The Hopeful Project

It was a dark December night when Jocelyn Lee, the artist and director of Speedwell projects in Portland Maine, asked me if I would consider putting a sculpture on the roof of the Speedwell building. I said yes and the first thought that came to me was that this piece needed to be about light. Maine is a dark place in the winter and I felt compelled to illuminate that corner of our world. Just then I didn’t know how or with what.

The creative rumination began. I had been working with neon and enjoyed the color and romance of light but getting something up on that roof at the scale was hard to figure out. Then one day I walked into the Neokraft Signs fabrication shop. It was a revelation. I saw possibilities there that I didn’t know were available to me. It was the chance to see my images as retro marquee sculpture and on a huge scale.

I had the concept, a bold statement with a message spelled out in bright colors and marquee lights. Now I needed a word, but what word? After weeks of thinking through all the possibilities I had an epiphany while in the midst of a political discussion with my art dealer and friend Jim Kempner. The word Hopeful popped up somewhere in our conversation and right then I knew that would be the message, it felt so right for the moment. As time goes by, this message continues to resonate. I asked David Wolfe at Wolfe Editions to help me create a font that would best carry this message. He brilliantly conceived of a retro automobile design, which I loved because it spoke to me of an earlier time when the highway was the frontier, when the car and the road signs danced in harmony in a country excited by possibilities. Of a bright future, illuminated by roadside marquee signs. A creative littering of the highway, extolling the prospects of great meals, fine night stays and the prospect of adventure, it was the time of my youth and a time in America when we felt compelled to see our great country and taste and participate in all its promise.

Throughout the shut-down of New York City due to the global pandemic, people who lived in Chelsea started tagging Jim Kempner Fine Art on Instagram in photos of the 120” Hopeful sign installed in the window. On April 3rd, Tracy Memoli wrote, “HOPEFUL. ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness’ – Desmond Tutu. This week was hard. Hope next week will be better. And hopeful each week will continue to get better as we move towards the light and move towards healing.” - article excepted from the pictorial brochure of the Hopeful Project