John Lewis- Good Trouble

This is the second image made for the Voice/New York Academy of Art residency collection. The theme of the collection is Equity and Justice. John Lewis literally put his life on the line as a civil rights activist in the 1960's working with The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. As chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, Mr. Lewis was one of the "Big Six" leaders who organized the March on Washington, the Selma to Montgomery march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where, infamously, he was attack by local police and State Troopers. He also served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020 where he continued the fight for Justice and Equity for all Americans. Artistically, I tried to convey the visceral nature of his work during the civil rights era by overlaying images, "scratching" through layers to reveal historical images and showing how his motto of "Good Trouble" seeps through all of his activities.