Texan Artist Wants To Paint Protest Mural On Your Brooklyn Wall

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — A Texas artist wants to paint a child missing his mother on your Brooklyn building.

Kristen Gunn, 37, watched in horror as ICE agents paraded children who had been separated from their families through La Guardia Airport on June 20, and that live footage that decided her. Her mural of a mother missing her child belonged in Austin, but the child missing his mother needed to be in New York City, she said.

“My hope was that we could cut to the heart of the issue and say, 'We all deserve to be with our children,'” said Gunn, a mother of two. “No matter how much we disagree.”

Gunn, an Austin television producer by day and muralist by spare time, has spent the past week trying to find a home for the second mural installation, which depicts a small boy clutching an empty silhouette behind a chain-link fence.

The companion piece shows a mother clinging to empty space.

“I started this project as a kind of therapy,” said Gunn. “It’s devastating that we treat other humans this way.”

Gunn first became aware of the federal government’s zero tolerance immigration policy — which calls for separating families caught crossing the U.S. border illegally — through friends who also happen to be immigration rights attorneys.

One such friend — whom Gunn described as a “f---ing warrior” — told Gunn about meeting a mother whose 10-year-old son had been pulled away from her the day before. The woman's body hadn’t yet adapted to the loss, Gunn’s friend told her.

“She was putting her arms in front her,” said Gunn. “It was as if he were there and she was patting him, and he was patting her.”

President Donald Trump has since issued an executive order that will allegedly put an end to the much-contested policy, which has taken about 2,700 children from their parents and continues to spark outrage in New York.

Federal authorities have refused to disclose the number of children sent here, how they are being treated, and when they’ll see their parents again, said Mayor Bill de Blasio at a press conference Monday.

"We have no indication of a reunification plan," the mayor said. "We have no accounting for how many kids are here or where they are."

That's why Gunn has not been deterred — despite a 15,000-mile distance and a slew of coding laws unique to New York City — from trying to find a home for her mural in Brooklyn.

It’s not just that she wants to show support for the families, she wants New York City to know something about her home state.

“There are so many people who care about this here in Texas,” said Gunn. “We’re making a concerted effort to say we’re completely aligned.”

So Gunn is asking anyone that can help — a willing homeowner with an empty wall or a fellow muralist who knows the rules — to reach out to her through her Facebook group, End Family Separation.

She’s also set up a website where her images can be downloaded and shared freely and in any form, because Gunn, the mother of a toddler and an eight-year-old, said she’ll do “anything she can” to help the mother who lost her 10-year-old.

“That’s the thing that reverberates in my soul,” said Gunn. “She didn’t have the capacity to understand … how they could take her son away from her.”

Photos courtesy of Kristen Gunn