"My name is Olive Moya and this piece I created for Street Wise uses a photograph of John Wesley McVey‘s house at 1718 Canyon Blvd. in what was known as the "little rectangle". John Wesley McVey was a black hotel owner and a a musician living in Boulder in the late 1800s early 1900s. I wanted to bring attention to the history of red lining that confine the black community to "the little rectangle". It is a small area considered undesirable due to flooding and it's proximity to “the jungle", which was home to sex workers and other "undesirable" characters in the 1960s. I use glitching and shifting in the photo to speak to the instability and trauma created by racism in Boulder that the community must still work to unlearn and change. The layers of shapes and lines work to conceal more and more of the intentionally fragmented image with pleasing colors. However, those layers are also glitched as if they can’t entirely hide reality. I want to honor John McVey's home while also utilizing it’s narrative to recognize how much growth is still very necessary for all of us. The history of that home and area represents a microcosm of our problems regarding race in America. I want to show how displaced and alienated we’ve made black and brown people and continue the discussion on how we can change that. I hope this can serve as an active reminder that our education on this matter is never ending and that we must listen carefully to those who are actively experiencing systemic racism. I would like to thank the Carnegie library of local history for the photo."

- Olive Moya