Design Assistance
Witness Walls
Witness Walls
Commissioned by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, Witness Walls features the vision of Oakland, CA Artist, Walter Hood. Commemorating the city’s role in the historic Civil Rights Movement, the Witness Walls in downtown Nashville tell the story of an April 1960 protest when 3,000 college students marched through the city to protest an attempted firebombing of a prominent civil rights attorney’s home. The students arrived at the city courthouse where they asked the mayor if he believed lunch counters should be desegregated. He responded with a yes, making the event one of the defining moments in the Civil Rights Movement.
The artist’s design for the Witness Walls, the first public art installation focused on civil rights in Nashville, is a set of fragmented sculptural walls inspired by the classical sculpted friezes commemorating heroic and mythical events in antiquity. Walking among the flat and curved walls, visitors are placed in the center of historic moments that are etched in precast concrete.
The artist liked the idea of using precast concrete as the medium because it had the flexibility to achieve the desired detail. Custom formliners and graphic concrete technology, which involves printing a surface retarder onto a special membrane before casting concrete on top of it, were used to replicate selected photos. Through the use of shadow and light, the heroes captured on the panels emerge and retreat with an invitation to not only touch the images, which seem to fade in and out of focus but also to feel the spirit that something profound happened in that particular place.
AWARDS
VIDEOS
LOCATION
Nashville, TN
ARCHITECT
Hood Design Studio, Inc.