BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts students got to meet two artists that are making a difference in the community on Wednesday.
Gino Morrow is one of those artists. He is in town working on a mural of Harriet Tubman, which will be displayed at the foot of Ferry. He talked with students about his vision for the mural, and what you won't see in it.
"One of the things I wanted to lean away from is, I didn't want to incorporate the old tropes and icons of slavery and our history," Morrow said, "because every time someone does a composition, they incorporate those tropes, and I'm not saying they're meaningless, I'm not saying they're not valuable.
"I'm saying I want to inspire the next generation of people who learn about the story, I don't want to inspire them to feel like chains, whips. That's not inspiring to me. I love my history, and I know my history well, and I think that's a relevant part. I have to teach my children that, but I also need to teach them to hope, and how to use that to translate that into hope."
The other artist there was Travis Rogers, who is an alumnus of the school. He spoke with 2 On Your Side before talking with students about the importance of art in the real world.
"To me, art is original thought, so it's a matter of how you think it and use your ideas in the world to help things," Rogers said. "Like a light bulb is art, the streets are art. I see it as how you can give back to the world in any type of way, and it's dope a school is giving kids a space to create those types of things.
"We see art as this big thing that's like hard to see, and I feel like a part of my job is teaching other humans as artists how to see the art in front of them."