The sidewalks of downtown St. Joseph are awash in yellow: yellow semicolons, yellow testimonials, yellow greetings, all rendered in yellow chalk.

St. Joe artist Jeremy Eaton has embraced the metaphor, the yellow and the semicolons to mark World Suicide Prevention Day (September 10).

The semicolon, Eaton says, becomes a metaphor for life.

“An author could have stopped a sentence at that point, but they chose to go on,” Mr Eaton said. “So, if you put that in a metaphor for life, you could have chosen to end your life but you chose to go on.”

A team from Eaton’s Griffey School for the Arts joined a team from the St Joseph Youth Alliance for a two-hour chalk-art campaign that pretty much covered a four block area along Francis and Edmond, 7th and 8th. There are hearts and kisses, personal messages and dedications, along with gestures of hope and encouragement.

And semicolons. Lots of semicolons.

“It’s so that the people who come downtown, either today or whenever, before it rains again, if it touches one person and makes them feel not alone, then we’ve done our job.”

Project Semicolon is an international suicide-prevention movement (On Facebook  here).

 

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