Making an Impact

The cultural and artistic future of Boston is on everyone’s mind after the introduction of city-wide programs such as Imagine Boston 2030 and Boston Creates.

Combining artistic endeavors with social activism has the opportunity and power to bring about great change.

Admired artists also work as activists, putting their ideas to the test to achieve a specific purpose.

Last October, Somerville artists Ann Hirsch and Jeremy Angier set their installation “SOS (Safety Orange Swimmers)” afloat in Boston’s Fort Point Channel. Twenty-two sculptures of orange people clinging to black inner tubes were meant to tie back to Boston’s history as a city of immigrants.

Another East Coast example is Dana Schutz’s 2016 painting Open Casket, which opened doors to major controversy, including calls that the painting be destroyed, because the white female artist painted Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse.

Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy, was abducted from his great-uncle’s Mississippi house in 1955. He was then beaten, mutilated, shot and sunk in the Tallahatchie River. Till’s mother insisted on an open casket for his funeral, and Schutz said she engaged more with Mamie Till’s empathy when working with the original image. The painting was included at the 2017 Whitney Biennial exhibition in New York.

A more city-centric arts initiative brings this activism closer to home. Boston Creates serves as the city-wide arts and culture plan for Boston, while Imagine Boston 2030 is the so-called “master plan,” aiming to promote inclusivity, preserve Boston’s legacy and ultimately bring the city into the future. Both of these plans are long-term and have specific goals to be accomplished each year.

Julie Burros, Chief of Arts and Culture for Boston, said, “as we stated the day the [Boston Creates] plan launched, we want to align public and private resources to strengthen cultural vitality of the city over the long-term and weave arts and culture into the fabric of everyday life.”

Boston Creates’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program aims to incorporate creativity into planning efforts. The program currently has 10 Boston artists working in Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF). The artists work with diverse populations in each neighborhood to bring about more interest in arts and culture.

Through various new projects, they discover new expressions and roles for the arts in the areas they are working in.

“Through Boston AIR, artists are supported as agents of reflection, collaboration and activism, whether through process-oriented practice, direct community engagement or as leaders of system-wide change projects at BCYF and other city agencies,” said Burros. “We’ve just concluded the second cohort of this program, where ten artists were placed at one of the 10 designated BCYF community centers and provided space at that center.”

Boston Artist-in-Residence Ann Hirsch works at the Vine Street BCYF Center and recently focused on connections through public art and sculpture with different ages, mostly youth groups. She used hand gestures as a magnifying tool to explore nonverbal communication in the expressions of protection, fear and protest.

At the Roslindale BCYF Center, Artist-in- Residence Cornell Coley opened up drumming circles to the center and the community. He brought the on-site recording studio back to life and organized a series of music concerts in Roslindale.

Some of my work is created with an activist mindset, some of it isn’t. though i do think all street art is an activist type of art form.”

In Curley, Artist-in-Residence John Walsh works as a graphic novelist. He interviewed immigrants and wrote and illustrated their stories in a way that makes for easy translation into other languages.

Another impactful initiative is Artists For Humanity, a Boston-based arts program that teaches under-resourced teenagers from various backgrounds arts skills that will hopefully positively impact their futures. AFH aims to build bridges between social, economic and racial divides among Boston teenagers.

“AFH addresses the 21st century skills gap head on, preparing teens to meet the critical demands of today’s economy through hands-on, experiential learning,” said Lauren Pellerano Gomez, an AFH representative. “As each studio is project-based, teens learn adaptability early on as they must process constructive criticism, and frame their creative process to meet the needs of each client.”

In September 2015, the “Redlined” public art project occurred, with coordination from Boston social justice organization City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU). For this project, organizers and volunteers walked nine miles, spreading red chalk in a line as they walked through Jamaica Plain.

The goal was to visibly show a literal “redlining” as representation of gentrification that Jamaica Plain residents began witnessing in 1936, when the Federal Housing Administration set up policies that eventually, and unintentionally, divided the area by class and race.

Cedric Douglas is a Boston Artist-in- Residence with Boston Creates. With the help of his “Up Truck” organization, he is spreading art throughout his community of Dorchester, where UP (short for Upham’s Corner) is located.

His goal is to engage the 13,000 residents of Dorchester in his mobile arts lab, while ultimately creating a fixed piece of art for the community.

Last May, he created a mural titled “A World of Innocent Wonder” for Northeastern University’s Behrakis Health Sciences Center. The mural depicts a child spray painting a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

“Some of my work is created with an activist mindset, some of it isn’t,” Douglas said. “Though I do think all street art is an activist type of art form.”

Douglas is currently working on two pieces influenced by the unarmed black males shot by police in the past. One is titled “Street Memorials” and the other is called “Tools for Protest” and features yellow caution tape with phrases such as “DON’T SHOOT” and “I CAN’T BREATHE.”

Boston University art lecturer Ed Stitt feels that art with a social activism twist can be powerful. Some of his favorites include the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros.

When thinking of social activists, he immediately noted Goya’s “Disasters of War”, Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa”, Honore Daumier’s political cartoons and Kathe Kollwitz’s prints.

“I ask students to make art about what is important to them, relevant to their experience,” said Stitt. “Often the art is personal, autobiographical, but now and then someone makes something with activism involved.”

Creativity opens our minds and hearts to wonder. The goal of activism is to bring about social or political change. When these two are combined, wondrous change can be created.

These advancements bring 500-year-old Boston into a new age: as a center for arts and culture, as a center for politics and social change and, ultimately, as a major city that served as one of the founding areas of this nation.

By Noemi Areliano-Summer | Photography by Samantha Cartwright | Design by Jami Rubin