Last Friday morning, Ekua Holmes (pictured above) was outside the Grove Hall Public Library in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood with folks from the Urban Farming Institute who were helping her plant hundreds of sunflowers.
“If you come upon a massive field of sunflowers,” the artist tells me, “what would that do to the spirit, what would it do to the emotion? Would it make you smile? Of course it would.”
Holmes’s “The Roxbury Sunflowers Project” was developed via the Public Art Accelerator program from independent public art curators Now + There. It launched on June 2, when she gave out seed packets to more than 100 people. More folks sent her notes asking to take part, so last Thursday night, she gave away seeds to 25 more people.
In addition to planting at the library at 41 Geneva Ave., she’s working to get sunflowers planted all across Roxbury, often considered the heart of Boston’s black community—in a vacant lot across the street, at the 95 Thornton Community Garden and Farm, at Freedom House near the intersection of Crawford and Warren streets, (where she’s also planning to make art for the windows showcasing the project’s themes), at the Nathan Hale School at 51 Cedar Street, at Hawthorne Youth and Community Center at 9 Fulda St. by the Haley House on Highland Park, at people’s homes and gardens.
“I’ve distributed probably about 8,000 seeds,” Holmes says, “and I have another 2,000 in my car, in the tub over there, that will go to other institutions.”
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Holmes grew up in Roxbury and still lives there. After winning the Caldecott Honor in 2016 for illustrating the Children’s book “Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” she’s illustrating two new children’s books that are due out this fall—“The Stuff of Stars,” about the cosmos, from Somerville’s Candlewick Press and “What Do You Do with a Voice Like That,” about Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, from a division of Simon & Schuster. She serves on the Boston Arts Commission. Since 2011, she’s been the community coordinator for sparc! The ArtMobile, operated by Massachusetts College for Art and Design’s Mass Center for Art and Community Partnerships. And she’s run two galleries—including Renaissance Art and Design Gallery located at times on Newbury Street and Roxbury’s Piano Factory (from which she is presently being displaced).
“I’ve always been attracted to sunflowers, from a young age. I decorate my house, usually with fake ones,” Holmes says.
Via Now + There, she developed her plan for a “massive sunflower planting in Roxbury.” It’s one of six projects by seven artists supported through the organization’s Public Art Accelerator. “The goal is really to allow Boston artists to create more art. We bring emerging and mid-career artists through six months of curriculum, looking at everything it takes to create good public art,” Now + There Executive Director Kate Gilbert says. “I like to think about it as the technical, emotional and financial support for public art.”
Gilbert says, “They don’t have to come with an idea. They don’t have to work with a certain community group if they don’t want to. It’s all about the artist’s vision.” Each project is then given $15,000 to $30,000 in funding, Gilbert says.
“There is a closed system. There are people who have figured out how to make public art. They’re really good at it. And the agencies go for what’s safe,” Gilbert says. “We really wanted to make that investment in the pipeline. … I wanted to give artists that first leg up.”
“I thought that this sunflower because of its special attributes would make a great symbol or emblem for Roxbury,” Holmes tells me. “Life is a struggle. That sunflower is so resilient that it will survive the struggle.”
For Holmes, the sunflowers represent a radiance that “sustains us even when things are not how we want them to go.” The flowers serve as a metaphor for heliotropism—“turning to the light.” They attract bees. They’re said to draw toxins out of the ground. With the profusion of seeds the flowers produce and their deep roots, they symbolize the hardiness of Roxbury. “These flowers intend to survive and they intend to come into being and share their great beauty.”
Soon, Holmes pictures, “At certain turns in the neighborhood, you’ll come upon fields of sunflowers and that infuses you with positive energy. … Let that sunflower represent that we’re planting a seed for the future, we’re planting seeds for tomorrow, seeds of hope, seeds of love.”
Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.
