Artist’s reaction to defacing of George Floyd mural in Overtown: ‘I’ll make it better’
As professional artist Kyle Holbrook started to repair his mural of George Floyd’s face on Northwest First Avenue in Overtown, he refused to be downcast.
“No matter if they do it a million times, I’ll come back and fix it a million times and make it better each time,” Holbrook said on Thursday. “This isn’t for me. It’s for the community and about perseverance.”
Holbrook said the hand that vandalized the mural had to come from someone who needed something more positive in their lives, something to celebrate. The rest of Holbrook’s mural, which stretches the block from Northwest 16th Street to Northwest 17th Street, celebrates Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna Bryant with whom the basketball star died in a 2020 helicopter crash; the joy of music, child’s play, meditation and undulating colors.
Then, there’s the face of Floyd, who died May 25, 2020, after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds while three other officers watched. What ignited protests about law enforcement treatment of Black people and often angry discussions about Black life in the United States moved Holbrook to do what he does with the Moving the Lives of Kids Community Mural Project: go to the wall.
Holbrook says he drives by the mural once a week “to check on it.” But he found out it had been vandalized Tuesday while working in Surfside on a mural honoring those who died in the June 24 Champlain Towers South collapse.
Some of what the vandals used, he noted, still wasn’t dry and burned his fingers. Holbrook went to his truck for gloves. He didn’t know how long the repairs would take, he said. They would finish “when it feels like it’s done.”
“Done” being defined as “better.”
This story was originally published July 15, 2021 at 2:14 PM.
