Martin Luther King Honored On Long Island With Student Portraits

RIVERHEAD, NY — To commemorate Martin Luther King Day on Monday, a student art project on Long Island invited young people to collaborate and share their vision through a series of portraits.

The "Martin Luther King Jr. Portrait Project" was launched by East End Arts & Humanities Council, Inc. in Riverhead through the organization's school art program, to celebrate MLK's legacy and to engage students, teachers, and the community.

The MLK Portrait Project was inspired by the work of teacher Kenneth Jackson, East End Arts said.

"The MLK Portrait Project is a way to celebrate the words of MLK by working together in unity, each creating an individual part, that ultimately becomes a whole. Every panel style is different, yet they all fit together," a release said.

Portraits were created on individual 12 x 12 panels with mostly acrylic as a mosaic of images to create a unified image of Martin Luther King Jr. Four different portraits were created in honor of MLK Jr. and each of the portraits contains 16 panels, East End Arts said.

Every student participant was given a panels of mosaic portrait to create an individual canvas; most completed portraits were created by students from two high schools.

Nine different Long Island high schools participated in the project, including students from Riverhead, Southampton, Greenport, Shelter Island, Center Moriches, Eastport-South Manor, Bridgehampton, Rocky Point, and Mount Sinai, East End Arts said.

The portraits will be displayed in a visual gallery and will also hang in each high school for a week.
All portraits will be auctioned to support EEA's scholarship fund for art students in need.