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2
Thursday, August 6, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS
Ellison Simmons
works with St. Louis
artist to promote
positive message
By TANYA MADHANI
Daily Staff Reporter
Maryanne Ellison, 1971 Univer-
sity alum and founder of Wildwood
Press — an art printing company
based in St. Louis — was combing
through pictures of protests and
demonstrations online in Fergu-
son in August as St. Louis County
braced itself for the grand jury
decision. That was when Sim-
mons saw the first set of hand
prints pasted on a boarded-up
Ferguson business created by
multimedia artist Damon Davis.
At the time of the grand jury
decision on the shooting of
Michael Brown, some insurance
companies did not cover busi-
nesses damage experiences until
they boarded up their windows,
Simmons said. Davis decided to
post prints of hands onto sev-
eral businesses as a form of soli-
darity with those shops, who
were already suffering from the
unrest.
“His intervention, with the
photographs of the hands, were
about supporting those business-
es with a mark,” Simmons said.
“Very similar to the marks on
doors of those celebrating Pass-
over, so it is a very moving piece.
Two of Simmons’s assistants
recognized the hand prints, but
were not able to identify the art-
ist.
“On the street, these crimes
of shooting of unarmed citizens
continued, so I looked harder for
(Davis),” Simmons said.
Davis posted a YouTube video
explaining his artwork and the
intention behind it, which Sim-
mons later found, leading her to
his website, where she left him a
note.
“(Davis) is a very young, very
ambitious young man,” Simmons
said. “I first left a note and my
web address and, two hours later,
he called.”
By April 1, Simmons and Davis
were discussing the future of his
hand prints, titled “All Hands on
Deck,” and other projects. Sim-
mons said she was interested in
meeting with Davis because she
could see the iconic potential his
prints could have in the history of
the events surrounding Ferguson.
“When I have an artist come
in, I always ask them what their
dream is,” Simmons said. “With
(Davis), his seven pairs of hands
were made for the street, and I
saw that it was really important
because the hands would become
a visual of Ferguson. I think that
needed to be preserved in an
archival way, and I could facili-
tate that for him.”
When she and Davis first met,
Simmons said, he told her he was
done making the hands.
“I just smiled and explained to
him that he’s 30 and I’m 65,” she
said. “To him, since he’s 30 and
it’s April, November seems like a
decade ago, but when you’re 65,
November seems like it was 10
minutes ago.”
When Simmons asked Davis if
he had any of the original prints
he had used to board up Fergu-
son businesses, he explained
they were quickly painted over
or removed. He had one board
left, Simmons said, but that had
already been shipped off to the
Smithsonian.
But while original copies of
Davis’s prints weren’t available
for Simmons, he had put up his
hand prints online at allhand-
sondeckproject.org for the public
to download for free.
“They’ve learned that (the prints)
have been put up in many places
across the country and around the
world,” Simmons said.
Simmons and Davis re-printed
those images from Davis’s web-
site in order to create an exhibit to
showcase them at John Burroughs
School, “one of the most affluent
private schools in St. Louis County.”
Simmons said the message of
Davis’ prints are a message of peo-
ple coming together to fix an over-
arching societal problem.
“It’s important to say that when
anybody looks at those hands, the
first thing they say is ‘Oh I get it,
hands up, don’t shoot,’” she said.
“(Davis’) message was not that. It
was ‘all hands on deck.’”
The real motivation behind
Davis’s work is to let individu-
als know minorities alone cannot
break down years of institutional-
ized racism and inclusion of diverse
groups, Simmons said.
“It’s a problem that white people
need to fix and, as hard as that mes-
sage is to hear, it’s absolutely accu-
rate that the dominant majority in
any culture is responsible for both
the good things and the bad things
as long as there’s no joint voice,” she
said.
Simmons and Davis will con-
tinue to collaborate on future proj-
ects, one of which is a steel tracing
of Davis’s arms, which are posi-
tioned into a “hands up” position.
The piece will be on display at the
Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
‘U’ alum contributes to Ferguson artwork
AMANDA ALLEN/Daily
Anastasia Sallen of Frog Holler Farm bags fresh vegetables at the Ann
Arbor Farmer’s Market on its 96th anniversary on Saturday.
M ARKET ANNIVE R SARY