What do you want to do before you die? Share your dreams with this Beaufort project
At different locations in northern Beaufort County in recent weeks, visitors and residents might have seen the large black chalkboard with colorful handwriting scrawled from end to end.
Pick up a piece of chalk, think for a minute or 10, and fill in your own blank after the stenciled words: “Before I die I want to...”
The “Before I Die” wall is a community project started by artist Candy Chang in New Orleans and modeled in thousands of places worldwide. A Beaufort version, launched this month, is unique in that it is mobile, its creators say.
The wall built of lumber and chalkboard paint started at the Pat Conroy Literary Center in downtown Beaufort earlier this month. After being scrubbed of the initial responses, the wall moved to Beaufort County Library St. Helena branch on Friday.
“The whole purpose is to get people to think about life, not death,” said TZiPi Radonsky, who hatched the idea for a wall in Beaufort and created it with her grandson Drew West, an art teacher at Whale Branch Middle School, and his fiancee, Bri Londono. “But that death is a reality, and we’re all mortal. The idea is to build community through the wall.”
The initial responses ranged from deathly serious: “cure cancer,” to whimsical: “dance like crazy in the kitchen,” and humorously practical “catch up on laundry.”
A young girl wrote that she would say goodbye to everyone. A young couple promised to travel the world.
Others expressed wishes to live to see multiple generations of their families.
Radonsky said she saw a web link to the project this past spring, and had been thinking about death and dying and how some friends had not talked about the subject with their partners before they recently died.
West designed and built the wall with his brother, and Radonsky applied the paint. A Facebook page and Instagram account tell the public about the wall and where to find it next.
The wall filled quickly in about a day at the first stop, Literary Center director Jonathan Haupt said. After the stenciled lines filled, people scribbled in every available space and even on the bricks near the entrance to the center’s home in the former bank building on Port Republic Street.
The project served as a conversation starter, forcing family and friends to think about what it is they want to accomplish, Haupt said.
“We were excited about hosting it, thinking of it first and foremost as a storytelling opportunity for people to set aspirations for themselves,” he said.
Radonsky hopes to present the wall to the public in Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park in January.
The Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce has requested to be a host. The wall will also travel to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Port Royal, to United Church on Duke Street and to Penn Center on St. Helena Island for the literary center’s annual March Forth celebration coinciding with the anniversary of Pat Conroy’s death.
“It seems to have a lot of interest from the community,” Haupt said. “That’s wonderful; I hope it continues to tour the area for a long time to come.”
