Love My Neighbor®: Love My Neighbor at the Taste of Soul 2019 with Bank of America

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Love My Neighbor at the Taste of Soul 2019 with Bank of America

Our awesome Love My Neighbor Day “Scottsdale” art tent was front and center at the remarkable TasteOfSoul 2019 celebration this past Saturday thanks to my awesome partners from Bank of America Better Money Habits community volunteer team.

The Taste of Soul Marching band parade passing by our Love My Neighbor booth

350000 people attend this annual iconic LA celebration.

So many things were super special about it. Bank of America team of volunteers worked their hearts out from 5am setting it up and all throughout the LA heatwave day assisting kids with my art program and giving their parents free financial advice (of course regardless of where they bank) just as they always do in our Carson based program. It’s an amazing and real dedicated effort by a corporate player to truly make itself part of the community.

It was amazing as always to see how kids respond to an idea of thinking about their special neighbor after learning the stories of my special neighbor that I love to portray.

As an artist it is a special privilege to see how portraying diversity of my special Carson neighbors affects the viewers and participants of Love My Neighbor project.

Another amazing part was that the long marginalized and neglected epicly troubled “Scottsdale” neighborhood in Carson that was given up on so many times throughout its 5 decades of policy failure history was now representing The City of Carson right next to the booth of Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors at the event that carries particularly special meaning for “Scottsdale’s” long time African American residents. We did it all with art. Art is power.

It was also great to see my good friend Carson Councilmemeber Jawane Hilton stopping by the booth.

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"MY NEIGHBORS: Capturing the Soul of America's Diverse City" a series by Alexey Steele

There is a lot of adversity to overcome in today’s world. For me the answer to many difficult questions that we presented with daily is in the simple principle "Love My Neighbor".

Loving one’s neighbor is the foundational building block in the moral fiber of our society. I make my case with ongoing "My Neighbors Series" a collection of portrayals of the people around me in our City of Carson.

Carson is a great city, statistically one of the most diverse in the nation, a community most closely reflecting our World. Carson is great because of its people and the diversity is its most important asset.

I was honored to be awarded The City of Carson Cultural Arts Commission grant for 2015/16 and then again for 2016/17 to continue working on "My Neighbors Series" in collaboration with the City of Carson.

I was also honored to be awarded 2016 and, recently, 2017 additional grants by Wells Fargo Bank.

I am grateful for a long-term support and sponsorship for my cultural outreach programs by Rand Resources, LLC

It is a great privilege to collaborate and coordinate my Carson projects with 501c3 non-profit Artward Initiative.

Art can lift aspirations and give us all an important common ground in today’s divisive times. I believe that as we are continuously exposed to the stream of escalating negative news we need to focus on people in communities that inspire us in positive ways. I take inspiration for this series from my community that overcomes adversity.

Every street and every neighborhood has its own widely loved neighbors. What I want to capture through My Neighbors is the unique, iconic and deeply human qualities that make ordinary people the true bedrock of our communities and who give us something meaningful, true and solid to hold onto in times of trouble, which is especially important in neighborhoods like Scottsdale.

At the kind of times that we live in I want ART to help people fill what I call The Dignity Gap.

I believe that strengthening community bonds by getting to know and love one’s neighbors is an answer to many of the difficult issues facing society today. I hope that My Neighbors will encourage visitors to see their own neighbors from a new perspective and take the message of love for one’s neighbor back to their own streets.

I want to capture people in these painting who you cannot help but love. Through the Love My Neighbor public art project, I want to encourage other people to notice and embrace human beacons in their own neighborhoods.

These are the overlooked heroes of our society.

I also believe in the public nature of ART. In this I am following in the footsteps of my late father, an important Ukrainian artist Leonid Steele and this project is my homage to him.

Just as my father went into remote villages of Ukraine to capture the expression of real people and share it with them, I am following this family tradition to capture in paint the strength, the dignity and the grace at the rock bottom of our society, which is so often the bedrock of our community.

Alexey