on display at the govrnor's mansion was removed by Governor MyWayOrTheHighway and replaced with the image of a bald eagle. David Lentz, the artist who created the piece, "Wishes in the Wind," says he never intended to make a political statement, and speaks thougthfully of how he conceived his work, which depicts three children of different races at play on a snowy sidewalk.
"...I tried to walk a tightrope politically," the artist said in a phone interview from Shorewood, Wis. "I didn't want it to be political. I wanted it to be about children and issues."
Lenz said that he thought carefully about which children to include in the painting. For instance, the girl on the far right spent a few months at a rescue mission for the homeless, while the boy in the center lost a relative to a drunk driver. (The artist said he too had lost a loved one in a drunk driving accident.)
The children in the painting are, from left to right: DeAngel Beckworth, 7; Brogan Calvillo, 5; and Dimitria Campbell, who was 3 when the painting was made.
"It's about smiling children. It's really hard to argue with it," said Lenz, whose paintings can be found in museums around the country. His portrait of the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver, commemorating her work with the Special Olympics, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
The artist added that he hopes Walker would "contemplate how his policies will affect children living in Wisconsin's large cities, especially the homeless and low income families, and what policies might help prevent the tragedy of drunk driving."
