Congratulations to Cregory Avery and Amiria Smith, whose artwork is featured this month in the Frazier Museum’s Virtual Magazine. Their inspiring artwork and essays were created last fall for the Cool Kentucky exhibit.
https://www.fraziermuseum.org/virtualmuseum
Say Their Names
Amiria Smith
11th Grade
PRP High School
For my Cool Kentucky project, I have decided to take a picture of the big mural on West Main Street in Louisville, Kentucky entitled “Say Their Names.” This mural depicts Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, David McAtee, Sandra Bland, and others. One thing all of these names have in common: the injustice and violence present in the world today has cost them their lives. These young, black men and women had their life unfairly taken from them for the simple fact that their skin isn’t white. But the tragedy that has happened to them has opened the world’s eyes and caused a lot of people of all different races and backgrounds to stand up for the Black Lives Matter movement, which is truly a beautiful thing. Being a young, black female in today’s society is scary. Especially when you read and see all of this injustice occurring right in front of you. Taking a picture of this mural, I found it so moving that in a hard time where some people are angry, some people are sad, or tired, or even unbothered, Braylyn Resko Stewart still found a way to create something so beautiful. I wanted to be able to capture this inspiring work on camera as a reminder to myself and everyone else that tragedy doesn’t have to come with sadness. From this tragedy we can persevere, move forward, and strive for better things for ourselves and our community. This mural is a representation of Kentucky’s growth and unity. We’ve faced tragedy, now we have to work hard to not only make sure justice is served, but to make sure that something like these incidents doesn’t happen again. My goal for this artwork was to take a picture that represents current events in Kentucky. I thought it would be cool and different to take a picture of this mural because to me it stands for the future of Kentucky. It represents unity and the changes we are trying to make at this time. As a state, we are going through a time of growth and reflection, that that’s exactly what I want people to think of when they see this image. Taking this picture, I learned a lot about the background of each person depicted in the mural. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking the picture just for the purposes of this, but taking in each person’s story. Seeing this artwork in person was an amazing experience. It moved me to know that someone could take something so terrible and turn into something beautiful for the world to see. It also made me proud to know that this wonderful mural is now a part of Kentucky. It inspires me to want to create an artwork in the future for BLM. Especially seeing that it could actually have an affect on people just like Stewart’s work did for me.
Life Support
Cregory Avery
11th Grade
PRP High School
My artwork is titled “Life Support.” I wanted my piece to revolve around a topic that has gone on within my community. In my artwork, there’s a graphic of Breonna Taylor; a former Louisville EMT. Behind her, you can see support and love for the former EMT. Lastly, toward the bottom of my piece, there are multiple fists in support of her behind rows of clouds. My piece was made digitally. For Breonna, I used a different technique from my usual form. I used a sort of pattern method for creating her face and facial features. For her hair, I filled it in and added the small details after. (Hair shine and jewelry) Her top also consisted of two colors and glitter effects for the overall shirt. I created the clouds with an airbrush tool and highlighted the tops of the clouds with a lighter color. For the fists, I sort of used the same pattern method and added a glow effect to them as well. Lastly, the background consisted of support “the people” showed in regards to Breonna’s passing. My artwork was sparked by a major tragedy that took place in my community. I’ve witnessed throughout the world the hurt and disbelief that her passing has brought to the forefront. I had to honor her in some way. With that being said, my artwork is intended to focus not on the negative, but to highlight the millions of people throughout the world who honored her, who came together to support her loved ones and who came together to celebrate her beautiful life. My main goal as an artist is to create. Not only just to create, but to create for a purpose. Art is what my life revolves around and it’s what sparks my creativity. Not only that, it is a way for me to be expressive when I sometimes don’t have the words to do so. It’s a great way to get my voice heard and my craft out there. With that being said, this piece definitely helped me with expression and to me, shed light on the beautiful concept of people coming together to reflect on Breonna Taylor’s bright life. Something I’ve learned from this piece is that being able to show love through any medium is really important and having the courage to express myself through something I love to do is an amazing thing to accomplish. With that being said, “Life Support” turned out better than I expected it to. All of the ideas in my head were put onto a canvas. This will affect my later artwork by giving me the drive to continue to bring my ideas and experiences to life and to convey a message whether it’s light hearted or sensitive topics that people may not want to touch on. Much like this one.
PRP Visual Art + Design / Ms. Webb 