GROUNDED IN COMMUNITY
HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIDE
In 2016 Myneishia Johnson, 19, was murdered a few days before her high school graduation on Beale Street when a gunman fired into a crowd during a drive by shooting. Tributes at the scene in honor of Johnson were removed by city workers because she was shot on a prominent tourist street.
In response, Grounded artists came together alongside neighbors and mothers to paint, move, to listen and learn how to advocate for change.
The tribute depicts how peace can rise up from chaos. The mountaintop is heaved up from the tectonic loss so many feel when their loved one is gunned down. Its presence shows the mass of pain families who've been ripped apart by senseless acts of gun violence feel.
BULLETS TO BELLS
Grounded collaborated with Chris Dean and his family on an art installation and living memorial to honor his father, Ray Lee, who was lost to gun violence.
Our team melted bullet casings to remold them into 23 bells to represent each year of Ray Lee’s life. The bells are suspended by a melted sawed-off shotgun that was recovered from a crime scene to show the possibility of transformation and peace.
COLOR OF FREEDOM
Grounded artist Terry Lynn immersed himself in the creative works produced by incarcerated youth in collaboration with the Grounded team during our pilot program in the Shelby County Youth Justice and Educational Center during the summer of 2018.
Approximately 30 young men created art, wrote poetry, and participated in “Slow Walkin’,” also known as walking meditation.
Terry Lynn has honored these lives and experiences through a series of paintings.
It is our goal to create a traveling exhibition highlighting these artworks to discuss, examine and challenge the systems, beliefs and root causes that lead to the incarceration of children.
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
For Freedoms sponsored a billboard campaign to encourage civic engagement featuring provocative images and questions.
Grounded Ambassador Molly Billings drew a black-and-white silhouette of the path of a bullet. The bullet pierces a person’s heart, then breaks into three ribbons with red hearts at the ends. Billings said she wanted “to show the bullet becoming something it can’t, that being an explosion of love…” A quote from Grounded’s short film Me and the Light accompanies Billings’ image.
Another billboard on I-20 in Jackson, Mississippi, features an image of Lil Buck from Me and the Light and a quote from the film.