The killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer has sparked protests worldwide as supporters of Black Lives Matter gather together to use their voice to demand change.
The movement is powerful and it has inspired some local artists to use their talents to make a statement about racial inequality.
Jane Simpson couldn’t help but notice all the handmade signs she saw as she took part in the Black Lives Matter protest in Dublin on May 30. Some were painted and others had cut out letters. They were made from cardboard boxes and large pieces of poster board. The messages ranged from “Choose Love” and “Enough is Enough” to “America We Can Do Better” and “I Can’t Breathe.”
“People put so much time into making those signs, it would be a shame to throw them out,” Simpson said. “Why not give them a second life?”
So before Traceymay Kalvaitis, pastor of Dublin Community Church, addressed the crowd, Simpson asked for a simple favor. Anyone who wished could leave their signs and Simpson would make sure they were seen again.
Because the Peterborough artist had an idea that would take all those powerful statements and turn them into a piece of art. In all, Simpson estimates she collected 75 signs between the protests in Dublin and Peterborough thanks to some help from her fellow artist Joan Barrows.
“As a whole, incredibly powerful and inspiring,” Simpson said. “They were really sending a good, strong message and there’s a story behind every sign and why they made them.”
Within a few days, Simpson had constructed a collage in the kiosk she rents with Barrows and another Peterborough artist, Lulu Fichter. Every inch of the kiosk, which sits between the Granite Block building and 14 Grove St. and is known simply as Oh!, was covered – the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Simpson planned to keep the exhibit up indefinitely, but with protests planned for this past weekend and the next, many people wanted their signs back.
“It was a pretty powerful exhibit I’d have to say,” Simpson said.
So all that sits in the kiosk now is a pair of signs made by Simpson and another from Barrows, joined by a chair and a single electric candle.
Simpson said she is open to putting together another installation using posters, but not until the signs have been retired. It was a lot of work to create and if she’s going to do it again, it would be for something more permanent than the one that lasted less than a week.
“If people were willing to donate them, I’d be willing to do it again,” Simpson said.
Ann Putnam of Wilton hasn’t been shy about using her art to make a political or social statement. When the US government once again decided to delay the use of Harriet Tubman for the $20 bill, Putnam made a carving of her own version of what the Tubman bill would look like. She’s done other carvings, like that of Iesha Evans, who was famously photographed in front of a line of Louisiana state troopers during a protest in the wake of the killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.
As she watched videos of protests around the world, the words of James Baldwin kept showing up in Instagram posts. Putnam has a unique connection with Baldwin, an important voice in the Civil Rights movement, as she works in the James Baldwin Library at MacDowell Colony, which Baldwin visited three times.
So while she’s focusing most of her energy these days on digesting as much information as possible and participating in protests around New Hampshire, Putnam felt a pull to get back into her studio.
“I thought, it’s about time I carve a portrait of James Baldwin,” she said.
In one night, she completed the carving and posted a 60 second video on Instagram accompanied by the following words of Baldwin:
“Black people are in the streets has to do with the lives they are forced to lead in this country, and they are forced to lead these lives by the indifference, and the apathy, and a certain kind of ignorance, a very willful ignorance on the part of their co-citizens. Everybody knows, no matter what they do not know, that they wouldn’t like to be a black man in this country. They know that, and they shut their minds against the rest of it, all the implications of being a black father, or a black woman, or a black son.”
Meg Rogers Eldredge grew up in Peterborough and Antrim, and until recently, had lived the last five years of her adult life in the Monadnock region. But during her time away, which included boarding school in western Massachusetts, and time spent in New York City and the Dominican Republic, she has learned through experiences that have shaped her life.
And when the protests began, Rogers Eldredge felt compelled to help in the best way she knew how. After the coronavirus pandemic led to a loss of her job, Rogers Eldredge began making masks and then took it one step further to align her work to aid a specific cause.
Thanks to a friend, Rogers Eldredge was given fabric from the Congo and she began making a couple different kinds of masks and scrunchies with the fabric and selling them through her Etsy shop.
“It’s uplifting these fabrics that come from the roots of black America,” Rogers Eldredge said. “So I thought ‘how can I use this beautiful stuff and be supportive of the cause?”
But it was much more than just using fabric. She began looking around for an organization that she could donate the profits to and after stumbling upon the Black Feminist Project, based in New York City, in Rolling Stone, Rogers Eldredge got to work creating. She felt drawn to the Black Feminist Project because it supports both women and people of color.
“I’ve personally experienced a lot of discrimination as a woman and as a woman business owner,” Rogers Eldredge said. “So it was like hitting two birds with one stone for me.”
In the first 18 hours, she had $300 sales, mostly from people in the Monadnock region, and plans to keep it going as long as people are buying them.
While it’s not a significant amount of money, Rogers Eldredge said she feels it’s important to do her part.
“As a white person with privilege, and I consider myself an ally, I believe it’s my duty,” she said. “There are a lot of people that really want to do better.”
To view Rogers Eldredge’s work, visit https://www.etsy.com/shop/rayosupplyco/.