Honor the Essential Workers – 2-10-2021- Artist Spar Street visits with Jason Schwartz about his Sculpture, found at https://Honortheessential.com, a statue to honor front line workers , who have been on the front lines as the world experiences COVID-19 virus pandemic.
Summary & Transcript
In this heartfelt and insightful interview, Jason Schwartz hosts artist and sculptor Spar Street to discuss Spar’s latest project: a monumental sculpture dedicated to honoring essential workers, particularly those who have risked their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Spar shares personal experiences, including the tragic loss of a close friend to COVID-19, which profoundly shifted his perspective on the pandemic and the crucial role essential workers play in sustaining society. The conversation delves into the symbolism of his stainless-steel sculpture, which reflects the viewer’s image to emphasize interconnectedness and mutual dependence between service workers and the public. Spar explains the monument’s design, intended to immortalize essential workers’ names in granite, as a lasting tribute to their sacrifice and dedication. The discussion also touches on the societal neglect and disrespect many essential workers face despite their heroic efforts. Spar hopes to see these sculptures installed in prominent public locations such as hospitals, grocery stores, and airports, with support from corporations and local governments. The interview concludes with a virtual tour of Spar’s home and art studio, where he showcases his broader artistic work, reinforcing the theme of human connection, respect, and gratitude.
Highlights
- [04:22] Spar shares the emotional impact of losing a close friend to COVID-19, marking a turning point in his understanding of the pandemic’s seriousness.
- [07:13] Spar calls essential workers “the heroes of our time” for risking their lives to keep society functioning amid the pandemic.
- [10:27] Introduction of Spar’s stainless steel monument designed to honor essential workers by reflecting their image and inscribing their names in granite.
- [15:22] Spar highlights Maui’s local context and the critical dependence on essential workers for survival and community well-being.
- [19:38] Spar discusses efforts to place the monument in public spaces, including hospitals and grocery stores, to raise awareness and respect.
- [23:12] Spar emphasizes that the monument is a durable, lasting tribute, intended to stand for thousands of years as a symbol of honor.
- [34:38] ❤️ Spar’s final message urges viewers to express gratitude and respect for essential workers, acknowledging their vulnerability and courage.
Key Insights
- [04:22] Personal Loss as Catalyst for Social Awareness: The death of Spar’s friend from COVID-19 transformed the abstract concept of the pandemic into a deeply personal reality. This shift underscores how personal experiences can heighten awareness and motivate social action, particularly in recognizing the sacrifices of essential workers.
- [07:13] Essential Workers as Modern-Day Heroes: Spar elevates essential workers to heroic status, highlighting the paradox in which society demands their continued labor despite high health risks and often fails to appropriately honor or protect them. This insight calls for a cultural reevaluation of how we value labor that sustains daily life.
- [10:27] Art as a Medium for Social Connection and Recognition: The sculpture’s polished stainless-steel surface that reflects viewers’ images symbolizes interconnectedness, reinforcing that essential workers and consumers are intrinsically linked. This innovative use of reflective art serves as a powerful metaphor for empathy and mutual dependence.
- [15:22] Local Context Amplifies Universal Themes: Spar contextualizes the monument within Maui’s unique social and ecological environment, illustrating how essential workers’ importance transcends global pandemics and is critical for sustaining island communities with limited natural resources.
- [19:38] Institutional Support is Key for Legacy Building: Spar’s outreach to mayors, governors, and corporations emphasizes the necessity of institutional backing to embed respect for essential workers into public consciousness through permanent monuments, not just temporary gestures like banners.
- [23:12] Durability Reflects the Monument’s Meaning: The choice of materials—polished stainless steel and granite—ensures the monument’s longevity, symbolizing the enduring gratitude owed to essential workers. This approach contrasts sharply with ephemeral acknowledgments, aiming to create a permanent place of honor.
- [34:38] ❤️ Gratitude as a Social and Emotional Practice: Spar’s closing message stresses the importance of vulnerability, courage, and gratitude in human relationships, especially toward those who serve society often without recognition. This insight calls for a cultural shift toward honoring essential workers as foundational to community resilience and well-being.
The interview is a compelling blend of personal narrative, artistic vision, and social commentary that elevates the role of essential workers in the collective consciousness. It powerfully advocates for lasting recognition and respect through the universal language of art and human connection.
Transcript
00:00
[Music] aloha everyone my name is jason schwartz i’m your host here at the neutral zone mauineutralzone.com we’re on kaku 88.5 fm the voice of maui we’re also seen on akaku maui community media and on youtube and at mauineutralzone.com you see all our shows and we got a lot to talk about but today we have a guest a very special guest someone i’ve known for a long while i haven’t seen him in a while but the last i remember him he was showing his extraordinary art to uh president of a company that um
00:53
i was working at this is good anyway spar street is here with us i say good to see you my friend aloha aloha jason good to see you too you have a beautiful piece of art behind you you’re out in haiku there are you haiku maui yeah yeah uh there’s so much majesty here on maui and um this is the slice i’m uh i’m enjoying today so that’s a beautiful slice i’ve been living in haiku on and off since 1981. and um if i know you from better than a deck i guess it’s almost a decade and a half
01:37
ago that we were doing things together and that’s amazing to me all this time spar i describe you as an artist but you’re obviously more than that you’re an artist and a sculptor what have you been doing all these years besides more of the same well that’s a that’s a loaded question jason because on purpose you know there’s a lot there’s a lot that goes on in a lifetime as you know i’ve i’ve been raising raising my daughter who’s now 18. uh that’s been a lot i’ve been through
02:15
uh in the last year and a bit i’ve been through a separation of a 19 year marriage so you’ve been through all kinds of stuff but when i think of you as an artist i remember you had very large wall pieces but you also dealt in other media and i was always very when i thought of you your art brought out a larger than life feeling in me and made me think and feel and you were very much and the fact that you were clearly sharing and selling your art to very significant collectors and people
02:59
that you know obviously had a lot of money you’re in a different class than any artist a couple of people i knew here on maui doing it but you’re in a different league and talking at a place so i’m thinking over these last decades you now are having art that flies or somehow interact but i i’m really kind of jesting but also kind of pointing to to how i found you this time you this we’re in covert times now you know and i’m thinking of all these years and i think honor the essential
03:36
i thought that oh maybe let me see what that is and when i went there and i saw this is about art but it is something greater than that so that’s what i was kind of alluding to that your um your public statements are more than art they’re uh society moving and respecting and i gave your opening speech my opening speech for you um thanks jason uh well in march of last year um a dear friend of mine who i used to ski with every single weekend for a good portion of 20 years uh he caught covid and and he died
04:22
seven days later and uh it was the first oh i forgot to turn that off [Music] and that was the first time that i considered covet 19 to be something that had any possible impact on me other than uh the financial impact that i was pretty certain it was going to have because all the galleries were were closed i’m in 14 galleries around the world and all of them closed and when my friend dennis caught it and then died i was i was shocked and horrified and um it was the first time that i realized
05:16
that kovit was more than something that was on tv it was it was hurting people like me who are losing friends and family and um and at that point there was they were saying like a thousand to three thousand people a day were dying of it and um shortly after hearing that my my friend had passed away um i was in mana foods and i was checking in checking out and the guy said um jokingly to me um i’m an essential worker i uh i’m immune to the virus and i was like you know i get that you’re joking
05:59
but you know a friend of mine just died of it and two days later i’m in petco and i’m checking out and i’m telling the the the woman there who was serving me um i’m thanking her for showing up to work when you know they’re telling us you can catch this thing and you can you can die and if you catch it you can give it to other people that you love and they could die um so we don’t want you to go around to anybody we don’t want you to touch anything we don’t want you to breathe
06:34
air near anybody because you can catch this thing oh but if you’re an essential worker we want you to go touch stuff all day long we want you to breathe around people all day long and essentially put yourself in the highest risk frontline situation and you know risk everything in order so so that i can make sure i have dog food for my dog and i can get my next meal all because these essential workers are are choosing to go to work in spite of the risks um and there are some people are out there
07:13
saying hey the risks aren’t that bad but you know whether they are real or imagined um the media was saying people are dying by the thousands every day and you could too and they were still going to work and to me they’re the they’re the heroes of our time because if essential workers didn’t go to to work we wouldn’t have food we wouldn’t have gas we wouldn’t have electricity we wouldn’t have roads um i mean it would it would be mayhem in a matter of minutes if they all quit
07:51
at the same time in the same day we wouldn’t have mail we wouldn’t have packages we wouldn’t have amazon.com you know everything would fall away if the essential workers said you know the risks are too much i’m not going to go to work so they went to work for us in my opinion and that was a heroic choice and i’ve subsequently found out that from the hundreds of workers that i’ve spoken with most of them feel completely and totally unacknowledged for the level of commitment they’ve made
08:28
and um and unappreciated for the level of commitment and it gets worse they were even they’ve even been like at costco they’ve driven they’ve driven and charged their vehicles at the attendance because the attendant asked them to wear a mask and you know the attendants are just doing their job like they’re they’re not you know they’ve got to ask people to wear masks and they’re trying to protect everybody and they deserve better and there’s been a lot of people um
09:12
when i spoke to the manager of costco two weeks ago she said in in one week they’ve had five people uh charge their employees with vehicles just for asking them to wear masks i’ve and and that’s that’s just that week you know that doesn’t include all the people who’ve been insulted and and told you know how wrong it is and shown how angry are they are that they have to line up to get inside stores or you know it just goes on and on the the level of disrespect and dishonor
09:53
that’s going on for essential workers the people that make it so you can drink that coffee you you just drank you know that coffee would not exist in your cab if it wasn’t for the person who ran the ships and the the person who farmed the coffee the person who ground the coffee the person who roasted the coffee i mean there’s so many people that make it so we can live and i think that they deserve honor and respect and they’re not getting it for the most part and so i designed i
10:27
designed a sculpture and a monument to honor these people as the heroes of our time and i think they’re the heroes of all time because there’s there’s never been a day that that coffee or drinking um didn’t have an essential worker that made it possible for you to drink it or a whole bunch of them actually oh yeah so you know i really i really think that that they deserve to be traded with the highest level of respect and especially now when they’re risking their lives in order to show up for us so
11:03
that’s why i made uh made this sculpture would you like you would like to show a picture of it yeah let’s do that i was going to let’s do it right now i’m going to uh bring up my picture first i think let’s see where i’m at can you see that i can there’s you standing in a beautiful spot looks like wailea to me between the two hotels yeah that’s exactly where that is maui yeah and this is you know there’s every single essential worker that has been working in the county to keep things ahead going
11:47
ahead there’s been i don’t know if you’re aware of it but there’s been a huge um unemployment problem here in in maui there’s been so many people that haven’t had enough money for food and there’s been a massive number of public workers that have been helping with unemployment and with so many other things to make sure that we all survive through this and and they’re going to work in spite of the fact that they’re they’re risking their own health in order to provide for us
12:23
that’s in front of whole foods walmart i really wanted to put put this in front of every single place that um that we have essential workers so that we raise the consciousness of well of how heroic these people have been and how generous they’ve been with their with their lives in order to support us but also to help turn around the the people who aren’t um caring for and respecting and acknowledging the the uh the workers in the various places i mean the there you’re looking at the capitol
13:05
building i mean essential workers one of them was killed and at the airport i mean the airport one of the highest risk places i’d love to see the airport all the employees they’re honored so wherever it’s very effective to have the background moving because it it communicates that this is really something that could be in front of many places and people can honor their people that’s a beautiful statue yeah you call i guess yeah well i don’t know the difference what’s the
13:48
difference between a statue and a monument i don’t know dedication well monument is it is usually a dead has a dedication to it and it it’s intended to be a thing of honor and respect a statue can be a monument but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is yeah well you know when i look at that i think so the website is honorthecentral.com so wow um what is it made of bronze or is it something else it’s it’s polished stainless steel um so it’s uh the intention there was that every
14:39
single person who um walks up and sees the sculpture actually feels included in it because their own image is reflected off the mirror-like surface and so i really wanted not only to have the the essential workers see themselves when they walked up to the sculpture but i wanted the the customers or we the buying public to walk up and see how we are intrinsically connected to every single person that is serving us when we walk into the store our very lives depend on it in you know when if we look at
15:22
especially food services you know there’s a lot of people that have told me oh you know i i’m a i’m a great hunter i’m a great forager i could last here on maui if if all the essential workers quit i was going yeah but you’re gonna you’re gonna be competing with a hundred and thousand 130 000 other people for the coconut and the pig and the deer you know there’s what they say 10 or 12 000 deer on the island and 10 or 12 000 pig that live on the island how long is that
15:55
going to last for 130 000 people you know there’s there’s a bunch of fish that are out there but we already know what overfishing has done for for our island you know the the you’re expressing the the obvious the clear picture is that uh we have to be responsible to each other and honor each other and recognize just how important and valuable each of us are even those that aren’t declared essential but for sure the people that have been there come you know whatever the storm is they’re there that is an
16:37
extraordinary gift to us and you very eloquently talk and and those people you know they some of them provide food some of them provide gas some of the provide products um but then there’s the people who provide emotional and spiritual support you know that that make us i’ll speak for myself that make me uh a better human being they make it so that i can make it through the challenges that i face in my life and those people are as essential to my well-being if not more essential to my well-being
17:19
than even food and and water um because you know that i i get to know the beautiful beauty of friendship and i i guess the the heart within the heart um is a way of acknowledging that you know we’re really all held in in the hearts of other people every moment of our lives and when we were in our mom’s bellies you know we had an umbilical cord that that fed us and nourished us but as um we as we get older the uh you know and we come out the umbilical cord gets severed but a new invisible
18:08
umbilical cord exists and that is uh equally is important to our survival and that is the essential workers and the essential people in our lives they’re the ones that that continue to feed us after after we’ve left the womb so for your imminence power when i’m looking at and hearing you speak um you really put put your words they translate in the peace aspire beautifully thank you i like that it’s one one continuous line it’s two it’s two hearts but really it’s it’s made up of one continuous line to
18:52
to um to help us recognize that we’re all connected you know that that i’m holding my daughter’s heart in my heart um and when i walk into walmart or costco or whole foods or walk into a hospital it’s the heart of another human being that’s holding my heart and and making it so that it continues to beat and i continue to live so i i think it’s an important message and i’d really i’d really love the support of major corporations and mayors we’ve got um we’ve sent this proposal out to
19:38
every single governor uh in the u.s and you know we’d like to see it in cities and communities like maui just as a uh an ongoing monument ongoing reminder of how much we are cared for and how we depend on those that care for us and how valuable they are so and this uh this piece is made with the highest quality stainless steel you can get it it will last for thousands of years the oldest sculpture known to man is about three to seven hundred thousand years old and uh the base is solid granite um
20:28
fully capable of lasting hundreds of thousands of a year so this is a a monument that will that my intention is to write the names of the essential workers um in in the various stores in that stone so that their names are written in stone the way the heroes of so many of our past endeavors are so so that they know that that they’re important and that they’re valued and that they’re cared for and that their contribution was significant enough that we would we would recognize them for
21:07
their contribution that’s a beautiful um thing that i wasn’t even thinking about when looking at your feet that the foundation is the essential workers with their names scribed right into the granite that’s beautiful um i don’t know if this is a forum where we should discuss price how do how do these things get actualized people would contact you uh well uh we’ve been reaching out uh we’re in a conversation with the the mayor of maui uh we’re hoping that one of the first ones
21:49
will go here that uh i’d like to have one in front of mana foods because it was modern foods that kind of woke up this whole idea when the the cashier said i’m an essential worker i’m immune to the virus um so i would love to see one in front of those places that there we have two hospital three hospitals if depending on what whether you include kaiser but everybody whose lives are sustained there with the services that our hospitals provide i think that that they are you know if you’re working at costco you’re on
22:32
the front line if you’re working at walmart you’re working to find if you’re working in a hospital where you know for sure is living you’re working on the front line and um i think that they need to be recognized in a in a more permanent way there there’s if you go by the hospital now you see that there’s there’s some uh banners that are put out in front of the hospital but the banners are very temporary and in my opinion a cheap way to acknowledge these people who are not doing a superficial
23:12
uh commitment to our community so i would like something substantial to to be there to honor them for decades to come oh and your question your question was work work what what does it take i i have several people found foundries and fabrication places that um that have helped me make the first few um and i have access to make a lot more um anybody who wants to do this i’m not doing this to make a lot of money i’m i’m not trying to make i’m just trying to make ends meet because i think this
23:54
is so valuable that like i just want to see it move forward so if they want to con contact um go to honorthecentral.com and there’s a contact phone number there um they can there’s a facebook site that is honor the essential and there’s a contact there um you know i’ve got a team of people who share my passion for seeing this move forward so uh if if you um if you want to honor your employees or just honor somebody that you care about dearly and you want to have one of these sculptures in front of your business or
24:33
in front of your home please contact us and i’ve sold sculptures for as much as a million dollars and um these i’m selling uh not and i’m not even trying to sell them i’m just trying to break even um in the they started about 15 000 and if you want us uh if you want a 20 foot one i can do that for a couple hundred thousand so wow 20 foot high so you’re talking yeah yeah i mean the face to give you an example um the [Music] uh there’s a sculpture in chicago that’s a little over 20 feet high that
25:28
cost 26 million so to do this for i’m having it manufactured at a at a place that can do it for significantly less than it would cost my interest again is to honor essential workers i’m not trying to make money i’m just trying to make um make this a substantial part of the legacy that i leave and anybody else who wants to leave a legacy of honor and respect i think that our our children deserve to grow into a world where honor and respect is is fundamental and foundational in their experience so i think that this
26:13
would be an enormous contribution to that so and so do i i’m very very uh big fan and i look forward to seeing it in person i i really are 20 foot one that really would be spectacular yeah yeah well the the one that i showed in front of the let me see if i can share a screen with you and i’ll show you what it might look like in front of the capitol building all right um this this would this would be what a 20-foot one looks like oh i want to see if i have to no you’re good you’re going to share it
26:55
it’ll just pop i think it should no now you’re sharing your your screen so you need to um your screen oh you’ve turned you’ve turned you’ve turned it off so i can’t share but if you turn it back on i can share new share is that it must be new share you there so yeah i’m here uh you need to make it so that i can you have to when i hit stare is that same blocking thing yeah you’re blocking it yeah so you need to go go to go to participants and then we found that i think it was
27:50
security we said this chance is very dirty because there it is okay well i mean if people are watching this right now they can go they can go take a look at it but like when i see there that you’re what maybe six three something like that six four i’m i’m i’m six six that’s right that one with the with the base would be about eight or nine feet right pretty substantial but even bigger i can just well imagine be very formal are any lights have you tried it with lights to focus on it for evening
28:33
well you know that that’s interesting that you would say that i once we get this established i could see projecting this image on the side of buildings as a way of reminding people to honor the people that are taking care of us i i’ve worked with the number one [Music] or the oldest jewelry company america black star frost we’ve come up with jewelry to honor essential workers you know there’s t-shirts hats you know there’s so many ways we could use this symbol to be a glue a universal symbol of
29:18
of respect for the people that are caring for us so um projecting it onto the sides of buildings and things like that is definitely something that that we’ve thought about doing i always find it interesting when i see an image like a heart and realize we all know heart but so many people have so many different ways of showing that same heart and i’ve seen you show a heart in in so many ways in all your work the heart always shines through but this one is really especially it has tremendous power just looking at
29:55
it then for what it state what it stands for is so powerful thank you so much jason you’re most welcome you know um while we’re there in the house of spar street i almost feel like it would be crazy if we didn’t do a tour why don’t we make sure we can get these cameras working and walk around a little would you like that sure let me see if i can get this to do its thing here well it i i can just pick up my computer and i’ll walk around okay okay do that and i’ll put one so as long as you’ve got it focused or
30:41
pinned on on my camera we do do you have it pinned on yeah okay well this is the this is the my my view my inspiration every day the little touch where there’s whales and dolphins that are there on a daily basis um i set up here that’s my dog kaimana this sculpture is a sculpture called exalted giving for the people in my life that have proven that they are interested in my well-being and they are consistently showing that they care about me because they see my soul not because they want something um
31:30
then there’s uh a kitchen this is one of my waves um as you may or may not know my waves have been really popular and a lot of different circles this is uh heading into my room is that on x metal or is that on uh not no this is that’s a that’s that’s a painting on lemon linen it’s a gamble everything for love half-heartedness does not reach into majesty that’s a roomy quote from one of my favorite roomie poems and uh turn the lights on here um this is you said larger than life paintings i
32:22
mean this this one here is seven by fourteen feet it’s called bathing in grace and uh just i could give you names of everyone but oh yeah i’m just having a fun time just trying to stay and not get dizzy is good there we go okay beautiful and the color is very very dramatic no wonder you could see all kinds of things into them have you done a lot of sculpture sculpture been integral in all your time looks like yeah i’ve been doing sculpture for a long time speaking of monuments this one here was
33:10
designed to commemorate 100 years of the nobel prize prize i did that one a little over two decades ago [Music] so yeah sculpture has been a huge part of my life and i could go on but the internet gets worse as we wander out through the house more well thank you for taking us on on your tour you’re most welcome you know uh today we’re here with you know talking about honoring the essential workers and they deserve this special show but i hope you’ll come back another time and we can share
33:53
about your art in general and explore different things i appreciate you taking the time with me today for an incredibly important thing and thank you for all of all that you do and all the inspiration you bring all the time with all your art but this has been especially powerful um spar i think that um anything specifically you want to say to people before we let them go on this subject um just mostly i would like people to care about the people that care for them it takes vulnerability and courage to
34:38
reach out and acknowledge the vulnerability of being a human being how fragile we are and um you know if if we can have the courage to say thank you you know thank you for showing up for me thank you for caring you know my life is better because you’re in it then thank please thank the the essential workers that you work so many of them have told me that they’re treated as less than human or insulted or called names horrific names just because they’re they’re trying to keep us all safe
35:19
and there are some people who say oh you know the the masks and distance doesn’t keep us safe but they’re still trying to keep us safe so i think if we can have a good attitude towards the people who are showing up risking their lives in order to make sure ours are sustained i think that that’s a good way to live our lives and that’s the legacy i’d like to pass on so um yeah that’s that’s the message i’d like to pass on and please go visit honortheessential.com and
35:54
and check it out and if you like what you see please let me know isn’t it amazing we’re living in an age where you’re walking around your house 50 40 miles or 30 miles from where i am and we’re sharing it all over the world the world has changed so much but the basics get back down to the basics is heart to heart it’s honoring exactly the the person that’s right there with you that’s right there and risking their world so that your world continues wow yeah thank you well
36:33
we’ve we’ve sent this off to a lot of people in in washington and we’ve got a proposal up to joe biden if anybody knows joe personally uh please let us know we’d love to uh we’d love to influence him to leave a legacy of honor and respect um so um you know we’re we’re trying to get that to be the new foundation of of this country that has been you know a leader in the world for so long well we’re going to post a link not only with the show but to your whole website and all that’s
37:15
going on and thank you sparta for being here with us today and honoring the essential workers of our world in our lives thank you bless your heart well everyone out there we will see you again and spa we will see you again and have you on the show and we’ll talk offline i’m looking forward to it thank you guys for joining us out there spar that’s a question aloha thank you bye bye [Music] you
