Sanctuary and Deliverance

I’ve been asked to blog about my work on Sanctuary and Deliverance, our community mural project.

I’m, Ruth Andrews, the lead artist, and I'm also the person who conceived the project. Before I talk about the art, I’d like to establish what this project means to me, and I hope, to you.

We have embarked on a heroic quest. Sanctuary and Deliverance seeks to unite divergent views into a single community narrative, a mural. To do justice to this ambitious project, the wall we are going to paint is 900 square feet beginning 12 feet off the ground and continuing upward for another 15 feet. We are very grateful that Becky Maier of Village Floral and Attorney Stephen Woods are fully supportive of the project, and have donated their wall.

Cass County has long been an inclusive community that demands fair treatment for everyone. This is who we are; feisty and creative. We have not achieved racial equality, and we have not given up. The mission of the Minority Coalition, project sponsor, is to increase racial harmony. The mural will be a catalyst for examining our current status.

The mural committee was fortunate to receive a planning grant which allowed us to spend a year figuring out how to achieve our goals. We began by studying the various accounts of the Kentucky Raid, looking at original sources when possible. We discovered there is no single authoritative account, further, that most accounts were written by white men. These accounts failed to capture the drama experienced by the primary participants - the African American freedom seekers. We decided the mural would highlight the African American perspective.

Our perspective was greatly aided by Kentucky at Sunrise, a diorama by about the Kentucky Raid conceived by African American playwright Von Washington. This drama was performed, with the help of 30 community members, at the 2009 International Festival in Cassopolis.

In my next blog I’ll talk about murals, and the design process. We welcome your responses!