Lisa Watkins, a retired Bronx schoolteacher, recalled seeing a story on the news about a Charlie Hewitt, a Maine-based artist, who had a huge “Hopeful” sign displayed on billboards in New Jersey. Considering the collective trauma of COVID-19 endured by so many Bronxites in such a relatively short space of time, she remembered thinking at the time that it would be a great word to have projected across the borough.

 

“We had the two years of the pandemic,” Watkins said. “Just when we thought we were coming out of the pandemic around Christmas time, we had the resurgence of the Omicron variant. Then, we had the shooting of an innocent kid and his mother who were sitting in their car. That was followed by the big fire.”

 

Watkins was referring to the non-fatal shooting of an 11-month-old baby girl, known as “Baby Catherine,” who was shot in the face in crossfire on Valentine Avenue and E. 198th Street in Bedford Park on Jan. 19, while sitting in a car with her mother, as well as the Twin Parks fire tragedy that took place on Jan. 9 at Twin Parks North West housing complex at 333 181st Street in Fordham Heights, which took the lives of 17 people, including 8 children.

 

She decided to reach out to Hewitt on Jan. 25. “I found the Hopeful Project on Instagram,” Watkins said. “I wrote him. I thought of three places where I would love to see one of those billboards.” In her message, she suggested the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Deegan Expressway near Yankee Stadium, and someplace along the Bronx River Parkway.

 

Thanks to Watkins’ initial message, Charlie Hewitt has since brought his Hopeful Project to The Bronx. In a phone interview with the Norwood News, he shared why he decided to place his digital billboards where he did finally. “I wanted them on the subway stations because the people went into Manhattan and other parts of the boroughs to work during the virus,” Hewitt said. “They suffered the most. They didn’t have cars or country homes. They had to take the trains.”

He added, “All the work that was done came from places like The Bronx and the people who took those trains in a very unstable and unsafe time. I celebrate that work. That is the most appropriate place to put a message in The Bronx.”

 

There are now six Hopeful digital billboard signs in The Bronx that project the word “Hopeful” in radiant colors at five subway stations, serving the B and D lines. The stations are Bedford Park Boulevard, Kingsbridge Road, Tremont Avenue, 170th Street, and at both exits of the 161st Street- Yankee Stadium station, one at the River Avenue exit and one at the Walton Avenue exit. Hewitt said the billboards will remain displayed until the end of May.

 

Recently, the artist also placed Hopeful signs in two Brooklyn subway stations following the horrific, non-fatal, mass shooting that took place on April 12 at the 36th Street station in Sunset Park, which serves the N, R and D lines. Miraculously, nobody was killed and the alleged suspect, Frank R. James, has since been apprehended. As reported by Norwood News at the time, 10 subway passengers were shot and at least six other people were otherwise injured in the context of the attack.

 

The Hopeful Project was born in Portland, Maine in 2019. Hewitt recalls that his first Hopeful sign went up in the neighborhood, Woodfords Corner, on the rooftop of Speedwell Projects, a nonprofit gallery. The gallery had asked him to put a sculpture on the roof. “I thought I needed change,” Hewitt said. “That was going to be a piece of my ego on the roof. I wanted to do something more challenging.”

 

He added, “I knew that I live in a dark state. I thought it would be great to make something that brought light to this corner. I also wanted to challenge myself to be positive rather than take this negative stance,” he said. “As a challenge, let’s get together and start projecting this positiveness into our communities, our families, and our future.”

 

Since then, Hewitt has completed 28 Hopeful installations. His work has also appeared in other states like Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maine in addition to New York, and ranges from sculptures, billboards, and paintings. Of the digital “Hopeful” billboards, he said it’s the message more than the medium that stands out. “It pops up as something surprising, unique, and bold,” Hewitt said.

 

It is not the first time billboard messages have been used to impact society. The 2017 movie, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” is a crime drama written, co-produced, and directed by Martin McDonagh, and starring Frances McDormand as a Missouri woman who rents three roadside billboards to call attention to her daughter’s unsolved rape and murder, in an effort to pressure police to resolve the case. The film went on to win seven Academy Awards, including Best Actress for McDormand and Best Picture.

 

McDonagh said the film script was inspired by similar billboards he had seen while traveling across America decades earlier which related to a 1991 murder case in Texas that remains unsolved. People magazine reported in 2018 that since the movie came out, investigators have doubled the reward for any information that leads to an arrest in the killing of 34-year-old Kathy Page.

 

Trailer for the 2017 movie, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Video via YouTube. (Viewer discretion advised).

The film would go on to inspire, Kat Sullivan, a 17-year-old girl, who alleges she was raped by a former staff member at Emma Willards private boarding school in Troy, New York. Sullivan employed similar tactics to push for the passage of the New York State Child Victims Act.

 

As reported by The Daily Mail, Sullivan alleges when she sought help from school administrators, they instead pressured her to withdraw from the school. Emma Willard School later settled with her and Sullivan used her settlement money to purchase billboards to warn people about her alleged rapist.

 

She said she also wanted to campaign to pressure New York State Assembly Members to pass the Child Victims Act, the aim of which was to extend the statute of limitations for civil and criminal cases against perpetrators of child sexual abuse and the institutions that cover up for them. The bill became law in 2019, and initially opened a one-year window for survivors to file civil lawsuits seeking compensation for the sexual abuse they suffered as children.

 

The deadline was later extended by one year, as reported by Democrat & Chronicle, because of the COVID pandemic. Last week, on April 29, The Legislative Gazette reported that “the State senate had passed the Adult Survivors Act, which would create a one-year window for the revival of time-barred civil lawsuits based on sex crimes committed against individuals who were 18 years of age or older.”

 

State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi (S.D. 34) speaks on the passing of the New York Child Victims Act. Video via YouTube.

 

Meanwhile, Hewitt and Jim Kempner, owner of Jim Kempner Fine Art, are privately funding the Hopeful signs in The Bronx. Kempner has been friends with Hewitt for 35 years and is his art dealer. They first met at a poker game with a private art dealer in SoHo. After that meeting, Kempner started showing Hewitt’s art. Kempner said that they have done ten art shows together in Chelsea and are doing another show together on May 19 at Kempner’s art gallery, located at 501 West 23rd Street in Manhattan.

 

Kempner recalls the first time he saw the design for the Hopeful project. “It was a perfect throwback to the ‘50s with the neon signs on the highway for diners,” he said. “It really hit a chord. It’s so simple, but so powerful.” In conversations with his friend, Kempner has heard about the impact of the Hopeful signs.

 

“A lot of people have written to him about how much it’s meant,” the art dealer said. “Some of the workers and the nurses in the hospitals, just working late hours, seemingly thankless…. then they come out and see this. It brought tears to their eyes.”

 

 

Watkins has also seen firsthand the reception the Hopeful installations have gotten in the community. “My friends who saw the TV interview we did for NY1 were raving about it,” Watkins said. “They were saying, ‘What a wonderful word in these times!’” She also recalls the time Hewitt handed a Hopeful pin to a man during the unveiling of the Hopeful installation at the Kingsbridge Road Station. “He took off his hat and he put the pin on the hat,” Watkins said. “It was a Yankees hat. It said, ‘Hopeful NY.’ What a perfect symbol of The Bronx!”

 

Watkins said she believes the Hopeful signs are making a difference. “You can’t help but feel the energy from it,” she said. “As a Bronxite, being hopeful for tomorrow and what it might bring, it’s a light in these dark times.”

 

*Síle Moloney contributed to this story.