Earth Month 2021 Virtual Art Gallery

Welcome. This year, Good Shepherd Services observed Earth Day for the entire month of April in honor of our new Living Land Acknowledgement.

From April 1^st to April 30^th, the Mission and Culture department invited all staff and program participants to submit their artwork to GSS’ Earth Month 2021 Virtual Art Gallery. This year’s theme is: “Where We Are: A community commitment to and celebration of our Earth.”  The Mission and Culture department calls for artists to reflect on the sentiments in the gallery description combined with attention to your local surroundings, to New York City, to the country as a whole, and/or our entire planet. We invite all artists to use the theme, the description, and the GSS Land Acknowledgement as inspiration to create something original for GSS’ Earth Month 2021 Virtual Art Gallery.

 

Good Shepherd Services NYC Living Land Acknowledgment

We live on the original homeland of the Lenape, Lenapehoking. Lenapehoking includes today the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Due to colonization, the Lenape people continue today as a diaspora including two Federally recognized nations in Oklahoma, one in Wisconsin, and two in Ontario, Canada.

We recognize that honoring and respecting Mother Earth (Haki) is central to Lenape culture. ​​

Indigenous peoples continue to protect and honor all wisdom past, present, and future – and will always do so. Indigenous peoples have and continue to experience genocide, theft of their ancestral lands, and other atrocities connected to colonization. It is necessary to honor these beginnings, history, and realities. It is essential to honor the ongoing legacies Indigenous cultures nurture within our communities and the lands that we gather, live, learn and work on. It is necessary to acknowledge that Indigenous communities are still here and continue to act against harm and work for the collective healing and sustainability of humanity and the Earth.

 

Artists / Poets

Shari Bailey

Dani DeLade

 

Poetry

Dear Mother Earth by Jamil Thomas

A moment of silence, or a moment of praise

Heavenly earth,

Nursing the people, and their foolish ways

Peacefully hearing your waves,

On sea shores,

Your bodies an adventure,

So, detour, to see more

To land’s that man has ravished

Your Sun gives me strength

Sun rays for days

Fuel to man’s savage

The carrots to a rabbit

Captain Planet told you to manage her pain

Lost words of a fanatic in vain

Mother earth told you humans to be more

Traveling continents,

Building a larger repour

With those that came before me

The War Stories,

Were gory

Destruction of you

Feuds fueled by corruption

You lashed out in reluctance

Human’s destroying your substance

But Mother Gaia’s a rider

A provider to all

United we stand

Divided we fall…….LETS PROTECT MOTHER AT ALL COST!

 

The Gallery

“Mother Earth” by Shari Bailey

 

 “Putting the Pieces Together” by Dani DeLade

 

[Untitled] by John-Pierre DoO’Santos

 

[Untitled] by Erin (Ashanti) Martinez

 

[Untitled] by Marissa Medley

 

[Untitled] by Vetha Valentine