The STAND YOUR GROUND FOR TRAYVON MARTIN installation
was a response to a tragedy.
A call out for social justice, moral courage and truth.
As the internationally renown Chinese artist
Ai Wei Wei
affirms/proclaims in his art:
Art’s real context
is not simply the market
or
the institution,
but,
what is happening now,
around us,
in the real world.
Thank you to all stepped up and participated.
This is Y/OUR action toward a blueprint of diversity, equity
and
a resolution to break the vicious cycle of fear and hate:
a challenge to break open our biases
and
move toward the practice
of calling out the angels within our
humanity
Thank you to the advocacy and faith of all who loaned their hoodies.
Special gratitude to:
Janet Dirks; Leo, owner of Shish; Mary Reyelts; Robert Nash; Rob Matteson,
Stephanie Shaw; Rob Carlson; and my sonic art collaborator, Dan Choma
11 APRIL 2012
After the announcement of George Zimmerman being charged with 2nd degree murder, Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, thanked everyone.
She began by telling people how all she wanted was an arrest.
She then addressed the issue of race that had clouded her son’s death by speaking from her heart:
“I just want to speak
from my heart
to
your heart.
Because a heart has no color.
It’s not black.
It’s not white.
It’s red.
And
I want to say
thank you
from
my heart
to
your heart.
Thank you.”
CATHERINE L. JOHNSON 
Who among us could go away unchanged? Perhaps only if we dared not think about or look at or touch the hoodies draped in repose in The Hall of Lament, Catherine L. Johnson’s most recent art installation, might we possibly be able to repress the undeniable pain and mournful sadness emanating from the hooded sweatshirts. Johnson has created a tomb within a hallway, shirts hanging like crucified shrouds, reminding us of the senseless killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida, where he lost his life because he looked suspicious in his hoodie.
I moved slowly down the hallway that Sunday afternoon, examining each shirt and imagining the owners, some from the other side of the world, who had lent their shirts for the exhibit. Fervent music played softly in the background. People moved carefully, talked quietly, or simply pondered the tragedy that our country was being forced to witness. The lights were dim and I was glad for the sense of privacy, feeling the tears well up in my eyes as I moved from shirt to shirt, feeling the loneliness of the empty hoodies and the loss of one young man’s life.
Art has played many roles in our society, whether to shock or bemuse, soothe or uplift, or as a visual record of history. Catherine L. Johnson’s Hall of Lament evoked all of these feelings for me in its social commentary and artistic expression. I am grateful for the unforgettable images that she so intuitively created. Johnson is an artist who fervently lives the words of the French novelist, Emil Zola:
“If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you:
I came to live out loud.”