{"id":37269,"date":"2021-06-16T16:46:44","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T20:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/?p=37269"},"modified":"2021-06-17T08:17:31","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T12:17:31","slug":"four-utc-connected-artists-bring-their-hearts-and-art-to-new-mural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2021\/06\/four-utc-connected-artists-bring-their-hearts-and-art-to-new-mural\/","title":{"rendered":"Four UTC-connected artists bring their hearts and art to new mural"},"content":{"rendered":"
To see the “Soul of MLK” mural, go to the EPB East 10th Street Substation at the corner of East 10th Street and Foster Street.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Murals from top to bottom: Rachel Veal, Keelah Jackson-Harris, Josiah Golson, Madison Myers<\/p><\/div>\n

Madison Myers vividly recalls attending a music performance at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, located in the heart of Chattanooga\u2019s Martin Luther King Boulevard District, back in 2019.<\/p>\n

While enjoying the music, Myers watched an older black woman and an older white man get up in front of the crowd and start dancing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like they were the only two people there,\u201d said Myers, a marketing major who recently completed her junior year at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. \u201cThey were just so in love with each other, and it made such an impression on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When an open call went out to local artists in July 2020 to submit bids for a community mural project to be painted along the EPB substation walls on East 10th Street, Myers jumped at the opportunity. She wanted to turn that lasting impression into \u201cInterracial Couple Dancing,\u201d a memory she could share with others.<\/p>\n

The mural competition, hosted by EPB and other local project partners, asked for vision statements and sample images and required that artists lived or worked in the EPB service territory. The central theme for the collaboration, \u201cThe Soul of MLK\u2014How Artists Visualize the Heartbeat and Soul of MLK in Arts, Music and Culture,\u201d was designed to highlight the history, heritage and significance of the MLK area.<\/p>\n

The nine selected artists were announced in early January. Myers was one of four with direct ties to UTC, joining alumni Josiah Golson and Keelah Jackson-Harris and adjunct professor Rachel Veal. The other selected muralists were Jaclyn Anderson, Rondell Crier, Julius Hubbard, Harlan Lovestone and Lauren O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that \u2018Interracial Couple Dancing\u2019 would really represent the soul of MLK,\u201d Myers said. \u201cI wanted them to represent the love that they were sharing with each other and with everybody else.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to paint the couple in explicit black and white skin tones. There are waves of pink and multiple blues and purples throughout their skin tones to represent that people are more than just their skin tone. They have a creative spirit and they\u2019re full of love. I wanted that to be the message I\u2019m sharing with the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Myers had been involved with a mural before, putting paint to the walls in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business\u2019 temporary Davenport Hall headquarters during the 2019-2020 academic year. But the EPB mural was different. Instead of her work being seen in a limited space, she could showcase her work out in the city.<\/p>\n

During April and May, each of the 12-foot-high by 17-foot-wide mural panels came to life with Myers and the other artists replacing gray walls with vibrant colors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been such a great experience seeing our individual pieces go together,\u201d Myers said. \u201cIt\u2019s been exciting to get to talk to the other people and get to hear their inspiration behind the mural design.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s cool about this project is that it\u2019s not just one artist; it\u2019s nine different artists who get to share what \u2018The Soul of MLK\u2019 means to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is a look at the other murals created by members of the UTC family.<\/p>\n

Josiah Golson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Josiah Golson has returned to UTC as an adjunct instructor in the Honors College\u2019s Innovation Lab. A 2008 graduate of the University with a bachelor\u2019s degree in communication, Golson later earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Texas School of Law.<\/p>\n

Golson is the founder of the Chattanooga-based 800 Collective, a diverse group of artists using art as a means of civic engagement and public discourse. His mural is called \u201cHead in the Clouds of History.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a UTC student, I remember walking up and down these streets. I didn\u2019t have a car until I was a junior, so I would walk from the campus to downtown, maybe grab a bite or go to a movie or something, and always imagine these spaces being activated. So this was inspired by a style of work that I did a few years back in that you can tell what\u2019s going on in a person\u2019s head by the illustration of what\u2019s happening in their hair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love creating art that can speak to a sense of place and the energy of a place\u2014and emphasizing story. Anything that allows me to be a part of storytelling is wonderful. This is a young woman who could represent a student at UTC or someone coming of age, and she will have this dream-like expression on her face. In her hair, there are images of people dancing, musicians, people engaged in civic engagement\u2014basically to reflect the history of what\u2019s happened on 9th Street and MLK. It\u2019s a lively culture and how she\u2019s an heir to the type of history that belongs to her and the people in this area. And she takes ownership of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keelah Jackson-Harris<\/strong><\/p>\n

Keelah Jackson-Harris is co-founder of the Keeody Art Gallery, located one-half mile from the mural site on MLK Boulevard, and an artist-in-residence at The Baylor School. She received a bachelor\u2019s degree in political science from UTC in 2001 and a master\u2019s in education from UT Knoxville in 2006.<\/p>\n

Jackson-Harris\u2019 mural is titled \u201cDr. King\u2019s 9th Street Reverie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this mural, it was very important for me to preserve the legacy of this area. I know that as we have viewed the various aesthetic changes, I want to make sure that the rich legacy of the black community is commemorated. And so I made sure to include entertainers from the various eras and business owners to show that there are roots in this area. Husbands and wives have businesses\u2014such as myself and my husband, we have Keeody Gallery\u2014and Clyde Stubblefield came from this area. And of course, Bessie Smith; she was very prominent in the 9th Street district, in the circuit, back in her time. I want the beauty of every important factor of 9th Street to be highlighted within my piece.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the funny thing is, I\u2019m teaching two eighth-grade classes about street art, or art from the streets. I\u2019ve been recording every step of the process, using it as part of my lesson plans and curriculum. I think that it will be exciting for them to see the final product. I\u2019ve tried to incorporate them in this so that they will understand that not only am I a part of history in being a black female muralist in this project, but they\u2019re part of history, too. They have learned along with me on this project. They have told me that this has been an exciting experience for them because it\u2019s living art and it\u2019s a living lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Veal<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Veal is an adjunct art professor at UTC, and her professional experience includes working for Chattanooga\u2019s Hunter Museum of American Art. She received a bachelor\u2019s degree in education from Mercer University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cStreet Music\u201d is the title of her first solo outdoor mural.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt usually takes a while to mull things over when I\u2019m given a theme because I don\u2019t want it to be contrived, so I\u2019ll do something to get my mind in a mode where I can be inspired and creative. I had a vision of musicians because music as an art form is something that brings people together.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic is a very integral part of my life. Knowing the theme was sort of encompassing MLK Boulevard, the more I talked to people\u2014and specifically, people who lived in this area who have watched the city grow and change\u2014music seemed to be something common in everyone\u2019s memory. And I see Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s message as bringing people together and doing it in a peaceful way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rainbow background represents the idea that everything we see, whatever color it is\u2014whether it\u2019s the array of beautiful flowers in the fields or the foods that we eat or the clothes we wear or even the people that we pass and are friends with and live among\u2014they come from the rainbow.\u201d<\/p>\n