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Artist makes statement with busts

There were many pieces of artwork at the Washington National Cathedral as part of the “By The People” entertainment festival that opened on Thursday, but sculptures by artist Stephen Hayes were among the displays that were most impactful.

The array consisted of eight busts of various African-American men, each of whom had the voice of an African-American teenager. According to Hayes, the busts along with the voices represent his belief that life for the teenagers has not changed significantly from when the adults were teenagers. Hayes said both the voices and the heads are of real people who live in Washington, D.C..

 

“I talked to both young and old black men in D.C. about what they are going through in their life and how they are judged,” Hayes said.

Born in North Carolina, Hayes received his Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Arts in Visual Communication from North Carolina Central University in 2006 and his Masters Degree of Fine Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design in 2010. Hayes received national attention early in his career for a piece of artwork called ‘Cash Crop’ that explored the slave trade in an extremely powerful and graphic way. The display consisted of 15 statues of people of various ages, each statue representing one million slaves. The statues were modeled on friends and family of Hayes.

There are plenty of opportunities for artwork that revolve around black culture, Hayes said, but he wanted to focus on something current for the festival project.

“I wanted to talk about the legacy of what it means to be black,” Hayes said. “The struggle they are going through is the same struggle I went through when I was a kid.”

While his work may be impressive and powerful, Hayes said the main goal of the project is to both give pride to black men and let others know of how things like crime and poverty affect their lives.

“The aim of this project is to create a platform for African-American males,” Hayes said. “I want to create awareness about what black people go through daily in American society.”

The message of Hayes’s project also seemed to resonate with attendees. Libby Lye, a spectator at the event, said the point of the art had an impact on her.

“I think the busts being done in similar casts and style really shows the unification through the society and they all kind of have this shared experience,” Lye said.

Despite putting heavy emphasis on what his goal with the project was, Hayes said there is not one main thing he wants people to take away from his work, which took over three months to complete.

“It’s all up to the people to decide to themselves what they want to take away from my work,” Hayes said.

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Gas leak at AU sparks evacuations

 

 

Firefighters stand outside Abbey Joel Butler Pavilion to ensure no cars go through the area. They swept the various buildings to check gas concentration and clear each building for reentry. Photo by Sam DeFusco, Teen Observer.

WASHINGTON — A gas leak at American University Wednesday morning sparked the evacuation of central campus, closed roads and disrupted university businesses for almost two hours. No one was harmed.

Construction workers believe they hit an unmarked gas line as they were working on an underground utilities project, according to David Osborne, AU’s Director of Energy and Engineering.

“The contractor was digging to put in the underground hot water lines as part of this big project,” Osborne said. “My understanding is they called out missed utilities before the day they were supposed to, and they ended up hitting a line that was either wasn’t marked or wasn’t where it should be, which caused it to break.”

The construction workers immediately notified campus police, Washington Gas and the fire department, and worked to seal the leak at the excavation site behind the McKinley Building, Osborne said. Police sent out an evacuation alert at 8:32 a.m. and sounded a campus-wide alarm at 8:50 a.m.

In the cafeteria, the calm eating and clanking of dishes paused as an alarm suddenly sounded and drowned out the noise of the dining hall. Students began to stand up in confusion and quickly make their way upstairs to evacuate the dining hall, some leaving their belongings behind. Workers in the campus Starbucks grabbed bagels and coffee to go.

“I was in the terrace of McKinley when the fire alarm went off at around 8:50,” said McKenna Solberg, a student attending a summer communications program at AU. “Another Comm kid and I left the building and there was caution tape all around outside and a really potent smell of gas.”

The rotten-egg smell of gas wafted over groups of evacuated students gathered on the quad in front of the Mary Graydon student center, as they waited to be relocated. Some wondered aloud why they were congregating so close to a building that could potentially explode. Several fire trucks arrived on the scene.

Campus police closed McKinley Hall, Butler Pavilion, Bender Arena, Sports Center Garage and shops in the pavilion tunnel. The police conducted a sweep to make sure that everyone was out of the buildings, then closed off the area with yellow caution tape.

Caution tape blocks the road underneath Abbey Joel Butler Pavilion after people were evacuated because of a gas leak that started from a construction site. People were barred from the area until the gas leak was contained. Photo by Sam DeFusco, Teen Observer.

Summer program teachers and counselors led the students to unaffected buildings to continue their classes.

“I have 150 students here on campus and 16 classes and so we needed to move a number of classes and spaces, but fortunately, we had already gone over the proper protocol, which is that we meet out on the Quad,” said Sarah Menke-Fish, the director of AU’s Discover the World of Communications program. “They broke out into classes and sections. I found immediate spaces that they could go to.”

AU police sounded the all clear at about 10:15 a.m., reopening all buildings and roadways.  Ian Greenlee, Lieutenant of Police Operations for AU, said no one was harmed and there will be no long-term effects from the gas leak. According to Greenlee, all of the necessary and proper protocols were followed to contain the leak and evaluate the air quality of each of the affected buildings. Gas should be restored by end of the day, though the use of hot water may be further affected, along with possible cooking operations.

[This report was compiled by Prof. Farley’s Professional Newswriting class.]