Compassionate Art
Inspired by the murals painted in Uptown and along East Lake Street in Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd’s death, we are conducting a series of interviews with local artists to explore the meaning and power of compassion and the role art can play in fostering greater empathy and understanding in society.
For our first interview, teammembers Crystal Cullerton-Sen and Theresa Glaser met with a visual arts educator at PiM Arts High School and the artists who designed and facilitated the painting of two murals in Uptown. More than 40 students from PiM participated. Here’s what they had to say.
Crystal: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today. I wanted to explore the role of art in fostering compassion and healing after experiencing the power of the murals in Uptown. I remember driving home and seeing a beautiful mural of George Floyd. I had to stop. I had to pull over and sit in front of it. The painting was such a gift. It allowed me to grieve. Since then, I’ve been wondering what role art plays in helping us understand and foster empathy and compassion? So, thank you for exploring this with us.
Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about the ideas behind your mural designs. How did they come about?
Ari Stephens (3rd year student at PiM): I really wanted to say exactly what the situation is, the context, this time in history, through the use of imagery. I chose some of the victims of police brutality as the backdrop of this activist, who I tried to paint in terms of the context of today…she has a mask on to show that this is current, this is happening in front of us. This is not history. I made her hair (with) flowers, because I wanted to express there is beauty and there is suffering happening. Be aware of both. Every time you see a person of color, stop thinking of them as a victim and you as their savior. But also, don’t avoid the hurt that is happening and the suffering that is happening.
Mason Taniguchi (4th year student at PiM): I originally designed the mural - the one that says, “Stop Killing Us”- as a digital piece for an English final.
Rebecca Johannsen (Visual Arts Educator / Mural Project Facilitator): I run the Visual Arts Instagram account at PiM, and I had been reposting artwork students made in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. I am inspired by it, and love that students are noticing something that is important to them and putting out good into the world. Mason’s piece is particularly emotional – the color usage, the composition and the meaning behind it is really emotional. So that’s where I started. I saw Mason’s digital work and wanted to use it for the murals.
Mason: I’m often asked why it isn’t a guy in the centerpiece. It’s true, there’s injustice happening against black men in America. I think for me, as a black, queer trans person, I find the amount of violence against trans women, the amount against black trans women, appalling. When I was designing this artwork, it was those women I wanted to honor and memorialize. So, I put a woman at the center piece. She has a cloud of red over her eyes to symbolize there’s an identity that’s being stripped away from an individual when there’s institutionalized racism and mass incarceration and all these built-in systems that put black men, women and others into an “other” category. It makes being black in America difficult.
When I was really young, I would be the only black kid or the only dark-skinned kid in my class. If you look at my old swim team pictures, I was literally the only black kid on the entire team of all genders and orientations, and it was painful. I would go to summer camp, and not a single person would look like me, and it would hurt so much. I wanted to represent those people in some way.
Theresa: What was the experience like of painting that mural? Can you describe the thoughts and feelings you had while you were engaged in the mural process?
Mason: There was a point where one of the buildings where we were working – we had already primed the space, we sketched out the designs, we were pretty much ready to start painting - the building owner or manager came down and said, “no, sorry, you can’t do this, you can’t paint this. You can’t have anything about Black Lives Matter, you can’t have anything about George Floyd, you can’t have anything about police brutality.” It (felt like it) just need(ed) to be all about peace and love and happiness. And, that broke my heart. I started crying. I was so angry…. My mom had to say, “Mason calm down. That doesn’t help anything.” And Ms. Jo (Rebecca) came over to me and said, “I know you’re struggling right now and it’s OK if you leave.” I genuinely thought, “I might just have to leave right now.’” But, luckily, I didn’t. I stayed. And about 15 minutes later we got permission from a building across the street.
Rebecca: Directly across
Mason: Yeah, directly across us – to paint their boards. I got to put my work there. It all worked out.
Ari: Everyone was so pissed off about that. We had had permission. But we ended up having just this huge wall to work on.
But the process of painting… I mean, we only got 2 or 3 people who decided to tell us we were wrong. But for the most part, people were walking by and they were cheering, they were taking photos. They were totally supporting the art going up. And that felt really good.
Crystal: What are your hopes and wishes in terms of impact of your art on the community?
Ari: There’s something incredible about being able to put your art out into the world when what you’re putting out is something with a message and has meaning and there’s a point to it. Working with others on the mural helped me realize this is what I want my art to do. I want my art to inform and inspire people to ask some questions.
Mason: For me, I always knew I wanted to be an artist as a career. Now I really want to be an art therapist in the future. There’s not a lot of people like me out there, and there’s definitely not a lot of therapists like me. It would be nice for future generations and kids who grow up like me to have someone they can talk to, someone who knows what they’re going through, someone who can help them express what they are going through – whether that be vocally or through art. I’m really hopeful that art therapy is what I can do in the future.
Ari: If I could piggy-back off of that… I have totally learned the importance of seeing someone like you. I’d like to work in animation or script writing in the future. I recently watched a remake (of the original show) She-Ra on Netflix. They have a character named Double Trouble who uses they/them pronouns. The script writers didn’t write about the struggle of being trans or being non-binary or “overcoming” queerness. They simply referred to them using their pronouns. I cried because, it conveyed something I need to see more – it was just – this person exists, this is who they are, and we’re all Ok with that.
Crystal: Could each of you share what compassion means to you?
Mason: I think... to be the opposite of apathetic. I think people display compassion in different ways. I know for me, when I’m texting my friends and they say, “I’m going through a rough time,” one way I show compassion is to relate their struggles to mine. I let them know “you’re not alone.” Some of my friends don’t like that, so I have to adapt to them. I have to change the things that I do so that they feel comfortable or so they know that I’m not trying to shift the topic onto myself or stuff like that.
Rebecca: I think that is compassion. Being introspective enough to see that when you handle a situation one way and your friends say “That makes me feel bad,” you change the way you approach your friends - I think that’s compassion in itself. That you care enough to make sure that they’re feeling heard and understood, and that you’re meeting their needs.
Compassion requires patience because everyone is different. We all feel love and we all understand the world through different lenses. When we’re patient with each other and when we’re open to understanding and teaching and learning from each other, I feel like that’s compassion.
Ari: It’s empathy to me. Compassion is really choosing to see someone and choosing to hear their experience. When you decide to listen to someone, and to see someone for who they are and to look at them and decide that they are not a bad person because of what they’ve been through, then you start to build this sense of compassion, this sense of love, and this sense of community and safety. Empathy is so important.
