GREAT AMERICANS PROJECT

Racial Justice Education - Community Engagement - Art Events
(formerly PARJE Mini-Murals)

SELECT PAST EVENTS
Lyman Allyn Art Museum (4/9/22), Florence Griswold Museum (5/18/22), Bruce Museum (6/12/22), MOCA Westport (7/22/22), Mystic Aquarium, Norwich Got Talent, Norwich Healthy Living, La Grua Art Space, Rocky Hill School, New London Dream Market, Lyme Academy Of Fine Art, Lyme Art Association, Mystic Seaport Museum.

WHAT IS THE GREAT AMERICANS PROJECT?

This project is a collection of oversized coloring book pages. They form a compact portable “mural” created during specific community events and engage audiences in racial justice conversations while creating art! During events, local children and adults create art, foster discussion, and explore historical topics of local and national importance.

The panels are modular and as we complete more events, the number of topics grows until it becomes a giant quilt-like celebration of community-created educational artwork.

The Great Americans Project (GAP) is fillings the gap in American history.

THINK BIG

We have hosted over 22 events since our inception in 2021. Our goal is to have a giant traveling artwork, over 40 panels made in 2022, created for and by local communities to foster education and the beauty of inclusion.

The GAP are creating a growing quilted artwork about civil rights, human rights, inclusivity, history, and diversity. This work will be shown at museums, libraries, and schools across the country.

THINK SMALL

Every mini-mural panel is replicated onto a smaller coloring book page.

Our associated PARJE Coloring Book Pages are a more nimble way of engaging kids in our history. Each page includes historical biographies and educational information on the back and visiting children are encouraged to take home their personalized artworks.

art about race - the mini mural quilt project

Our first GAP event was at the Mystic Aquarium’s “Women in Science” Day. We celebrated the diversity of coral reefs while remembering four African American women who were the first in their fields. We have since held events in Norwich, Mystic Seaport Museum, Stonington Art Center, Lower East Side NYC, New London Dream Market, Lyme Art Association and the Lyme Art Academy!

FINISHED PANELS

Featured

WILMA RUDOLF

Wilma Rudolph (1940 - 1994)

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was an American sprinter, who became a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field.

In 1960, Rudolph won three gold medals in the 100 and 200 meter dash and the 4 x 100 meter relay at the Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy.

Rudolph became the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.

JOHN LEWIS

John Robert Lewis was an American statesman and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia from 1987 until his death in 2020.

Lewis was one of the "Big Six" leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington. He fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States.

In 1965, Lewis led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

CATO MEAD

Cato Mead (1761-1846) is the only known Black Patriot. Mead fought in the American Revolutionary War and was the only Black Patriot known to be buried west of the Mississippi River. Cato Mead joined the 4th Connecticut Regiment of the Continental Army in Norwich, Connecticut in 1776 or 1777 at sixteen years old.

He served at Valley Forge from December 1777 through June 1778, where he got smallpox and spent two months in a Pennsylvania hospital. Early military records show Mead received solder's pay of $10.04 for service his in the Continental Army in July 1783.

PHOTO GALLERY