A 23-year-old Trinidadian artist has created the TIME Magazine’s special cover project, The New American Revolution.
Nneka Jones, a graduate of the University of Tampa, was tapped by TIME international art director Victor Williams to create her first cover for the magazine, the American flag image that speaks to where the country is now.
Jones was recruited to do the cover after her photo-realistic painting of George Floyd caught the art director’s eye on Instagram.
Jones, who works in embroidery on canvas, created the artwork featured on the cover by stenciling the outline of the black stripes onto the canvas, and hand-embroidering them with black thread. The white stripes in between are raw canvas. Similarly, the stars are the white of the canvas and she hand-embroidered the black around the stars.
“Every time she pushes the needle through the canvas, it’s an act of intention that mirrors the marching, the protests, the push to form a more perfect union,” TIME’s Williams says. “It’s deliberate. It’s painstaking. It’s long. It’s hard. Each one of those stitches is a single person’s story, a single person’s travails. That’s why we wanted to make the stitches visible.”
According to TIME, Jones’ fingers got torn up and sore from sewing this portrait in about 24 hours to meet the magazine’s deadline as such pieces usually take a week to a month to produce.
For the project, Pharrell curated a series of essays and conversations between Black leaders that explore America’s oppressive past and visions for a more equitable future, with perspectives from Kenya Barris, Angela Davis, Imara Jones, Naomi Osaka, Yara Shahidi, Tyler, the Creator and more. 
In his essay for The New American Revolution, Pharrell writes: “In assembling this project, I asked some of the most qualified people I know in every field—from Angela Davis to Tyler, the Creator, to Representative ­Barbara Lee—to talk with us, and with one another, about the way forward. I wanted to convey a vision of a future filled with the artists, creators and entrepreneurs who can fulfill the promise of this country’s principles.” 
He continues: “America’s wealth was built on the slave labor of Black people: This is our past. To live up to America’s ideals, we must trust in a Black vision of the future.”
Alongside his curation of conversations with Black leaders, Pharrell  is premiering a new song: “Entrepreneur,” featuring Jay-Z. He tells TIME that he hopes the track raises awareness of the challenges faced by minority-owned businesses and inspires more collaboration among entrepreneurs of colour—leading in turn to “more money and more opportunity for everyone. Source: The Loop, August 2020