“With the clearing of the chop, the city saw value in that mural and wanted to keep it and put up the protective barriers to keep automobiles from driving on it.” — Jason Huff, OAC project manager lead
The big Black Lives Matter work of art on Pine Street that made headlines in June is now a permanent fixture in Seattle, at least for the next five years. Before Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, Takiyah Ward and Joey Nix, who are Seattle artists and community organizers, were pressing themselves to figure out how to create art that “spoke to the ills of the pandemic.”
Then police killed Floyd, and Ward and Nix were instantly inspired by the Black Lives Matter murals popping up in other cities — Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, North Carolina.
Read more in the Oct. 14-20, 2020 issue.