You may recall (from several diaries here) that, early in the awful events in Ferguson, Missouri, St. Louis artist Mary Engelbreit came under fire for her beautiful expression of support for Michael Brown's family. When I saw that one could join in on her effort, I decided I would. Join me below the artistic curlicue for a look.
Mary Engelbreit's work is awfully cute; I am sure it wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but she does have both a liberal heart and a rather tart sense of humor, both of which are evident in her work.
As reported here initially by TomP, attorneys for Michael Brown's family set up the Michael Brown Memorial Fund to help the family defray its expenses (specifically not attorney fees). Ms. Engelbreit responded on Facebook (in part),
When situations turn horrible and I find it hard to move on, I usually draw my way through it. These drawing hardly ever see the light of day, since they're really just a form of therapy for me. But these events unfolding now in my hometown and across the country, shining a light on the ugly racism that still runs rampant in our country, made me think that maybe this drawing could help in some small way.
She offered prints of her drawing for sale, with all proceeds to benefit the Michael Brown Memorial Fund. What followed was a tempest of both supportive comments and hateful ones, a bizarre removal by Facebook of
her post, which included a
link to the print at her store, the subsequent restoration of her post and a promise from Facebook not to remove it again, and eventually,
the raising of over $15,000 for the fund through sale of the prints. (That report is from over two weeks ago, after only a couple of days' sale on a website with
very overloaded servers, so I imagine the amount is higher now.)
Anyway, since I like her work, and I liked that work in particular, I ordered a print, and look, here it is in its protective cardboard sleeve:
The piece itself!
I went for the extra ten bucks and got her autograph on it:
The prints are still for sale; the memorial fund is still open; the links are in my text above for your use if you like. Or you may just enjoy my copy. I plan to hang it up as soon as I can figure out where to find some wall space in here. ;)
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, and interesting videos, as well as links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate. Readers may notice that most who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but newcomers should not feel excluded. We welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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