As thousands of people walked by the United Center during the Democratic National Convention this week they were greeted twenty-foot-tall multicolored mural of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The master artists behind the project? Two talented Angelenos.
Ian Robertson-Salt and PeQue Brown created the piece in 2020 as part of an advertisement for Harris’s Vice Presidential campaign that was commissioned by political action committee EMILY’s List. This week it traveled more than 1,700 miles from Los Angeles to Chicago, where Harris became the first woman of color to accept the presidential nomination.
“I never would have guessed that my work would be in such a prominent location at such an important event,” said Robertson-Salt, who is from Pasadena and studied art at Cal State Long Beach. “I think it’s pretty amazing that my art can help amplify her voice and hopefully get her elected.”
Having the mural be displayed at the Democratic National Convention was a major moment for the artists, who both got into mural making as a means to inspire social change.
“I’m thrilled with the idea of having created something that the DNC thought was so significant that they used it,” said Brown, who currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Atlanta. “I’m sure that there are other artists who created mural projects, but this one actually found a home at the convention and I couldn’t have imagined that that was going to happen.”
Brown started working on murals to help inspire children to channel their creativity and emotions into a productive outlet. Robertson-Salt said he learned the art form from Chicano muralists, who emphasized the importance of incorporating the community into the painting process.
“I feel like public art has the ability to change public spaces and the way people interact with public spaces,” said Robertson-Salt. “It can really change people’s lives and change the world if it’s done right.”
Their mural of Kamala Harris was created on panels of pine wood using a range of materials including acrylic paint, spray paint, house paint, airbrushes, foam rollers and paint brushes, Robertson-Salt said. After working together to come up with the rendering, they completed the entire painting process in just one day.
The mural installation at the DNC was coordinated by EMILY’s List and carried out by Teamsters union members and Carpenters union members. It quickly became a social media sensation with hundreds of convention attendees and passersby stopping to snap photos next to the giant smiling Kamala.
“As we were conceptualizing the design, we wanted to show vibrancy, we wanted to show life and we wanted to show change,” said Brown. “And that’s the message I got back from people who saw it at the DNC — they felt there was a great connection between the art and what many of them felt on the inside, which was joy and excitement for this historic moment.”
The mural features an abstract geometric background with bright blues, oranges, purples and golds that bleed onto Harris’s face. The idea of blending the vibrant colors on top of the regular skin tone was to symbolize rebirth and the fact that something new and exciting is taking place with Harris’s rise, said Brown.
When Brown was first commissioned to create the piece in 2020, he was not a huge fan of Harris, he admitted. But his opinion has shifted recently as she’s become the Democratic nominee and outlined her vision for the country. He was particularly impressed by her DNC speech on Thursday night where she talked about about her humble roots growing up in a middle class family.
“The fact that she, first of first and foremost, comes from a middle class family means she understands the average American’s struggle,” he said. “And the fact that she has some very strong values and a strong moral core, those things really resonated with me.”
Robertson-Salt said he also draws a lot of inspiration from Harris and is honored to have his artwork be part of her history making moment.
“I like her track record on social justice issues and climate change and the fact that she’s the first female vice president is huge,” he said. “If my mom, my sister and my niece can see the first female president in our country in their lifetime that would be pretty amazing.”
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