It’s been quite the year already. Next week we repaint the BLM Mural. My passion and energy for this project has moved in all directions. I’ve experienced extreme joy and deep sorrow. This is what art can do. Artists create for so many reasons. And as we’ve seen with the BLM mural, public art gathers complexity over time. Meanings layer. Narratives shift. This is often the case with public art. I knew this going into it and my artist heart said, “this is what’s alive in me and apparently many others, lets see what happens.” 

When we make art it’s often with the knowing that it could cause disturbance, admiration, silence, or a lot of freaking talk… I’ve never created art to cause harm. I’ve also never promised a safe space. That is impossible. What I have tried to live in is the ability to show up and respond to whatever arises through a lens of curiosity. (after feeling ma feels) Things are allowed to change. Nothing is meant to stay the same or last forever. The BLM mural was always intended as a living piece—an invitation to revisit, repaint, and reexamine together each year. The movement around it is emergent. As art often does, it writes it’s own story in a long line of stories often only sorted out through the lens of time. The response to art and especially this art is a data point in the arc of our evolution towards personal and collective liberation. 

One piece of art is not meant to be all things to all people. In this case the mural was also never meant to be a badge of honor for a city, like all cities in America, is still reckoning with its own social and institutional racism. Our expectations are so vast and relative. I grew up in a city in Indiana where I still can’t imagine a BLM mural being permitted, let alone supported by the local government. Where the current governor (yes, in 2025) has publicly declared that the Supreme Court was wrong to legalize interracial marriage nationwide and that such decisions should be left to individual states. Against that backdrop, for me, the fact that this mural was approved at all feels significant. Even if it was performative to some, Art in these situations is an entry point for curiosity and discourse. Not everyone is going to get it. Which hurts sometimes. I can take things personally and be in my feelings like the rest of us. 

Ultimately, it is just a mark on the timeline of this place reflecting back to us who we are in these moments. I hope that’s allowed to be enough.