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Combat photography, veteran portraits featured in Upcountry History Museum exhibit

Combat photography, veteran portraits featured in Upcountry History Museum exhibit

Photos capture a moment but can also tell an entire story. For retired Air Force Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall of Harleyville, she found a way to do both during her career in combat photography.

Her work will be on display beginning Oct. 21 at Greenville’s Upcountry History Museum.

Combat photography exhibit

Pearsall’s 10-year military career started when she enlisted in the Air Force at 17 years old. She spent her first four years doing intelligence work and processing film from U-2 spy planes before transitioning to the 1st Combat Camera Squadron.

“I applied for the 1-Combat Camara Squadron in Charleston,” Pearsall said. “By the time I got here, 9/11 had happened and most of my unit was deployed. From there I was on the road for 180 days or more a year.”

Throughout Pearsall’s six years with the squadron, she documented a variety of military operations including a critically injured soldier being loaded from an ambulance onto a military helicopter in Iraq. She also photographed soldiers before, during and after patrols.

Pearsall was wounded twice while on active duty and medically retired in 2010.

Life after the military

After her military career ended, Pearsall said she struggled to find her purpose outside of the Air Force.

“The physical recovery was challenging enough,” Pearsall said. “That took me 18 months. I think the mental part was even more difficult because all I had ever identified was being (with) a military person and being a combat photographer. The doctors were so focused on telling me the things I could not do and that’s all I really heard.”

One day while she was waiting at a Veterans Affairs Hospital, she met a World War II veteran who survived D-Day. That encounter inspired the Veterans Portrait Project.

A new chapter

For 10.13 GJ: Stacy Pearsall

Pearsall coordinated with the VA public affairs office and arranged to photograph veterans in waiting rooms at various hospitals as they waited for their appointments. She also recorded the veteran’s story.

Since 2009, Pearsall has documented more than 7,500 veterans across all 50 states.

Drawing from Pearsall’s more than 20-year combat photography career, Syracuse University in New York compiled a 45-photo exhibit called “Hard Earned: The Military Photographs of Stacy Pearsall & The Veteran’s Portrait Project.” It features images she has taken throughout her years as a combat photographer as well as her ongoing Veterans Portrait Project.

The exhibit will run from Oct. 21 to Jan. 14, 2024, at the Upcountry History Museum. It will be accompanied by a companion exhibition with military objects and archival materials from the museum’s permanent collection as well as some loaned objects.

For more information, visit upcountryhistory.org.

Combat photography fast facts

  • Traveled to more than 40 countries
  • Served in three combat tours of Iraq
  • Bronze Star Medal recipient
  • Air Force Commendation with valor for her combat actions in Iraq
  • Two-time winner of National Press Photographers Association’s Military Photographer of the Year award
  • Holds an honorary doctoral degree from The Citadel
  • Hosts and co-created “After Action” TV series on PBS

San Francisco’s ‘last vibrant time’: Photographer captures city’s 1990s queer renaissance

San Francisco’s ‘last vibrant time’: Photographer captures city’s 1990s queer renaissance
Oakland photographer Chloe Sherman documented San Francisco’s queer cultural renaissance in the 1990s. Here is her photo, “The Glamorous Juanita More and Mr. David, 1999” (Chloe Sherman)

Oakland photographer Chloe Sherman’s new book of images immerses viewers in the last time San Francisco might be able to say it lived up to its promise of being an epicenter of American counterculture.

In the 1990s, San Francisco was the focus of a queer cultural renaissance, largely based in the Mission District. Then in her 20s, Sherman was part of this liberating, boundary-pushing social scene. Camera always in hand, she copiously photographed her friends — stylish and spirited queer youth, punks and artists — hanging out at clubs or around the neighborhood, at the beach or in the intimacy of their apartments.

These photos now star in “Renegades: San Francisco the 1990s” (128 pages, Hatje Cantz). Sherman and her friends gravitated to San Francisco for its beauty and its history of welcoming iconoclasts — the beats in the 1950s, the hippies in the 1960s and gay men in the 1970s and 1980s. Just before the dot-com boom, the city also remained affordable enough for a new generation of young people to enjoy a community where they could experiment with life, art, fashion, sexuality and gender.

Oakland photographer Chloe Sherman documented San Francisco’s queer cultural renaissance in the 1990s. Here is her photo, “Amita and Sunny, 1998” (Chloe Sherman) 

“It was such a pivotal time in San Francisco’s queer history,” Shermans said in an interview.

At the onset of the Mission District’s gentrification, these “renegades” created a “ferociously sex-positive subculture” of “radical feminists, queer punks and gender-variant people,” Anna Joy Springer, an author and former vocalist for the punk rock group Blatz, wrote in the book’s introduction.

During this time, there also was an explosion of female-owned clubs, cafes, bookstores and other businesses, particularly along 14th Street. Some of these venues, past and present, play prominent roles in Sherman’s book: The Lexington Club dive bar, Red Dora’s Bearded Lady Cafe, Glama-Rama! Salon and Black and Blue Tattoo.

Oakland photographer Chloe Sherman documented San Francisco's queer cultural renaissance in the 1990s. Here is her self-portrait. (Chloe Sherman)
Oakland photographer Chloe Sherman documented San Francisco’s queer cultural renaissance in the 1990s. Here is her self-portrait. (Chloe Sherman) 

Sherman grew up in New York, Chicago and Portland. In 1990, in her early 20s, she drove from Oregon to visit San Francisco for the first time with a friend.

“I fell in love with the city’s beautify and physicality and everything else about it. It had a gritty urban feel that I craved.”

Sherman hoped to figure out how to pursue an art career while she picked up work as a bike messenger or at Real Food grocery in nearby Noe Valley. She eventually earned a BFA in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Meanwhile, she paid $250 a month for her first home, a shared apartment in the Mission. The affordability was “huge,” said Sherman, because it allowed people like her to get by with minimum-wage jobs, while having plenty of time to do art, socialize and collaborate on projects.

At the time, it also was easy to meet people. In a pre-digital age, people had to leave their homes to find entertainment and other diversions, and there was always something going on — a party, a show or a gallery opening — most nights of the week, Sherman said. “You had to go out and get somewhere to find something,” she said.

Sherman found young people like herself and photographed them dancing in clubs, performing music, riding in cool cars, getting tattooed or lounging in the grass during lazy afternoon picnics. Her subjects also display the era’s fashion, including glamorous vintage gowns and classic suits and ties, representing the femme and butch aesthetics.  “Viewing these images all in one sitting is like suddenly being invited into the coolest (and tightest) group of friends you’ve ever had,” said KQED arts and culture writer Rae Alexandra.

While Sherman and her friends were having fun, they also were producing music, poetry, fiction, dance and even experimental films. “It was a very inclusive environment for this generation to thrive,” Sherman said. “You were immersed in this group of other like-minded people. It was part of a very DIY approach. We just kind of went for it and made it work. It was often fly by night, but it was often successful.”

Sherman collected her photos into a book after first displaying them in a show last year at the Schlomer Haus Gallery near the Castro. She ended her book with a photo of her good friend Springer at her going-away party in 1999. By the end of the decade, Springer and some others in Sherman’s circle had moved to different cities, either because of career opportunities or because they were being priced out of San Francisco. For family reasons, Sherman has since relocated to Oakland.

Dot-com entrepreneurs may see themselves as belonging to a more recent generation of San Francisco renegades, but Sherman agrees that the immense wealth they generated led to the hollowing out of a creative class that tends to operate at the lower end of the economy.

“I feel really lucky to have been able to be there and to have chronicled that era,” Sherman said. “There’s still beauty to the city, and it’s still a special place. That said, the ’90s may have simultaneously been the last of the most vibrant times.”

Rochester’s Emily Baron makes time for tintypes

Rochester’s Emily Baron makes time for tintypes

Flashbacks to the ’60s might be common for some flower children, but one Rochester photographer is using her flash to go back to the 1860s.

“It’s essentially the same process they used in the 1800s,” says Rochester-based photographer Emily Baron, describing the retro tintypes she creates.

The realization that her art form has such a lengthy history is something she describes as “kind of wild to think about.”

Tintypes, sometimes known as ferrotypes, are photographs produced on metal sheets. They were most popular in the 1860s but have made a resurgence in modern day photography as a fine art form.

Baron, who moved to Rochester in June 2022 because of family working at the Mayo Clinic, worked as a photographer previously in New York and North Carolina. She’s always loved photography but is particularly drawn to analog photography and enjoys experimenting and learning how things work.

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“With tintypes,” she says, “you are literally making the photographic emulsion on a piece of metal, and I think that is so cool. It’s an amazing combination of art and science.”

Despite the current preponderance of digital photography, Baron says she’s always continued shooting with film. Baron explains that she likes how analog photography is tactile and methodical. “With digital you can shoot multiple frames a second, which is great for certain things,” she says, “but shooting film or tintypes forces you to slow down.”

Though largely self-taught as a photographer, Baron first learned the basics of working in a darkroom in a high school class and later attended a workshop on the wet plate process. She says most of what you need to know to be a successful photographer can be learned online.

Photographer Emily Baron

Photographer Emily Baron prepares to make a tintype photograph in her darkroom Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, in Rochester.

Joe Ahlquist / Post Bulletin

Seeing a photographic image developing is something Baron describes as magical. “The darkroom allows you to take the image you took with the camera and turn it into the image you had in mind,” she says.

To create a tintype, Baron coats a 4” by 5” inch metal plate with chemicals to make it light sensitive. The chemicals involved include collodion and silver nitrate. She then puts the plate into a holder in her large format camera that is held on a sturdy tripod. The exposure time varies between seconds and minutes depending on how old the chemicals are and how much light is available.

Waiting patiently for the subject of the tintype to appear, Baron develops the exposed metal plate in the dark under a red light before she fixes it so it will no longer be light sensitive. Then, she varnishes the plate. While it only takes about 15 minutes to capture the image on a plate, the varnishing process she uses, which uses sandarac, takes about two weeks to dry.

Photographer Emily Baron

Photographer Emily Baron develops a tintype photograph in her darkroom Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, in Rochester.

Joe Ahlquist / Post Bulletin

The process requires gloves and eye protection. “Silver nitrate stains everything,” says Baron.

Baron’s love of the tactile nature of the sturdy metal photographs might be a reaction to the “clutter” created by the ease of taking photos in a digital age. “It’s so easy to snap a photo with your phone at any time,” she says, “but what happens to all these images? Most of them are never looked at again.”

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With tintype photography, Baron says the photographer must be more considerate of the subject, the composition, and the lighting of a photograph. “It makes you think so much more about what you’re taking a photo of,” she says.

When Baron experiments with new lighting or tries out new chemicals, she often takes self-portraits. “I have more self-portraits than I care to admit,” she says, adding that her favorite tintypes are those she’s taken of friends and family. She also creates tintypes of still life scenes in her studio.

Photographer Emily Baron

Photographer Emily Baron prepares to make a tintype photograph Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, in Rochester.

Joe Ahlquist / Post Bulletin

Baron says the tintypes’ lack of “film grain” and their sensitivity to ultra violet light gives them a unique image quality. The trade off for that quality is that the process includes a lot of technique that can potentially go wrong.

“Pouring the collodion takes some practice,” she says. “If you don’t pour it well, you’ll get all kind of weird artifacts on the final image. The process is very time-sensitive, too. Once you sensitize the plate, you only have a few minutes to take the image before it dries out.”

Photographer Emily Baron

Photographer Emily Baron makes a tintype photograph Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, in Rochester.

Joe Ahlquist / Post Bulletin

At the Lowertown Fest in Rochester this past August, Baron set up a mobile tintype stand right next to the dunk tank with a quilt hung as a portrait backdrop. She is just starting to make tintypes for events and festivals and is still working on perfecting her mobile set up.

“The process is so involved that it requires a lot of preparation,” she says, “and I’m still working out some kinks for tintypes on-the-go.”

She built a darkroom at her home and hopes to start teaching analog photography classes.

“My dream is to create a community darkroom where locals can develop and print and collaborate,” she says.

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For Baron, the charm of making tintypes is linked to their permanence and physicality.

“Being able to create tintypes and having a one-of-a-kind, physical object you can hold is really something special,” she says.

Emily’s type of art

To learn more about Emily Baron’s photography find her at

embryoh.com.

To find Emily Baron’s online photography shop, go to

littlecamerashop.com.

Photographer Emily Baron

Photographer Emily Baron develops a tintype photograph in her darkroom Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, in Rochester.

Joe Ahlquist / Post Bulletin

Historical Photography Exhibit of Southbury at the Public Library in October

Historical Photography Exhibit of Southbury at the Public Library in October

Residents and visitors to Southbury will soon have the opportunity of stepping back in time to see what the town and its people looked like over the past couple hundred years, without the need of a time machine. The 350th Anniversary Steering Committee, as part of its year-long celebration of the town, is proud to unveil a new, historical photography exhibit at the Gloria Cachion Gallery in the Southbury Public Library that will include images from private collections, some never before seen by the public.

This free photographic exhibit is the first of three months’ worth of changing images that celebrate some of Southbury’s outstanding people, places, institutions, and events. The changing exhibit will last three months from October to December. Each month will feature different photographs. The first part, which will open on October 3, 2023 is called “Early Southbury” and will feature many old images of Southbury, some dating as far as late 1800s.

Most images in this set are digitized photographs and come from both public and personal collections, including those of the Southbury Historical Society, Kayanne and Bill Davis, John and Lynn Dwyer, Christine and Ed Edelson, Melinda and Ray Elliott, Joyce Hornbecker Family, Ed Platt, Marilyn Stebar, Sandy Tarbox, Shirley Thorson and Cathy Phillips Weissmann.

Gosia Liedlich, the town’s Digital Communications Specialist, is a member of the 350th Anniversary Committee, and was leader on the project, including collecting and assembling the photographs. “It has been a privilege to work on this exhibit,” said Liedlich. “I’ve learned a lot about Southbury and its history in the process and we are thankful to all the current and past residents who brought in or sent us the photos.”

The town historian John Dwyer, co-chair of the 350th Committee, along with Southbury Historical Society President and committee member Melinda Elliott, collaborated on the captions for all the images.

The 350th Anniversary Steering Committee sincerely hope that residents and visitors alike will learn something new about the town and come away with a deeper appreciation of Southbury.

The exhibit will be open during regular library hours which are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9:30am to 5:30pm, Tuesday and Thursday 9:30am to 9:00pm, Saturdays 9:30am to 4:00pm and Sundays 12:00pm to 5:00pm.

The Town of Southbury is holding events and activities all year long to celebrate 350 years of community, culture and history (1673-2023), aimed at highlighting the past and progress of the one and only Southbury.

The 350th Anniversary Steering Committee is: John Dwyer and Kevin Bielmeier (co-chairs), Brian Jones (vice-chair), Justin Bette, Lynn Dwyer, Melinda Elliott, Michael Ganem, Kara Kenney, Mary Korsu, and Gosia Liedlich.

For more information on all the 350th events, visit www.southbury-ct.org/350.

Marina Abramović: a buyer’s guide

Marina Abramović: a buyer’s guide

Serbian superstar Marina Abramović has achieved cult status in the art world over the past decade or so, culminating in her current major retrospective at the Royal Academy (RA)—the first time a woman has had a solo show in the historic Main Galleries in the London institution’s 255-year history.

Her market has yet to reach such highs though; according to data provided by Art Market Research, only six works have achieved more than £50,000 at auction. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the chronic undervaluing of female artists throughout history as well as the fact that her practice has been chiefly rooted in performance, a deliberately temporary and transitory medium that fell out of fashion several decades ago, only to see a mini-revival in the 1990s. As she says on The Art Newspaper’s The Week in Art podcast: “At the end of the 1970s, performance was not popular any more… Galleries weren’t selling it and museums weren’t showing it. There was huge pressure on artists to start making paintings and objects.”

Abramović’s RA show demonstrates how her work cannot easily be pigeonholed; there is video, photography and re-stagings of her performance art. There is also sculpture, which Abramović began to produce in the late 1980s with her “transitory objects”, pieces that ask for the audience’s participation in the absence of the artist’s body. Then there are the works she created with Ulay, her former partner and collaborator. Her market is similarly kaleidoscopic. For example, she might sell a clay pillow and then a small edition of photographs and an iron chair, all within two years.

Marina Abramovic’s White Space (2014), Lisson Gallery

© Marina Abramović

Prices

Abramović’s auction record came in October 2020 when Christie’s sold The Life (2018-19), a mixed-reality installation first shown at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2019. It achieved £287,500, well below the £400,000-£800,000 estimate and a snip of the £1m it reportedly cost to make—a reminder that the art market is slow to adopt innovation. (It was the first time a mixed-reality work had come to auction.) Consigned directly by Abramović and Todd Eckert, who directed the piece, The Life was acquired by the Faurschou Foundation in New York.

A key turning point in her market came in 2010, says Claus Robenhagen, a director at Lisson Gallery. That was the year of The Artist is Present,Abramović’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As part of the show, for eight hours a day for three months, Abramović sat at a table, silently holding the gaze of whoever was sat opposite her. The artist Antony Gormley and the actor Alan Rickman were among the thousands who queued for the experience. That was also the year Lisson began to represent the artist, though the gallery’s relationship with Abramović dates back to the 1970s. “She went from being an important figure within performance art to becoming possibly the most famous and celebrated woman artist of her time,” Robenhagen says. “There was a big shift in the market; she created these large photo editions, and they started selling for good amounts of money.”

Robenhagen notes that, unlike a performance artist such as Tino Sehgal, who sells his performances via verbal instructions, Abramović’s performances are not for sale. “Marina prefers to keep ownership of the performances herself,” he says. “Institutions can exhibit them on loan, but that is done in dialogue with her in her studio.” In terms of her legacy, Robenhagen says Abramović’s studio will define how her performances will be re-staged for posterity. At present, there is no catalogue raisonné of her work.

Instead, collectors can acquire photo or video documentation; early performances are most coveted. At auction, stills of her best-known performances range in price from $30,000 to $100,000. Photographs of Balkan Baroque (1997), the critically acclaimed performance in which Abramović sat amid a pile of cattle bones, scrubbing them methodically with a metal brush, have fetched between $21,590 and $44,121. Winning her the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, the work was created in response to the war in former Yugoslavia.

Primary market prices for Abramović’s more recent works are much higher. In 2021, Lisson Gallery mounted two related shows by the artist, originally scheduled to coincide with the RA show, which was postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions. One featured a cinematic film, Seven Deaths, in which Abramović enacts the deaths of seven protagonists in famous operas—usually at the hands of a man, played by the Hollywood actor Willem Dafoe. The installation, which exists in five editions, starts at €250,000. The second show consisted of seven alabaster wall sculptures, each relating to a death scene in the film. Prices range from €250,000 to €400,000.

Alongside Lisson, Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, though she also has more fluid working relationships with Luciana Brito Galeria in São Paulo, Lia Rumma in Milan, Vienna’s Galerie Krinzinger and Galleri Brandstrup in Oslo.

Marina Abramović’s Portrait with Onions (2008) and Still Life with Potatoes (2008), Lisson Gallery

© Marina Abramović

Collectors

Abramović’s work is gaining traction with a newer generation of collectors. According to Robenhagen, in more recent years private museums and patrons in China and Brazil have begun to acquire her work. Historically, the artist has had a big following in Europe and the US, particularly among institutions. They include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent. The Tate in London owns a single work by Abramović: one of three editions of Rhythm 0 (1974), a table draped in a white cloth set with 69 objects, the remnants of a harrowing six-hour performance in which the audience was instructed to use the objects on Abramović as they wished. Another edition was sold at Sotheby’s in March 2022 for £52,920.

The German collector Julia Stoschek first acquired a work by Abramović in 2004. Today she owns 33 videos and photographs dating from 1975 to 2001, 26 of which were made together with Ulay. Stoschek notes how Abramović was one of the very first artists to have entered her collection, adding: “Building a media and performance art collection, you simply can’t ignore Marina’s pioneering work.”

Marina Abramović’s Seven Deaths (2021), Lisson Gallery

© Marina Abramović

Critics

Some reviewers criticised the RA show for its use of actors to re-stage her performances, which raises vital questions about the meaning of a practice so rooted in the artist’s own body, but also about how Abramović’s estate might be handled. Like her nebulous market, it is no mean feat to present work that largely exists as documentation. But, as Robenhagen puts it, “Marina is without a doubt one of the big, big artists of art history. And as that history is re-written, her importance will only become even more apparent.”

City Celebrates Indigenous Peoples Day

City Celebrates Indigenous Peoples Day

The City of Albuquerque was one of the first in the nation to adopt Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a city holiday and continues to be a model for meaningful Indigenous relations. Under Mayor Keller, the Office of Native American Affairs was established, and the city honors its commitments to tribal sovereignty and Indigenous rights through the Commission on American Indian and Alaskan Native Affairs.

“It is important that we continue to acknowledge how meaningful it is to honor and celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day in our city” said Mayor Tim Keller. “We recognize the powerful contributions of Native people in our community, and the important role they played, and continue to play, in making Albuquerque what it is today.”

The City celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day with the Native community at Tiguex Park. The City’s Office of Native American Affairs supported community organization, Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) for the Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration. This event garnered dozens of people who had the opportunity to participate in youth activities, browse various resource vendors, win raffle prizes, and even register to vote. The event also featured a meet and greet with popular Indigenous Tik Tok creators, and live musical performances by Indigenous artists Sage Bond and Emmet Yepa. 

“This event allows us to brings Albuquerque’s Natives together so we can all celebrate in community with one another” said Kyle Tapaha, Commission on American Indian Alaskan Native Affairs Chair and AIO Urban Indigenous Organizer. “Indigenous people are still here, and it is through honoring days that we recognize that.”

Mural honoring Dakota people unveiled in Red Wing

Mural honoring Dakota people unveiled in Red Wing

A community gathering Monday in Red Wing celebrated the unveiling of a large-scale outdoor mural honoring the Dakota people and Chief Red Wing.

“It matters that we know our history so we know where we want to go and where we want to go together,” Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said at the unveiling in downtown Red Wing, held on Indigenous Peoples Day.

“And this mural is a prime example of what that can look like when we tell the truth, when we embrace each other, when we work together across lines of difference — because that is what we are called to do as people who simply exist in this space and in this world together.”

The mural — 60 feet long and 18 feet high — is on the side of a city building at the corner of West Third and Bluff streets, overlooked by the landmark bluff He Mni Can.

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Men take part in a drum circle

Men take part in a drum circle during a mural unveiling ceremony on Indigenous People’s Day in Red Wing on Monday.

Tim Evans/MPR News

It was painted in September by Colorado-based Native artists Jeremy Fields and Collins Provost-Fields of Thrive Unltd, who were picked by the Prairie Island Indian Community.

“Each mural section depicts local Indigenous relatives in their natural environments. The sections are divided by a sweetgrass braid and a red willow twist with local native wildflowers and medicines intertwined,” organizers said in a news release ahead of the unveiling.

Cole Redhorse Taylor, a Mdewakanton Dakota artist and a Prairie Island member, contributed designs to the painting.

The mural is part of the Honoring Dakota Project, “a process of community conversations and events that provide education to discover shared stories, bridge the communities, and create a space for healing.” Partners in the project include the Prairie Island Indian Community, Red Wing Arts, the City of Red Wing and Goodhue County.

“In the beginning, we all came together to bring a mural to the Red Wing landscape that would create space and honor the Dakota Indigenous relatives of the area. As we began unraveling the context and purpose of the mural, we realized collectively, the importance of relationship and the necessity of community,” Fields said in the news release.

“This project has come to embody shared experiences, family and tribal lineages, collective healing and much more. It has grown far beyond brush strokes and paint. We are creating a community legacy, of which the effects will continue to ripple for generations to come.”

Organizers of the project said the mural provides the first public portrayal honoring Chief Red Wing in the city that carries his name.