Melvin Giles, Gita Ghei, and Anura Si-Asar
2024 Mid-Career Project Grantee | $10,000
Beacons of Hope
As a long-term BIPOC Rondo-based artist, Melvin Giles knows his community is strong, adaptive and beautiful. But it can be easy to forget sometimes in the face of how other people see their neighborhood and label it as “low-income” and “at risk.” His team wants to create a prototype of a sculpture called “Beacons of Hope” and use the prototype as a touchstone for conversations about loss and love and healing and peace in his community.
Melvin Giles is a Community and Global Peacemaker and a Bubbling Artist. He incorporates Peace Bubbles, Peace Messages and the International Peace Pole to create places/spaces of peace. He is known for his signature style of blowing and sharing peace bubbles. He is a veteran peace, diversity, and dismantling racism educator. He started using bubbles to bridge a gap and distrust between the Black community and the Saint Paul Police Department in the late 1990s by offering police officers bubbles for their domestic calls to give kids when investigating domestic violence in residential settings, in order for the children to have a healthier perception of police officers in general. He has extensive experience working with youth, academia, government agencies, nonprofit agencies and neighborhood groups. Notable accomplishments include serving as an adjunct community faculty instructor in Bethel University’s Anthropology Department, a member of AfroEco and the Growing Food and Justice All Initiative, advisor to the Diversity Committee of Ramsey County Master Gardeners, certified facilitator of Racial Sobriety workshops, anti-racism trainer for the Minnesota Tri-Council Commision of the Council of Churches, and founding member and key organizer of the St. Paul Pluralism Circle. Giles recently worked with two other artists on an exterior face-lift of the Rondo Library.
We at Forecast grieve with our community for the loss of artist Melvin Giles, a beautiful creative soul and peacemaker, and share our deepest condolences with those close to him. Melvin’s achievements and peace-focused community approach fill us with awe, joy, and gratitude. He touched many hearts through his creative work, including through projects with Forecast. Read our full tribute.
Anura Si-Asar is an educator, publisher and firefighter. As a former teacher, Anura worked in the Minneapolis Public Schools and at Harvest Preparatory School in the 1990s. He is the coordinator of the Imhotep Science Academy, a youth STEM Saturday program. Anura is the Publisher of Papyrus Publishing Inc. and a Captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.
Melvin Giles is an artist liaison for the Rice Street Visioning Study with Forecast and Ramsey County, and received a 2020 Forecast Messages of Hope Mini-Grant to promote hope in his community during Minnesota’s COVID-19 sheltering-in-place.
The McKnight Foundation generously enables Forecast to provide Professional Development Grants for mid-career artists seeking to expand their work in the field of public art. Forecast mid- and early-career grants are designed to support independent projects, leadership development, professional development, risk-taking, multidisciplinary approaches, and collaborative problem-solving in the field of public art.
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