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It's my honor to introduce our next guest Paul Goodnight African cultural artist entrepreneur teacher traveler Paul Goodnight is co-owner of color circle art publishing It's a Boston based Fine Arts publishing and distribution business. He works in many media himself to document the universal themes of humanity He's best known for his bold colorful paintings populated by ordinary black men and women Americans Africans Haitians Brazilians simply living his paintings hanging in the Smithsonian Institute and have been exhibited and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He's perhaps best known for commissioned works depicting athletes for the 1996 Atlanta and 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Something to know as you listen to Paul goodnight. A harrowing tour of duty in Vietnam. Decades ago left him unable to speak through drawing a childhood hobby. He was able to process the horrors he had witnessed and regain the ability to talk art literally gave him a voice a voice that he shares with us now his work.

Has been featured on the sets of the cause of the show and Seinfeld E.R. The Fresh Prince of Belair paintings are collected by Desmond Tutu and Maya Angelo Samuel Jackson was Lisa. Angela Bassett Andre Agassi all the greats. He once taught art to inmates at Bridgewater State Prison and was commissioned to create an album cover for Kool and the gang. This man's work gets around he says to define myself as an African-American artist does not put limitations on me rather it's uplifting and pays tribute to the fact that my ancestors come from a rich cultural tradition. I try to use he says a collection of sensuous colors often revealing mysterious hidden forms. I would love to convey the ability to see between the figures where passion and humanity resonate. Please join me in welcoming Paul goodnight. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you very much.

And after speaking after hearing the two doctors speak I feel like with this father I just. Don't know what to say. All the accolades that was given to me for being an artist I humbly appreciate and one of the things that I really do have a passion for is some of the things that I think all of us have passion for as we listen to the doctors before me and what we would like to see come forth in this come out of this meeting. But then what you see up on the screen is one of my last. Paintings that was shown in Africa and it is the topic of my discussion. The. I'm not here really to talk about my own I'm actually here to talk about something a little deeper than that happened to me from a trip that I did when I came back from Africa in Mozambique.

The piece was a memorial. For the Middle Passage or the slave trade something that we haven't gotten in this country and something that's dearly need in you and I ask myself why memorial. While memorial is why it is needed to fight the insane human the humanities. And the world. By using the most powerful instrument in this struggle. The memory of earlier horrors. And what is that all about. That's how. I was. Coached by a few people namely Barry gator and told me let's talk about what the middle passage is all about. Is it the middle passage. This particular design more of the zine is to celebrate to explore.

To create a bias of empathy. With and to provide a window on the meeting of the Middle Passage. Middle Passage is that period of time over 400 years ago when Africans left the continent of Africa and when they arrived on these shores and the Americas from the these shores in the Americans and the Caribbean's all along the way upward to two thirds never arrived here. Some committed suicide. Some died from disease from the horrible conditions under which people were forced to live. And those who did arrive here. There was a deep hope a faith that gave them the purpose to make families here and to try to prevail against odds that were stacked against them. I want to start by. Saying how I I got this mission I was in

Mozambique and I went to Mozambique with a group of people. Who were there to aid the people in Mozambique specifically in the boot to the capital. And each one came because there was a civil war that was going on there and it was a war torn country. So I went with doctors and lawyers and educators and people. Agricultural people and so forth and so on. And I was there as a cultural attache and we were to meet with the president there. And. Make a presentations of how we would support this particular country. All of them had incredible. Presentations mine was as we were going across the seas. I was flying cross seas mind was to have a heart exchange. But after I heard their presentations I said it's too minor. So

when I was asked to come up and asked and present my my presentation I told them that. While I had time to think and I asked them I said How come there isn't a memorial to the slave passengers here and immediately the President Chissano said well why isn't there a memorial or a monument to the. To the slave passage. And the United States and it wasn't ready for that answer. And so I immediately said well we're working on it. And everybody was quiet. And if you are my god I got myself into this I'm really well. Well how far have you got and I said well we've gotten pretty far on this. And I kept growing bigger and bigger and bigger and I kept getting more and more nervous hoping they would ask me no technical questions about this.

But what happened was is that when I can't got back on the plane and decided that I wanted to go and really make this a true happening I talked with John Biggers John Biggers is my mentor is he is arguably one of the biggest storytellers of our ancestral past and this country. And I told John Biggers about what has happened to me he lived in Africa for probably about two years. And he said he wanted to do this for years but he just wasn't a writer it just wasn't the right time. And I said well and I'm stuck here. So he keeps mapped it out. He made it very easy for me to present this to a group of people and see how far we would go with this. So I what I did was record his conversation was there was a three hour conversation we

kind of condensed into a short period of time. But he was very precise on what it would look like and how good it was to be built. I presented it to Barry and a group of other artists and architectures and planners and market and environmental planners and so forth and so on and they then donned still as Don who has an architectural firm here in Boston got very excited overly animated and said that he wanted to be a part of this. And then this went on within two weeks to design the architect to really design a piece for the Middle Passage and which will see a little later the. And so I asked him the question how are we going to put this together and he said listen this is a challenge for me something that I wanted to do for a long time. I'm going to I'm going to read his words because this is the reason why

monuments memorials line altars and things like that are are used in this country in order that we can have that sacred ground where we can go and get educated and learn. And learn about the treasures of the people who made sacrifices for us. His words the challenge the art of architectural faces a unique challenge. One of the Great or one far greater than the challenge of ordinary and human environments such as workplace homeplace and places of play. On such occasions the art and science of architecture must translate and give physical form. Two great ideas and events for great human input import such as the birth of the nation i.e. the Statue of Liberty concepts of justice the worship of

deities the revolved townie against terribly the recognition of war heroes and the Holocaust the horrors of the Holocaust. The Middle Passage is such an event. It Zenith is cruel and in human history. Of of Commerce of Africans and African-American slave trade. A history of moral yet to be found in the vast array of monuments and murals. Yet to be found in the vast array of monuments celebrating the American experiment. This work is about finding the right architecture and the right architect to form the moat and to form. An emotion that physical and psychological response to their very

evocative human event. The Middle Passage is that event that brought me here today. One of the things that I would like to say before I show the piece is that the graveyards all over this place is really in response to a lot of people who died to help build this country. I wanted to have one of the biggest graveyards in the history of the world to have a headstone that headstone would be the memorial. One here. In the United States and one in Africa and if possible one and Brazil and some of the other places where the slave trade was prevalent. Can. We show the monument and then I can talk a little bit about it afterwards. How do I queue it

or is it up or do I do something here. Experience really says something important about the experience of the little passengers. Please the relationship. In order to confirm what this building is really full of without actually experiencing it you need to simulate the experience and really the only way to do it as well. There are two ways to do it either you can build a very elaborate physical model and then somehow move a movie camera or a video camera through the physical model or you can do what we did which is build a virtual model a digital model and then use animation techniques to create experience. Little passage refers to the period of time between when slaves were captured and boarded on the slaveholders bound for the Americas. And when people actually arrive here you might say it was the journey on the sea.

Concept. Of a memorial and its physical manifestation that often texture or old structure of it is remarkable. The architectural structure replicates key aspects of the Middle Passage experience. It starts with a very elemental shape. A cube. Turned on its corner. Is that too. Rises and is balanced. On the pyramid that form that we associate so much with and should Egypt an ancient new Libya and which we see as part of the first mound of architectural contributions made by people of the historic black world. The pyramid itself and the body of order and that body of water symbolically represents the ocean. There

is a passage way a landing. I guess you could say in a certain sense a boardwalk. Which process from the peninsula of the actual land to the mainland you would say to the space inside the Hume above the pyramid. And that space becomes symbolically the new world of the Americas and that boardwalk becomes a physical connection representing the power of the Middle Passage. And through the small press at the top you experience the passing of the sun. As a light. That primordial energy source which confuses all things with the power to be and which in its own movement traces itself over the course of the day across this

interior of quilts. Recalling our own past. The. Africans who were on those ships lost hope. And committed suicide. Many slew their own children rather than see them go into an experience that they didn't know and couldn't assess. Many people died from illness and other afflictions brought about by the extreme overcrowding the absence of

any tolerable hygienic standard and the often cruel treatment that attended that period of transport past there was a long time and quite small boats and all of that together added up to the sort of physical side of the tragedy. The kind of project that is makes it very very suitable for doing computer animation. As you know from having worked on to explain that project plans and sections of the traditional kind. I'm not going to tell most people they're enough so they're really doing computer animation as a. Terrific way to explain it. Firstly the monument is a very powerful statement and I think when the monument is built it's going to do a great deal to create awareness of the experience of the Middle Passages and to maintain those that time a public awareness of that is very analogous I think to the effect that the Holocaust Museum has had in Washington for

example which is that I think it's a very moving building and it's done a great deal to. Sort of maintain the memory of the Holocaust already since the census being open. I think the middle passage of this monument will have a very closely and I would just kind of a fit. That was that virtual animation was done in MIT by two students by the name of Larry sass and Greg Anderson. And I thought they for what the money that they we had the best they could do. We wanted to do more. The Don is a magician as well as an art and architectural design master. He what it didn't show in that particular piece was that the. The pyramid that that housed the that sphere that's on the top there

had an agitator in it and it would go into the water would cascade down these three stairways and it would go into the water and the water would be agitated when the light came through it at the top. And we'd also have light coming out of that sphere and that that. Agitation would hit up against the light which would hit up against the murals in the in the centerpiece of the of the monument. And they would move. So there was this natural quality of of. Magic that created movement in the murals. And as you walk across this path you would actually feel things there would be things you would hear sounds of change and you would hear the water the e the agitation would be amplified so you would hear that when you walked into that you that chilled then became two different spheres. It was incredible new used all four elements just to be

provocative in when you walked out the other side. There would be a calmness there because you have to bring people down. There would be a calmness to be floral arrangements and flowers and gardens and trees someplace to contemplate some place to think some place to relax to realize what you had just gone through. It's the same way that any memorial should be should be there for any real passage of time that meant something to the building of this country. And then I asked myself why Boston. Why should we have Boston because Boston has historically been. Has. Has many ties to the Middle Passage and it has many ties for the emancipation of the slaves. One is because the first person who died in the revolution

was a black man who was still a slave his name was Crispus Attucks and he died because he feels the colony had gotten his freedom from the British that he would also get his freedom from slavery. And I think it's a tribute to him. Doctors Judge Samuel Saul realized that he the slave meant of Negroes. It was a bad thing his words quote The negro enslavement will cost us more than it will ever then it will cost us more than we will ever make. When it finished it was he was one of the believers that he believed in that the slave movement was a bad thing. And do these Egil the effects of it. We would definitely find out. And years to come of course civil war in part was about. This leaves three states

and slave states and of course in Maine. Brothers fighting brothers over that kind of thing. Phillis Wheatley one of the first people who was published here during the seventeen hundreds was was in Boston was. They were not concerned about not educating black folk but they were concerned about educating but still maintain slavery here. Samuel Adams he was one of the ones that stopped wanted to stop in 1733 and wanted to stop the transport of slaves here. The first black regiment that was a revolutionary regiment was called bucks of America was a stab is here to fight the British of course the British also shrewd slaves. But that was under the guidance of George Middleton and it was under the support of our dear friend John Hancock the African meeting house which is the oldest. The church and in Boston it's up on Joyce Street

was one of the places they use constantly and for the abolishment of slavery they had great art tours like Frederick Douglass and they had a small group of white folks who. What. Who created the center. Of the abolishment. The slate and the abolishment movement. And he published a paper here was called the Liberator I have one here I have the Liberator here. And it was all about the abolishment of slavery and what slavery did and what it didn't do and why it wasn't good. He had a group of people and and and also put supported a fellow by the name of David Walker and who made a pamphlet Walker peals and that pamphlet he passed throughout the south and it also

he died in the process. But it also was very very effective and letting slaves and slave owners know exactly why. Slavery should not be a continual thing. Maurice Do it was one of the first women black women who spoke up against slaves at the African to me meeting house and this and we can go on and on and on and on the regiment the first black regiment that was formulated here the fifty fourth regiment to fight in the civil war. Was. Led by Robert Poole shore and they fought. And admirably and throughout the south. And there are many more passes but 20 minutes you can't talk about it all. The last thing that I would like to say is that I didn't understand the impact of monuments or murals or. Memorials or shrines or all sorts of any kind. But when I because when I came back from Vietnam I didn't

understand why the we needed those. I did recognize that there was a moral that was being erected in Washington and I wanted to go down and see it because it didn't mean anything was abstract. I went down there and all of a sudden I got it. I looked in that monument that mural that memorial. And I saw our the reflection of my face. And right as I step back and focus on the names there there was one name his name was LOPEZ It was a person who was killed while I was in Vietnam. It wasn't the same Lopez but it dredged up all of the memories of who he was and who he was to me was a good friend of mine. He was from Puerto Rico and he lives in. And he lived and fought in Vietnam Nobili. His wife used to send me letters when he send him letters and we vowed that we would never be apart and of course he passed

tears welled up in myself I didn't cry but I understood the impact of that Mora because then I started looking at all the names to the right and the left. And that made. Made a major major effect on me that I would do something different with my life because of what I saw out there. I'm going to lead but my mama used to tell me oh my grandmother used to tell me he said there's three kinds of people. And he says there are people who do make things happen. There are also people who watch things happen and then there are also people who say What the hell is happening. I want to be a part of the group that makes things happen and need your support if you could help me on this. We would see that memorial I think it will be one of the staples of Boston Massachusetts and a great piece of land. Thank you very much. Now to a. Thank you.

All good night. Artist. Thank you very much.