GREENFIELD — A local artist hopes some Main Street building owners are willing to donate or rent their facades to exhibit a climate crisis tribute to Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

Joseph “JJ” White has crafted a 17½-foot-wide, three-panel sculpture that reads “How Dare You!,” the now-famous words Thunberg used when addressing world leaders at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in New York City, attacking their perceived inaction on climate change.

“I would say that she gave such a visceral, bold, heartfelt challenge to adults and the world about what they’re missing, what we’re missing,” he said at the Colrain Road home he shares with his wife. “We’re at a crisis point every single day.”

White and a few collaborators began assembling the work about six months ago. The materials include letters from the former Rooney’s department store on Main Street and other items White has collected over the past few years. He said he used construction adhesive and “many, many, many little screws and bolts.”

White has discussed his idea with several building owners and tenants, but has not received any commitments. He will manage the project, including installation, insurance and promotion.

“I can just see a kid walking down [the street] and saying, ‘Mommy, Daddy, what does that mean?’” he said, adding that people will be able to learn more about it by scanning a nearby QR code to watch a short clip of Thunberg’s speech. Now 21, she was 16 years old when she delivered her impassioned words to the UN Climate Action Summit, imploring leaders to take action to reverse “a mass extinction.”

Originally from St. Louis, White was the owner of the short-lived Art Deviation Store & Gallery, which specialized in erotica, political resistance and LGBTQ-focused art. That business, in the Tibetan Plaza in South Deerfield, closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was the home of the original “How Dare You!”

“I had a first edition of this back when the gallery closed and then it was out in the backyard, but the elements, they just disintegrated the frames that I had them put in,” he said.

White said he hopes to spark a community dialogue to keep the public pressure on for his children’s and grandchildren’s generations. He said the idea to make the work public came from one of his Airbnb clients, the author and former New York Times journalist Pagan Kennedy, who stayed at White’s home to get out of Boston during the COVID-19 pandemic and marveled at the sculpture park the artist was assembling in his backyard.

“I said, ‘You should make these public, because no one can see it back here,’” Kennedy recounted. “I just thought he was so talented.”

Kennedy, who now splits her time between Easthampton and Brooklyn, said she is itching to see “How Dare You!”

“He’s great,” she said. “I think he’s done a lot of the Greenfield area.”

White’s former Art Deviation Store & Gallery had included his work “Shell Shocked,” a transparent female mannequin containing empty shotgun shells as a statement about gun violence in the United States. Kennedy said this was the work she has found the most powerful. Another work was a white shirt stained with “blood” as a commentary on abortion laws in several southern states.

“A lot of the art that I’m doing has something to do with making the world a better place or screaming out loud,” White said.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.