A mural of 37-year-old Alton Sterling’s smiling face is painted on the front wall of the Triple S Food Mart where two police officers killed Sterling on July 5. Nearby, another mural—this one of a black man with his arms stretched out—is emblazoned on the side of the Denicola’s Furniture Store.
As 225 details in a feature from its August issue, art has been central to healing the community after Sterling died.
“When we decided to join hands with the Walls Project [and] present this blank canvas to the public, I wasn‘t sure what to expect. … It‘s perfect because it‘s full of raw emotion and sadness and hope,” Michael Gatz, owner of Denicola’s, tells 225. “There‘s nothing on this wall that‘s ‘wrong’ or ‘inappropriate’—because it‘s all real.”
Shortly after Sterling’s shooting, LSU Museum of Art coordinator of school and community programs Lucy Perera began searching for a way to help local kids and teens work through their feelings on police violence, racism and unrest in their community.
She decided it was a good idea to hang prayer flags handpainted by kids of the Neighborhood Arts Project, an effort Perera leads to bring art to inner city kids.
Some prayer flags are specific, with “Black Lives Matter” or Sterling’s name painted on them, while others are more abstract, with hearts or blotches of color dabbed on by the youngest artists.
While Perera says there’s still a long road to healing for many of these kids, the prayer flag project has opened up discussion and an outlet for the kids to process their feelings.
“There was one little kid around 8 or 9 that works with us down on South Boulevard. We had a long talk,” Perera says. “His sister was friends with Alton Sterling’s son, and he knew the story. And he said, ‘My dad has an unregistered gun. Does this mean my dad’s going to get shot?’ So we talked, and I hope that it allows him to see [this racial division] in a different light.”
