On the shoulders of giants

 Mural celebrates history of Ruston’s East End community

— Nancy Bergeron

Leader photos by Nancy Bergeron
Mural artist Vitus Shell, holding scissors, Ruston Alderwoman Angela Mayfield, and artist Drék Davis, joined by residents of the Greenwood neighborhood and members of the North Central Louisiana Arts Council, cut a ribbon Thursday for the “On the Shoulders of Giants” mural at the Greenwood community center.

The Grambling State University concert choir performs during a reception celebrating the mural that’s part of the North Central Louisiana Arts Council’s Lift Every Voice Initiative. Below, mural artists Vitus Shell and Drék Davis stand in front of their work.

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Ruston’s newest mural grew out of national tragedy. Now the bright colors on the big blue building on Cornell Avenue stand as what the North Central Louisiana Arts Council hopes is a successful part of its vow to listen and learn from experiences of Black members of the local community.

In the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery in 2020, “we started thinking about how we could reach out and have projects that would support the Black community,” NCLAC board President Peter Jones said Thursday, following a reception officially unveiling the Greenwood East End Mural “On the Shoulders of Giants.”

“Non-profit arts groups need to reach out into the community. We wanted to make this happen,” he said.

Floyd died in May 2020 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes as he lay on a city street, face down and handcuffed.

Two months before, Taylor was fatally shot during a botched police raid when officers burst in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment looking for a man who didn’t live there. A month before that Arbery was killed while jogging in a neighborhood near Brunswick, Georgia.

The killings of the three Black, unarmed individuals drew widespread attention and outcry — including from the Ruston-based NCLAC.

NCLAC added its voice to the Black Lives Matter movement, objecting to what the group called “continuing devasting injustices against Black Americans and other people of color,” and supporting efforts to end systemic racism.

Out of that came NCLAC’s Lift Every Voice Initiative, a program to increase the impact of the arts in under-represented communities, to acknowledge the contributions of Black members of the community, and to listen and learn from experiences.

That’s how the concept for the mural was born.

Vitus Shell, a Louisiana Tech University visiting associate professor of art, and Drék Davis, head of Grambling State University’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts, painted the mural.

The work wraps around part of two walls of the Greenwood Community Centers so people can see it from both approaches to the building, Davis said.

Scenes depict the former Greenwood School that once occupied what’s now the community center site, a church, a grocery store that used be in the community, sports scenes, and community legend retired Grambling State University baseball coach Wilbert Ellis.

An empty picture frame painted near the top of the mural is reserved for a picture of the old school. But so far, nobody’s located a photograph of the school.

One of the requirements of the Louisiana Division of the Arts grant that funded the project was the mural topic be drawn from conversations with people who live in the area.

“ So, the mural would be something that was a response to the neighborhood,” Jones said.

The project was two years in the making. Davis and Shell are working on a documentary of the interviews done with community members.

“The mural is one thing, but it’s the conversation that goes further,” Davis said.

“It’s important to tell a story bigger than just putting paint on a wall,” Shell said.

The pair said they enjoyed not only painting the mural, but also interacting with the community.

“It’s just like being at home and being around family,” Shell said.

For now, no other murals are planned. But the Lift Every Voice Initiative isn’t done.

“The more we can do, the better it is,” Jones said.