HOW WAS SCHOOL TODAY?
For Freedoms Artist Billboard Campaign

This billboard is LIVE for one month on I-95, in the heart of Miami's rush hour commute. As part of For Freedoms 50 State Initiative, the "largest creative collaboration in the history of the United States,"I hope to raise funds to run it for two months, in an effort to stimulate dialogue and remind people that the extreme gun violence we now see daily in America cannot become our new normal. This nationwide billboard and social media campaign features artist-produced billboards in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico ... going up across the country this fall in advance of the midterm elections.

Please DONATE & SHARE! Let's help voters find the candidates who support reasonable gun safety policy to make America a less militant & violent place. Photo credit @gavindmckenzie.

I have two young sons, smart, silly, inquisitive beings that I consider my greatest creations. My oldest was about to enter first grade on the day twenty six-year-olds were massacred in their first grade chairs at Sandy Hook. I still can’t process a man walking up and down those little aisles shooting each child in the face with an AR-15. How did we get here? Like so many, I believed this would be a turning point for our country. Shockingly, gun violence has only gotten worse since, a reflection of our country’s greater devolution from noble collective principles to fear-based and selfish priorities. 

My For Freedoms campaign builds on my ongoing series of site-specific and video installations aimed at connecting all citizens, regardless of politics, in our collective love for our children and their safety. I believe that, in this fundamental, love-based connection, we can unite to bring society back to a less militant and violent place.

“Stuart Sheldon created one of the billboards, an American flag posing spiralized questions about freedom. To him, it’s about urging people “at a granular level” to start over, with less fear and more optimism.” Los Angeles Times. Wynwood mural collaboration with For Freedoms, 2016

Coming To America, Acrylic, antique international stamps, inkjet prints, denim on canvas, 55×165″ 2017 -  Read the backstory of this commission work. 

We're All Pink Inside, Latex paint, inkjet original poetry on canvas, 70x206" 2017. Front page of The New Tropic - "Back by popular demand for Art Basel 2017, Miami artist Stuart Sheldon brings you LUSH and assembles ten renowned local and international artists. They will create their own version of utopia in an industrial Little River warehouse. Inspired by the raw mystery of Florida’s Everglades, each artist invokes their own distinct sense of “paradise found” as an antidote to the troubling world beyond."