**NEW BILLBOARDS - JULY 2021**
George Floyd vigil site at 38th and Chicago
Also featuring "Icon of a Revolution I" by Peyton Scott Russell
Billboard "Unified" by Xavier Tavera at the George Floyd vigil site on 38th and Chicago.
Photo Credit: CNN
Thunderstorm at 38th and Chicago vigil site.
Photo Credit: Brandon Bell
Billboards installed on Cup Foods at the George Floyd vigil site on 38th and Chicago.
Left: "La Conneccion" by Maria Christina "Tina" Tavera
Right: "untitled" by Patience Zalanga
Phase II "ALL ARE WELCOME?" by Julie Buffalohead
Julie Buffalohead endeavors to create work relating to her experience as a native woman. Historically, stories about American Indian people were written by anthropologists or other non-natives. When American Indians today tell their own stories we can change their perspective. We can reclaim the narrative of ourselves as distinct.
Julie is an artist telling visual stories. Julie's work focuses thematically upon describing Indian cultural experience through personal metaphor. Julie draws from stories across plural American Indian traditions and utilizing motifs within a context of cultural identity. Instead of being illustrative, her intent is to weave a personal story along with the narrative of her culture.
Julie Buffalohead's tribe is originally from northern Nebraska. In 1876 the Ponca were forcibly removed at gunpoint to Oklahoma, and a third of the tribe died on the journey from starvation. Native American cultural knowledge is transmitted through storytelling. In Julie's work characters who are caught within the human condition interact together in a tragic-comedic cultural framework.
Julie's develops her work in response to social concerns and phenomena that exist in America today. This includes the movement to draw attention to missing and murdered Indian women, social justice issues, and recently the Covid pandemic.
Phase II "GOSPEL OF GEORGE 9:26" by William Ransom
William Ransom grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont where he had a physical, working relationship with tools and materials on a daily basis. Ransom was directly engaged with the biological processes and natural cycles dependent on the balance of birth and death, growth and decay, loss and regeneration, consumption and excretion that would later inform much of his work. Balance has always played an important role in his life and work; as the son of a bi-racial union, balance between black and white; as a farm kid living in the city, balance between rural and urban, city and soil; as a diabetic, balance between a sweet tooth and insulin injections. Ransom’s work often reflects this sense of balance, suggesting flux, movement, things in a state of becoming or diminishing.
Ransom attended Bennington College and studied Sculpture and Architecture graduating with a BA in 2004 and went on to receive an MFA in Sculpture from Claremont Graduate University in 2008. He has shown extensively across the country in solo and group exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles and elsewhere. After a decade in Los Angeles he has returned with his family to the hills of Vermont where he now lives and works.
Website: https://williamransom.art/
Phase II "MAMA" by Gabriel Villa
Gabriel Villa's work addresses issues related to class and Mexican American culture, however his creative practice is centered around a lifelong fascination with the human condition. Throughout Gabriel's career he has explored ideas connected to family, religion, desire, surveillance, and greed. Symbols of societal constructs merge with idiosyncratic imagery collected from repeated observations of life in his neighborhood of over twenty years. Gabriel enjoys the physicality and process of making, whether it is executing a public mural, alone in my studio, or most recently, working in ceramics.
Phase II "Space is the Place" by Heather Hart
"ONE RACE represents that we are all one: one race, one species, not many, divided by color. For example, I have a black father and a white mother (referenced in the art), so what “race” am i, or what "race" is any “biracial/multicultural” person? Race is a fallacy, a social construct created by those in power to keep control and promote oppression. We are human. We are ONE RACE." - Peyton Scott Russell
Phase II "ONE RACE" Peyton Scott Russell
"ONE RACE represents that we are all one: one race, one species, not many, divided by color. For example, I have a black father and a white mother (referenced in the art), so what “race” am i, or what "race" is any “biracial/multicultural” person? Race is a fallacy, a social construct created by those in power to keep control and promote oppression. We are human. We are ONE RACE." - Peyton Scott Russell
Phase II "Racism Kills" by Luis Fitch
Phase II Billboards by Maria Christina "Tina" Tavera, Xavier Tavera, and Patience Zalanga
New SJBP Billboard by Xavier Tavera
Unified by Xavier Tavera
Shown Left is the new work by Xavier Tavera titled Unified. His original work, Non-Violent Resistance, was graffitied a week after installation. Both Tavera and NE Sculpture have been open to healthy and constructive dialogue with the community. This has been an excellent opportunity to address different points of view, to listen, and to make changes. With this in mind, Xavier Tavera's Unified, pictured left, is now installed at George Floyd Square.
"Non-Violent Resistance" Graffitied
Non-Violent Resistance, original work by Xavier Tavera, was graffitied a week after installation.
Non-Violent Resistance Original
Shown left is the "Non-Violent Resistance" original by Xavier Tavera.
Phase II Billboards by Jim Denomie, Seitu Ken Jones, and Xavier Tavera
Phase I Artists: Naima Green, Ivan B. Watkins, and Jessica Wimbley
Billboards installed on Cup Foods at the George Floyd vigil site on 38th and Chicago.
Left: "& Full of Dreams Too" by Naima Green
Right: "To All my Relations (Metakuye Oyasin)" by Ivan B. Watkins
Billboard installed across from Cup Foods at the George Floyd vigil site on 38th and Chicago.
"Masking; Testament" by Jessica Wimbley
Phase I Billboards by Naima Green, Ivan B. Watkins, and Jessica Wimbley
Phase I Billboards by William Ransom, Peyton Scott Russell, and Melodee Strong
