Richmond takes down South’s largest Confederate statue
Courthouse News, September 8, 2021
Flaurent was one of hundreds of Richmonders who came to watch the statue's removal, calling back to the reported thousands of locals who came to see it erected 130 years ago.
But the similarities stopped there: while the crowds back then expressed admiration for Lee, Wednesday morning featured artistic protests and praises for his statue's removal.
“I was standing there in the darkness this morning thinking what I wanted to say: Giddy up loser,” said Kate Fowler, director of development at Studio Two Three, a local art collective which set up a screen printing table and was taking donations in exchange for signs reading “Giddy up loser” with a caricature of Lee riding off the page.
“Engagement has been through the roof,” she said as lines for the prints stretched around the block with residents hoping to memorialize the moment in art.
Studio Two Three artists Kate Fowler and K.B. Brown churn out prints reading "Giddy up loser" on Wednesday as locals in Richmond, Va., celebrate the removal of the city's most prominent Confederate statue. (Brad Kutner/Courthouse News Service)