If you’ve taken a drive along Highway 62 near Twentynine Palms recently, you may have noticed some artistic-looking “love” signs. They’re not just hippie art, reporter David Haldane tells us. In fact, there’s some politics involved…
Katie Williams says she just got tired of seeing all the Donald Trump-inspired “Thanks for Making America Great Again” signs along California’s highways. So, she and fellow Merced artist Jacob Rafati, originally from Iran, got together to make a political statement of their own.
The result is a project they call “Love Transcends All Borders,” a collection of roadside signs depicting the word “love” in six different languages installed on private property along Highway 62 just outside Twentynine Palms.
Their hope, the artists say in a press release, is to “spark a conversation about immigration” based on love and respect rather than what Williams calls “the hate speech…coming from the oval office these days.”
Besides English, the signs are in Spanish, Chinese, Farsi, an Ethiopian language called Amharic and an Indian one called Kannada.
No public reaction yet from area residents, some of whom have urged their City Council to declare Twentynine Palms a “no-sanctuary” town.
