Statues, murals and traveling exhibits: What if pieces of art like these could be used on the streets and in the schools to give shape to vibrant histories that have too long been forgotten?

That's the question that came to David Good, minister emeritus at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, as he participated in area marches and teach-ins after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in the spring of 2020. And it's what led him to form Public Art for Racial Justice Education later that year.

He recalled the marches and teach-ins occurred at the same time statues of Confederate generals were being taken down forcibly or by official action from Virginia to Alabama.

"It occurred to me that now is the right time for lifting up champions of racial justice," Good said. "And to remember painful stories of our past through public art, but also to celebrate those people that for too long have been forgotten."

After a year and a half, Good's ruminations about public art have begun to be realized on the back of the Market Street Garage in Norwich, on a diptych making its way through schools, churches and galleries all over the region, and at community events as children give color to black and white images for a series of mini-murals.

It's the start of an initiative that now includes New London, Old Lyme, Norwich, East Lyme, as well as a growing list of interested communities in places like Old Saybrook and Groton.

"We didn't want to just create murals and public art just for itself," Good said. "We wanted to use that as an opportunity to bring together what Martin Luther King Jr. called the 'beloved community.' Too many of our communities are too divided and we don't know each other as well as we should."

Before the public art initiative, Good did not know Norwich Branch NAACP President Shiela Hayes. Now the two are close collaborators as she sits on the steering committee and oversees a sub-group of roughly 20 Norwich residents focused on the Market Street Garage mural set to be unveiled on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January.

She said the concept for the mural began with about 70 people, places and events before it was pared down to the faces and silhouettes that now look out from the formerly gray concrete. They include African-American soldiers, abolitionists, former slaves and human rights activists of different colors.

The mural is being created under the direction of artists Emida Roller and Samson Tonton, whom Hayes said exemplify the group's commitment to bringing the community together. They work with volunteer painters and take time to explain to curious passersby what the project is all about.

"They've been wonderful at welcoming people in," she said.

Next up is Old Lyme, where a mural is set to be painted at the middle school around the theme of a "welcome table." The concept commemorates a history of welcoming refugees into the community, where there is currently a family of seven from Afghanistan living at a house near Rogers Lake purchased by three Old Lyme churches.

He said the group hopes to select a lead artist for the project by mid-January.

Another community-building piece of art circulating as part of the initiative takes the form of two panels hinged together in what is known as a diptych.

Painted on one side by New Haven University art professor Nancy Gladwell, the scene shows "Bloody Sunday" on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama. That's when about 600 marchers who were protesting the killing of an activist by an Alabama state trooper were blocked by state police from crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They refused to turn around, resulting in a police response that led to the dispersion of tear gas, beatings and the hospitalization of more than 50 people.

On the other side, Lyme Academy of Fine Arts alumnus Jas Oyola-Blumenthal created what she described on the public art group's website as an approach rooted in "togetherness." The impressionistic painting shows a young artist at a desk finding inspiration in the historical event as she is flanked by a colorful group of freedom fighters waving blank signs.

Good said he likes to emphasize that it is not a "before and after" diptych – because society has not gotten to "after" yet.

"It raises the question, hopefully creates conversation, about what is necessary to finally cross that bridge," he said.

The diptych has been shared at various educational and cultural institutions in the area and was displayed at the NAACP Connecticut convention at Foxwoods Casino and at Juneteenth gatherings in New London, Norwich and Hartford, according to Good.

Hayes emphasized education is the third pillar that sustains the group's public art mission.

She pointed to a series of virtual Community Building and Advocacy presentations funded by a grant from Connecticut Humanities, the local affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of the sessions delved into topics like political art, Black artists, and how to use graphic design for grassroots community building.

She described an intergenerational approach as key to the success of conversations on racial justice – one that welcomes children through retirees and endeavors to include all their voices.

Good agreed that art alone won't solve the problem.

"We've got to have the conversations across all kinds of lines about how we can make that more perfect union, how can we build that beloved community, how can we break down the systemic racism that troubles all of us, or should trouble all of us," he said.

e.regan@theday.com