City moving sculpture after police voice gang concerns
TRENTON » Mayor Eric Jackson has taken the side of some police officers and expressed concerns about a new “OK sign” sculpture that was erected earlier this week at the intersection of Perry and Montgomery streets.
After the giant hand sculpture surfaced near the street corner on Tuesday, which is a known hotbed for drugs where gang members congregate, some city police officers, who spoke to The Trentonian on the condition on anonymity, feared the art could be viewed as a Bloods gang sign. One officer said the department is “worried” because the site where the piece is situated is a notorious Bloods corner in Trenton.
Jackson said Friday that his office received “a number of calls” from concerned citizens the previous day about alleged gang members posing with the sculpture and “using a like symbol that could represent their particular group.”
“It does resemble one of the local gang signs,” the mayor said. “The interpretation is negative and as a mayor I’ve got to be careful that while on city property, we’re sending out positive messages and we don’t want to misinterpret it even though we respect and understand art is interpretable.”
Isles, the nonprofit responsible for selecting the location of where the new piece of street art was located, announced Friday that it would remove the sculpture from city-owned property and relocate it due to “concerns voiced by the mayor’s office.”
“Sixteen kids from Homefront’s summer camp and artist Eric Schultz worked hard to create this sculpture, titled ‘Helping Hands,’” Julia Taylor, Isles’ deputy operation officer, said Friday in a statement, adding seven of the kids were from Trenton and nine were from Ewing, Hamilton, and Lawrence. “We think this was a good placement for these kids’ work, and we’ve gotten strong positive feedback from many residents and others on the installation.”
Taylor said the kids initially considered constructing a “peace sign” sculpture, but “felt that image was overplayed.”
“They decided on the “ok sign” because they felt that it was a universal sign of positivity,” Taylor said. “We’ve been in Trenton for 36 years, making places healthier and green, and we believe that art is vital to Trenton’s future. It is also open to interpretation. Any connection to gang signs or other images is totally unintentional and quite a stretch.”
The piece — constructed with pots and pans and fitted with prominent red fingernails — was created by children, ages 12 to 15, at a HomeFront camp with longtime sculptor Eric Schultz, who has a studio at Grounds For Sculpture.
“This was purely to teach children that they can make things out of found objects and show them how to use tools and to help them realize that you can get the hell out of Trenton,” Schultz explained Wednesday in a phone interview. “It’s been the OK symbol since the beginning of time. Unfortunately, location has created another meaning that is not intended by anyone who created it.”
Schultz said with “99 percent” certainty that the kids he worked on the piece with were not trying to pull a fast one on him.
“What would be the point of that?” the 30-year sculptor said. “Because they’re just going to have the sculpture removed. So all of their hard work is for nothing if that happens so that would be stupid.”
The mayor said he is “no way suggesting that artists’ work cannot be interpretable.”
“Clearly, as a mayor, I respect the art, culture and the value that they bring to our great city — that’s what we’re built on,” Jackson said. “We welcome creative art and the professionals to come in and use their craft to lift up our city, which they’ve done well.”
Isles was scheduled to unveil the sculpture this Friday for its newly designated Creek to Canal Creative District, but the event was canceled due to the controversy. It was part of three public art projects the nonprofit was going to show off in coming weeks, which also includes a mural across the street from where the sculpture stood and an oversized books installation at the Higbee Street School, the city’s first school for African-American children.
“We hope this high visibility moment gives us a chance to have a discussion about what is art and its purpose in an urban setting,” Taylor challenged.
The mayor said another piece of art will be situated where the sculpture sat.
“Maybe not a hand gesture type of art — but another creative type of art would go on that same property,” Jackson said.
Trenton police have expressed displeasure
with city street art before.
In Oct. 2014, a mural of slain Ferguson, Mo. teenager Michael Brown, who was shot to death by police while unarmed, was taken down after a request from city police.
The mural depicted the 18-year-old, who became a martyr for civil rights after his death, wearing his graduation cap and was inscribed with the slogan “Sagging pants … is not probable cause.”
Another city police officer, who spoke to The Trentonian on the condition on anonymity earlier this week, said the Brown mural was a completely different situation to the OK sign sculpture.
“They were making a statement with that,” the officer said. “This, there’s no statement. It’s supposed to be an OK sign, but it looks like a gang sign.”
The officer said if gang members or drug dealers in the area constructed the sculpture, then it would be a “whole different scenario.”
“But these people are from out of town that have no knowledge of our city or inner dealings with the city,” he said. “What it may look like and what it was put up there for were two different reasons.”