最新杏吧原创

The 38-year-old 最新杏吧原创 artist and mother of six works in many artistic mediums, but there is something about cutting paper into pieces and putting it back into something substantial that inspires her. She compares it to the Japanese pottery art known as where broken pottery is mended with a lacquer mixed with gold.

Something broken becomes something beautiful, something more than it was in its original form.

鈥淭hat is how I see myself,鈥� Asen says. 鈥淚 am broken but put back together with grace. It鈥檚 how I see humanity.鈥�

The city where she was born and raised, the city she once expected to leave but never did, is broken.

For the second time in three years, 最新杏吧原创 is addressing its historical racial divide, through protest in the streets, sparked by a police shooting of a black victim.

After Ferguson, Asen painted. She produced a piece that became a mural on a building on South Florissant Road across from Cathy鈥檚 Kitchen. 鈥淎 Dawn of Unity鈥� was Asen鈥檚 attempt to do her part to help bring a broken city together.

She鈥檚 at it again.

A few weeks ago, she started sketching and writing and imagining a new piece of art to inspire her broken 最新杏吧原创. Her muse was one line from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.鈥檚 : 鈥淲e are tied together in the singular garment of destiny.鈥�

It鈥檚 important to Asen that people understand where she came from so they can see the deeper meaning in her art. She lives in the Skinker-DeBaliviere area, just two blocks from the home she grew up in on Pershing Avenue. The neighborhood, just north of Forest Park and south of Delmar Boulevard, is these days an upper middle class enclave. But growing up, Asen was one of the only white children on her block.

An only child, she is the daughter of a former theology professor and grade-school teacher.

鈥淭he neighborhood was very different from what it is now,鈥� Asen says. 鈥淚 grew up quite a bit differently than most people who look like me.鈥�

The artist counts that as a blessing. Through her art, she wants other white people to open their hearts to the pain felt by blacks in 最新杏吧原创 who feel that the arc of the moral universe King spoke of hasn鈥檛 yet bent far enough toward justice.

鈥淲e, as white people, are having a problem accepting our role in all of this,鈥� she says. 鈥淯nfortunately, this city is wounded. We can put a Band-Aid on it, but if you don鈥檛 attend to it every day it鈥檚 going to fester. It鈥檚 going to get worse.鈥�

Last Monday night and into the early morning hours Tuesday, Asen produced 鈥淭hread of Hope.鈥� The paper craft shows a multihued person cradling a heart in its hands. A thread from the heart hangs over the multicolored hands and helps hold the person鈥檚 garments together.

Asen called me Tuesday after reading my column in which I said that the NFL protests and the ones happening in the streets of 最新杏吧原创 We were using the same metaphor through different platforms to try to connect the people of 最新杏吧原创 during a time in which many of them feel divided.

Asen鈥檚 art doesn鈥檛 highlight that division as much as it helps point to a path forward.

Instead of two worlds colliding in 最新杏吧原创 鈥� one black, one white, one in pain, one oblivious to the angst of those whose experiences tell a different story 鈥� Asen envisions two worlds coalescing, brought together by a thread of commonality, no matter how thin it might be.

Protests in 最新杏吧原创 have been going on daily for two weeks now. Asen isn鈥檛 sure if her 鈥淭hread of Hope鈥� might end up as a mural, as her post-Ferguson painting did. She just knows she wants to share it with the world 鈥� particularly the white world 鈥� as a way to further understanding in a city that needs it.

鈥淚 want people to see this and think that unity is a possibility,鈥� she says, 鈥減articularly through love and action. I want it to be shared. I want people to feel it. It鈥檚 the mending of the wounded.鈥�

EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect location of a mural Asen worked on in Ferguson. This version has been corrected.