Public Art
Client:  THE UNEXPECTED
Location: Downtown Fort Smith, Northwest Arkansas

Artists: Robert Montgomery

Service: Concept, Curation, Development and Production

The Scottish-born, London-based poet, artist, and sculptor Robert Montgomery collaborated with global creative house Justkids towards a poetic contribution to the Downtown Fort Smith community, embodied as a site-specific installation lighting up the downtown urban-scape with a timely yet wholehearted command “MINE LOVE DISTRIBUTE HOPE”.

The LED lighted sculpture, part of the conceptual artist light poems series, adds to the growing public art collection curated by Justkids for 5 years in a row through The Unexpected art event.

Robert Montgomery wanted to produce a work that felt universal while at the same time being highly contextual, harnessing a poetic voice that both embodies and addresses directly to Fort Smith community.

“Both of my grandfathers were coal miners and they were also very loving men who instilled their children and grandchildren with a passion for education and a sense of hope for the future. They mined coal, but they also mined love and shared hope. This very short poem is a poem for them, and as such it also celebrates manual workers everywhere who work hard for all of us, manual workers build and maintain our cities and we all owe them respect and gratitude.”

- Robert Montgomery