The Banner That Traveled and Found a Home

This banner is now a permanent Richmond resident.

This is the other banner that traveled to North Carolina.

Back in the middle of the pandemic, I was fortunate to receive funding to create an artist project with the afro-latino community of Richmond. I enlisted the help of my friend Carmen Meléndez, and together we came up with three design that could be painted during a single session at the Art Center. It was a time when public art with social justice themes saw plenty of defacing and even vandalism (but that’s another blog post), so our rationale was that these “portable murals” could be displayed at protests and community events, then stored. The centerpiece of this project was a 6 foot tall, 16 feet long canvas banner that translated the Black Lives Matter phrase into Spanish. Carmen painted the faces on it, I masked the letters so that Richmond residents could focus on painting without worrying to much about staying within the lines.

Radical Monarch Richmond mural tour.

Well the project was well-attended, and four banners came out of it. On a lark, I submitted a couple of them as entries to the Protest Signs exhibit at the University of North Carolina CAB Gallery and they were accepted. The large one got its own wall. After they were returned, I started thinking about a community group that might want the large one. I got a couple of offers which I declined, then it occurred to me to mention the large banner to the Richmond Chapter of the Radical Monarchs, a group I had worked with the previous year. They were excited about the idea. Now this Spanish-speaking banner will be displayed at their outdoor events.