62The Spirit of We

From across the street this reads as pure abstraction — cream and black and dusty blue curling along a long low wall, all loops and hooks and dots, like a page of handwriting in a language you almost know. It is not abstraction. It is a technique, and it has a name.

The lead designer was Richard C. Thomas of New Orleans, who pioneered what he calls visual jazz, and the plaque bolted to the wall tells you exactly how to look at it: at first glance, this artwork looks abstract. Like listening to jazz on your front porch, it seems like a jumble of colour and rhythm. Then, just like jazz, your attention is rewarded. So give it thirty seconds. A whale surfaces out of the pattern near the right end. Cotton bolls. A bison. Families, seeds, birds, water, fire.

It was painted in August 2019 by six Waco ISD high-school students through Creative Waco's ARTPrenticeship programme — an eight-week paid apprenticeship where teenagers take a wall from concept to completion under working artists. Their names are on the plaque, in full, in the same size type as the mentors': Naya Banda, Treshion Bryant, Brenden Kidd, Fate King, Lillian Olvera and IsaBella Thomas. You will meet this programme twice more on this walk.