reports, almost good enough for a boat ride.
Each of the artists have been commenting on the sometimes heavy rains, which can sort of kill your aerosol buzz, but no one really minds because the festival buzz is building toward tonight’s big events. We think the folks at Nuart had it planned this way because there is work that needs to be done underground in the tunnel gallery spaces for the Saturday night opening.
Here under cover from the storms C215 is hard at work on a very large and color drenched portrait, Hush is on a ladder glossing the lips of a modern geisha, and Aiko is stenciling a signature sexy pop-inspired theme that covers two thirds of the front of one tunnel – leaving the remaining space for Ms. Cooper to project some 1300 of her photos for the expected crowd this evening.
DalEast and Faith47 have been slowed down a bit too. “Raining now,,, waiting for it to stop,” she taps out on her keyboard in a brief cadence as if sending a guarded cable in Morse code across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, there are some other diversions to be inspected, and other artists to meet. Everyone has been talking about taking a local fjord boat ride up Stavanger Peninsula so they may accompany Martha on the voyage to see the natural beauty of the Norwegian coastline while things are drying out today.
Luckily a fair share of work has been completed, and the Minister of Culture has already stopped by to tour and pose for a photo in front of the David Choe piece, and the scaffolding on the airport control tower came down to reveal the new large stenciled mural wrapping it by M-City, who has since moved on with ROA to Lodz, Poland for the Urban Forms festival.
“We’ll all be here through the weekkend so that’s when the bigger walls may get finished,” says Martha. Martin Whatson is just about finished and Ernest Zacarevic completed his outside installation with a stack of chairs for his stencil to balance upon. He also rather conspiratorially reveals this teaser to BSA, “my main installation for Nuart 2013 will feature a car, half sliced.” He says it will continue a theme in his previous work.
More from Nuart soon, but in the mean time, here are some progress shots for BSA readers including work by David Choe, C215, Aiko, Vhils, Ernest Zacharevic, Dot Dot Dot, Hush, and M-City.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening:Narcelio Grud “Bus Stop Sound”, Pablo Aravena “Time Wastes For Nobody”, Dan Witz – Light Star Express, El Ton0 – Random Mural Painting, and Mimi The Clown is a Rock Star .
BSA Special Feature: Narcelio Grud
Bus Stop Sound
Narcelio Grud knows how to experiment – in fact his primary driving force as a Street Artist is to innovate and discover. Released earlier this summer, this new video details the refurbishing of a bus stop with musical instrumentation. Not only does Mr. Grud and his assistant reconfigure the bus stop in broad daylight while people are standing in line and waiting, there is a natural curiosity and interaction alerted at the prospect of beating a drum.
Pablo Aravena “Time Wastes For Nobody”
Ripo and She One are in Barcelona adorning the rubble, hidden from the main veins of commerce and the public stampede. Presented as a wistful tone poem, the sense of being there is as palpable as just the sense of being. This work is not opportunist as much as a concert, a collaborative trio – a destroyed building and two painters. It’s a moment caught, and lost.
Dan Witz – Light Star Express
A succinct overview with the artist of some of the projects on the street that he has executed including his “Wailing Walls” series of Street Art installations, his project called “WTF”, his 9/11 shrines and his masterful way with oils and glazes to create tableaus of glowing light – intimate moments of warm illumination.
El Ton0 – Random Mural Painting
An indoor mural incorporating the concept of randomness with 51 kids over 2 days creating 62 lines, which together create this mural with Street Artist El Tono at the International Montessori School of Beijing.
Mimi The Clown is a Rock Star
The French Street Artist continues to mess around with stencils and celebrity – his own. Set to a soundtrack of Ramones reprising the 1960s “Let’s Dance” Mimi cavorts with walls and gallery shows in makeup, a rare combination of performance, personality, and preening. A clown in the most serious sense, Mimi brings the tradition of public maudlin/comic performance and overlays it with the celebrity culture of the modern age, an entanglement that is difficult to decode.
Oh! If only these walls could speak! The diverse stories of New York’s 20th/21st century immigrants would yell above the racing traffic north of 96th Street.
Inspired in part by a similarly named festival held last year in Santurce, Puerto Rico, Los Muros Hablan NYC just took place in Harlem and the South Bronx, bringing Street Artists and muralists together from Latin America, Puerto Rico, and New York. In a coordinated effort with the museum El Museo del Barrio, a cultural space called La Repuesta, and the office of local Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, the festival gathered a scattered collection of walls under one name.
Combining an animated neighborhood block party, live music, and panel discussion, Los Murals Hablan (translated as “The Murals Speak”) brought back a part of New York street life that sometimes feels like it is disappearing in the grand blanding of Manhattan. We look at it as a reinvigoration; a continuation of the tradition of community murals and graffiti influences from El Barrio while updating it to include the stunning new directions of a global Street Art scene.
Invited artists included were Axel Void, Celso Gonzales, Roberto Biaggi, Elian & Pastel, Jufe, Betsy Casañas, Manny Vega, LNY, Don Rim X, and Viajero. Here are images of some of the artists and their work by photographer Jaime Rojo.
For an artist born in Miami of a Haitian mom and raised in Spain, the concept of home in this city of immigrants is especially poignant. On his Facebook description of his wall Axel says, “The concept fits the event that Los Muros Hablan proposed, ‘Diaspora’. In a neighborhood like East Harlem, there is a great mix of nationalities that all meet at this place they now call home. It was really something to see the different reactions and hospitality of the people who would pass by or lived across from the wall. This wall is dedicated to them.”
New Yorker Viajero has his studio in Brooklyn and his heart in Puerto Rico. The artist draws on tradition and reveres those who came before him as well as the power that lies in the community today. With an interest in sculpture and installation as well as drawing Viajero’s mural flies off the wall so that it can also hang from the limbs of a tree in front of it. If only his mural could speak!
We like to say that the world has become more global over the last twenty years, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to you. Money, jobs, and trade are increasingly free to traverse boarders in this age of globalism, yes. Getting a visa to leave and explore and learn about another culture and come back home may still prove to be impossible, depending on where you live.
Beijing based Street Artist ROBBBB recently took a small troupe of his countrymen/women to Europe and put them on the streets of Milan, Florence, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, and Lisbon. He says it is a sort of cultural exchange, even if the real people in these wheat-pastes never left home.
“I put the most real and authentic Chinese people in these pieces so that they could be in a different political, social and cultural environment in Europe,” he explains of the six-city tour. “I also wonder how the Europeans will think of these Chinese subjects and what their reaction is to seeing them in these locations.”
“I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.” ~ Bell Hooks
On the street, the most magical art is sometimes the most miniature.
It can be easy to overlook the small and smartly cut stencil or meticulously markered sticker that pops up on a dumpster or illuminates a light pole when you are being overpowered by the panoramic painting that swallows the expanse of an entire wall. Getting up big is big right now. Making a splash with an ocean of pigments appears to be the norm rather than the exception in art in the streets at the moment – thanks to very organized festivals and welcoming real estate folks and an ever more appreciative appetite by the public.
But that doesn’t mean the petite pieces have perished. At times they appear to proliferate.
Small Street Art pieces seem to pop up on the streets overnight like mushrooms in the urban forest – aided by the darkness and fertile conditions – small and surprisingly shaped upcroppings, some tasty and complex and others that may poison your pleasant disposition. We still remember the thrill of walking the desolate streets of Williamsburg, Bushwick, Red Hook and Greenpoint in the late 90s/early 2000s and discovering the “hidden” Street Art that suddenly surfaced without announcement. Amidst a sorry series of sadly deflated industrial sites you would see a hand drawn sticker, a grease-penciled poem, a knitted pole cozy, a pasted collage of textures, photos, and text. Its less frequent right now, but the practice has continued partly because it is quick to install and the effect can have impact and a certain intimacy.
Also, not everyone has a burning need for the big stage. As we all know, the biggest talker in the room is not necessarily the most humorous, insightful, genius or certainly, the most magical.
September is the perfect time of the year for Street Art in NYC – and shout out to the NYTimes who ran a double spread and video this week with images of Street Art and graffiti you can see here every week – including the great MOMO piece in Dumbo that was commissioned by Two Trees, and walls from the Bushwick Collective, 5 Pointz, Welling Court, Hunts Point, Coney Island and more. Seeing the collection made us think about how much BSA really covers throughout New York and the world every month and that made us happy as Bill DiBlasio, the apparent next mayor of NYC.
Also it was cool this week to step back and see everybody at the “Wild Style” 30th Anniversary free show in the park by the East River – to see so many people including Lee Quinones, both Ahearn brothers, Cold Crush brothers, Lady Pink, Fab Five Freddy, Futura, Mare 139, Jane Dickson, Lisa Lee, Patti Astor, Joe Conzo, Martha Cooper, among others – and Busy B, who reminded us that the early days of hip-hop were about “peace, love, unity, and having fun”. Yeah, we’re on board for more of that.
Stay tuned this month for exclusive BSA coverage of Nuart ’13 in Stavanger, Urban Forms in Lodz, Faile at the Dallas Contemporary, a number of new gallery shows with the new crop of artists on display, and even a chance for BSA to meet you in Bushwick at a special event on the 19th, wink wink.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week including Amanda Wong, Bunny M, Case Maclaim, Dede, Droid 907, Freddie 111 Street, Gilf!, Josh McCutchen, Judith Supine, Meer sau, Phetus, Phlegm, PRVRT, r1, Reme821, SARZTKG, and Vexta.
“The piece is made of reclaimed plastic bottles that were assembled in a large wire mesh,” says South African installation artist r1, who created this piece in a way that reminded us of the El Anatsui show this year at the Brooklyn Museum and on the Highline. “Community and street art seems to work well together,” r1 says when recalling the spontaneously posing kids who arrived to get in the picture.
Meer Sau shares these smiles with BSA readers this week, where a crosswalk is emblazoned with some words of encouragement. He did the installation and then stood around waiting to see what expressions he could capture. “Everybody wants compliments,” Sau explains.
Hellbent is in LA to open his show at CAVE tonight, and he shares with you these exclusive shots of the next phase of his abstract patterned color bars for the gallery he calls Mix Tapes. New is the sophistication in dimension and shadow, and a lot more white space, with pieces broken apart and reassembled in a looser, less dense buildup – a continuation of the direction he began for the “Spectrum” group show he was in last month.
“My ‘No Wave’ paintings are a further exploration of abstraction that I have been working on for the last year and half and I feel that they are going to continue to evolve,” he says. “In the same way that Richard Dieberkorn’s Ocean Park series was a 7-year journey, I think the Mix Tape series is only in its infancy.”
“With these current paintings I have been exploring leaving parts of the canvas untouched and allowing the white of the gesso to become a part of the paintings. I think this lets the painting breath and provides a ground for the viewer.”
“I have also been adding shadow to some of the different ‘Shafts’ to enhance the dimensionality of these paintings. While in the early phase of this work I think the color itself had achieved a 3D effect, if subtly, with the shadows it is instantly apparent. I was initially hesitant about the shadows but I have been having so much fun and since I had used them in murals in the past it was an easy transition. I am having a lot fun playing with these different layers and figuring out the different planes of the canvas as I construct them.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: Augustine Kofie in Paris with TRBDSGN, C215 is “Dreaming In The Back of The Classroom”, Ben Slow with Jim McElvaney and Best Ever in London, and Know Hope prepares for “The Abstract And The Very Real”.
BSA Special Feature: Augustine Kofie
in Paris with TRBDSGN
Kofie, Hobz and Honda address the wall schematically and with precision; an integrated and collaborative conversation with cans, tape, diffusers, an improvised protracter, and cell phones of course. It’s an unassuming record of a dedicated trio working together while kids fly by on transportation methods that are similarly time-tested as well as improvised.
C215 is Dreaming In The Back of The Classroom
For his recent TED Talk Christian Guémy reveals his philosophical approach to his creativity on the street, the impact of his personal relationships and his life path on his work. It is instructive to see the profound effect of a persons’ biography on the selection of work and even how it is expressed on the street.
(Turn the CAPTIONS button on lower right corner for subtitles)
Ben Slow, Jim McElvaney and Best Ever in London
Four guys on Old Street in London take on the challenge of a huge wall together at The White Collar Factory by Fifth Wall.
Know Hope prepares for “The Abstract And The Very Real”
The weight of the world, patriotism, and his place in the street. Living in Israel, Street Artist/fine artist Know Hope understands well the personal, the political, the historical – and how a continuously charged environment affects the art he creates. For his new gallery show at Lazarides, the artist reflects on his poetic approach to abstract realities. While examining walls, borders, and fences Know Hope pursues avenues to show how the bonds between emotional perceptions and political ones are inseparable.
A quick check with Detroit’s Hygenic Dress League, the conceptual Street Art duo who brought rainbows, butterflies and semi automatic weapons to Oakland and the tropical islands of Hawaii this August. As always, the messages are intentionally mixed, and particularly when viewed through chain linked fencing topped with razor wire in Oakland, the scrambling of transmissions is pleasantly disturbing.
Soon the leaves will be falling and the hottest Fall ’13 looks will be ready for you to buy. In this high-security retail environment, HDL’s militarized and sexy guard could be handling a dangerous “situation” or is just directing you to a nearby sales rack of fall fashions in this tough and trendy boutique. Perhaps it is HDL’s concept of an idyllic shopping paradise for consumers that conveniently is also a high security prison to keep you safe from outside danger. Hope they take credit cards.
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.”
The streets have always been a powerful venue for everyday men and women to advocate their political views and to be visible, to be heard, to champion and to demand. Today we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and all that it achieved and how we all changed as a result of it, even as we recognize how far yet we have to go for everyone to be treated fairly and the great cost the struggle exacted from many. This march had an impact on the American people like none other and even now the struggle for freedom, equality, and economic justice continues here and around the world as the words of Martin Luther King Jr. remain an inspiration to many.
The Loss Prevention. John Lewis. March On Washington. August 28, 1963. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Martin Luther King “I Have A Dream” Speech
Full Text:
“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
