Diamond Mines: The Public Art of Ronald Llewellyn Jones

About Film
Despite public relations about Houston’s demographic diversity, segregation and poverty continue to be significant challenges for residents of the City’s low-income neighborhoods of color. According to the Houston Museum of African American Culture the lack of resources in these neighborhoods has stifled the accumulation of cultural capital required to empower them. When the Museum with a history of extensive community interaction ran out of buildings to create its neighborhood message murals, it turned to artist Ronald Llewellyn Jones to create public art that would continue its efforts to create a sense of empowerment and pride in Houston neighborhoods characterized by segregation and high levels of poverty.

Director Statement
Public art serves as a timelessly shared generational memory. The absence of public art in underserved communities remains a barrier to individual and community empowerment. Without it the cultural capital that comes from shared identity must be forged again and again and again by each generation of low-income communities of color. Communities are left to
celebrate only their survival and resilience without any acknowledgment or representations of visible accomplishments that can inspire individuals to imagine futures within their communities and not think that the only future for them is to ”get outta the hood.”

Director Biography
John Guess, Jr. is the voice and architect behind the resurgence of the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC), where he currently serves as Chief Executive Officer. Formerly a member of the first Congressional Black Caucus staff and Senior Legislative Director for the late Maryland Congressman Parren J. Mitchell, Guess has had the Museum sponsor difficult community conversations including "Did the Barack Obama Presidency Improve the Lives of African Americans,” and “Why Did 53% of White Women Vote for Donald Trump.” The Museum became the first African American cultural asset to own a Confederate Monument. In 2021, Guess had the Museum inaugurate its only permanent exhibition, “The Stairwell of Memory,’ which utilized three different artists to memorialize through portraits local victims of police brutality Sandra Bland, George Floyd and Robbie Tolan, and began an annual Bland, Floyd, Tolan lecture that brings together the mothers of police brutality from across the country. Most recently, HMAAC initiated art classes at and installed a Message Mural in the Visitation Room of the Harris County Jail’s Women’s Empowerment Center. In 2023, Guess was awarded an Honorary Degree for Humane Letters by the Johns Hopkins University.

As former Director of Just Right Entertainment, John has produced two award winning films, The Hand We’ve Been Dealt: Borderline Houston and Telling Our Story: Conversations on Race, Reconciliation and the Future of the Black Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, the cult classic film Bert about the late Houston artist Bert Long, Jr., which was named one of the 10 All-time Best Houston Documentaries by the Houston Press, and co-produced a Town Hall meeting hosted by Alfre Woodard and Hill Harper for the Congressional Black Caucus at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.