DC -- Public Art: Murals by Garin Baker:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.138.200.66 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1]
 MURGBA_210929_04.JPG
|
[2] MURGBA_210929_09.JPG
|
[3] MURGBA_210929_12.JPG
|
[4] MURGBA_210929_15.JPG
|
[5] MURGBA_210929_20.JPG
|
[6] MURGBA_210929_21.JPG
|
- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- MURGBA_210929_04.JPG: Vandalized
- Description of Subject Matter: Massive new mural in D.C. pays tribute to the men who built the Lincoln Memorial statue
By Perry Stein
September 1, 2017
It might have been the simple gray tones of the hulking monument under construction. Or maybe it was the contours of muscular men hard at work on what would become one of the most venerated statues in the nation. Or possibly it was the words beneath it:
"Without culture there can be no growth. . . . Without action, no progress. And without conflict, no victory." — Frederick Douglass.
Whatever it was, joggers stopped, cyclists dismounted and Metro riders peered out their windows during evening commuting hours this week to glimpse the newly installed mural that pays homage to the workers who built the statue in the Lincoln Memorial.
"It's beautiful," said Prameeka Patura, 27, who passed by the mural on an evening walk. "It's very creative. Now I'm thinking I need to go back and look up all this history."
"28 Blocks" by New York artist Garin Baker sits along the Metropolitan Branch Trail — a popular pedestrian and cyclist commuter trail in Northeast Washington that is surrounded by train tracks to the east and industrial buildings on the west. It is a tribute to the men — many of whom were the first and second generation of black men born free — who built the 120-ton marble statue. Italian immigrants also helped build the statue, which was designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French to sit in the memorial, planned by architect Henry Bacon.
The name comes from the 28 blocks of marble used to erect the statue between 1914 and 1922. The marble was carved from mountains in northwestern Georgia by the sons of African slaves, according to the D.C. Department of General Services. The marble was then sent to New York, where the statue was carved block by block. The blocks were later transported from New York to Washington through Union Station, upon which they were assembled for the first time.
The Department of General Services put out a $50,000 national call in spring 2016 for artists to submit proposals for a mural that would cover the vacant Penn Center building the city owns where New York Avenue NE meets the trail.
The city received 20 applications and ultimately settled on Baker's vision because the mural itself was striking and its message was particularly salient for that space, according to Joia Nuri, a public information officer for the department.
The Metropolitan Branch Trail runs parallel to the train tracks that ferry people from New York to Union Station. Visitors arriving from New York to the nation's capital by rail will be able to see the mural out their windows just before reaching the station.
"We selected this mural because of its connection to Washington. The Lincoln Memorial is one of the most iconic monuments in Washington," Nuri said. "The reaction has been phenomenal. We have just been standing there and watching people go by and stop and take pictures."
Baker said he was researching the history of the Lincoln Memorial and was "blown away" by the story. From there, he wanted to find a way to transform that history into a mural.
"When I started doing research, the story really started to unfold. I found a really symbolic story about America," Baker said. "These workers' souls and their hearts and their dreams are imbued in those stones. For an artist, it's a good thing."
It took Baker four months to hand-paint the mural on 156 sections of parachute cloth in his New York studio. He then used a special polymer glue to attach the mural to the facade of the building.
He said the color scheme of black, white and gray is intentional and carries symbolism.
"People see things in black and white, but it's really not the full story," he said. "Only through all the shades of gray do we see the full truth."
Nuri said the city has no immediate plans to put the Penn Center building to use, but it might eventually be used by D.C. Public Schools.
The above was from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/massive-new-mural-in-dc-pays-tribute-to-the-men-who-built-the-lincoln-memorial/2017/09/01/00425e76-8e5d-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html?utm_term=.36f7c9f4658e
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].
