In the middle of October, there was an art celebration at Coffey Park for two new art projects that are being displayed around the Red Hook East Houses.
The first one is titled American Dream and was done by photographer Caroline Mardok. This project is located at 590 Clinton Street.
The portraits are of PS 15 students and they portray the Red Hook Houses while addressing climate change. The students were placed in various positions in relation to the buildings.
There was one where a kid had one foot on the building in a playful pose and another where a girl’s face could be seen above the building. Mardok did six workshops of 1.5 hours each with the third grade students.
The other one is the Radiance project that was done by the PTSD collective. It was led by Tony Schloss and Paul Kamuf and the diamond themed project is located at Mill and Hicks and along Centre Mall between Hicks and Bush Streets.
At the art celebration in Coffey Park, RHI had snacks and a table with information about GED classes and information about the Red Hook Harvest Festival that was going to have pumpkins, music and games.
Pioneer Works had a table that had different color cloth and materials so that people could add to the big community quilt that is being made to commemorate the Hurricane Sandy 10-year anniversary. People also had the option to add to the quilt with a story or photo via a QR code.
There was a table at the art celebration where people had an opportunity to draw and express themselves. Some people drew flowers, trees, animals and someone wrote fully fund Red Hook Houses with a hashtag.
Mz. Hunyz Mobile Kitchen provided food. Their slogan is, “Home Cooked Meals at Your Fingertips.”
They had jerk chicken, collard greens, rice and salad. They is a Red Hook business that has a food truck on Columbia Street and also caters.
The shimmering facets of each mosaic diamond symbolizes the work of many dedicated individuals including the Youth Organizers at Red Hook Initiative. There were five youth organizers who worked with Schloss and Kamuf to help make this happen and make their ideas become reality.
Mardok collaborated with third grade students at PS 15 with the support of Pioneer Works. The artists, Kamuf and Schloss, and Mardok, were chosen by the community through an interview process.
These artworks that have been designed for the Red Hook East Houses were supported by a program called City Artist Corps: Bridging the Divide.
ArtBridge, Red Hook Initiative, Pioneer Works and PS 15 collaborated to make sure this program reached community interests and residents.
The PTSD Collective stands for Paul and Tony Sign Design. It also has deeper meaning since Schloss thinks that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is relevant to the time we are in.
“A lot of people are recovering from COVID, war and all the tension in America, so it is sort of a reaction to that,” Schloss said about the name. “Calling out all the stress everybody is under these days. And trying to be a response, something positive.”
In the summer of 2021, the two artists started working together with the goal of doing projects on fences in the urban environment.
They did a design for a developer in Williamsburg on the waterfront but it was not able to be installed. This is their first major project.
Over a series of workshops and sessions with the youth organizers they tested different methods of applying things to fences like mosaics. The two artists got to know the youth organizers and found out about the work they were doing as community organizers.
The idea of diamonds as a theme for this project really started to resonate with everybody.
“Diamonds are unique, are multifaceted, are forged under great pressure, are brilliant and beautiful,” Schloss said. “They mean different things to a lot of different people, so that theme resonated with everybody.”
The Radiance name for the project is in reference to the diamonds but it also has another meaning since it related to the youth organizers, who really stood out.
“In working with the youth organizers, they just projected such confidence, such awareness and commitment to the community, that we saw this radiating out of them,” Schloss said. “We were really impressed by this positive and activism.”
“It is not very often that we see young people who are so knowledgable about issues in their community and want to work to do something about it,” Schloss added. “We were honored to work with them and learn from them.”
He added that the work they were mostly concentrating on during this project was making sure that the NYHCA Houses are funded fully for repairs and upkeep.
There were three different pieces that the five youth organizers and the two artists collaborated on.
One piece was five different diamonds and each one represented one of the five youth organizers. Since there were five people in the group they made five diamonds to reflect them.
The second piece is a big diamond, which is various shades, and represents individual pieces that make up the community.
The third piece features and is an homage to Sheryl Nash-Chisholm, who passed away about one year ago. She worked for many, many years with the young people who came through Red Hook Initiative.
“She used to work in hip hop in its early days,” Schloss said. “We wanted to memorialize Cheryl, so we used the same diamond motif to make that image.”
The Radiance pieces are located at Hicks and West 9th. St and in the interior walkway of Red Hook East.
This project was made possible through ArtBridge, which is supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs. Schloss and Kamuf submitted the project to Rebecca Pristoop, who is the senior program manager at ArtBridge, and then she submitted to NYCHA and the construction company.
NYHCA had to approve the project and then the construction company had to as well.
The artists and youth organizers worked together to agree on the theme and the method they would use. They worked in the evenings at Red Hook Initiative and practiced making the mosaics.
“We made this image of Abraham Lincoln that up close looks like different shades of gray but far away you can see the image,” Schloss said. “It is an old image from the Scientific America from like 1920 when they were experimenting with color. It helped to figure out the system for how you would build on the fence.
The nest step involved the artists making it all a reality.
“Then Paul and I worked for about three or four months building the work and testing different materials and shapes,” Schloss said. “Then we waited three or fourth months to get the permission and then we installed it this summer. All together it was about a year but half that time was waiting for permission.”
Pristoop said that Red Hook was one of their earliest partnerships when they first started partnering with NYCHA. Their first partnership came after 2019 and that was when they started working with local artists.
“The community is so vibrant and has so many wonderful resources that we decided to combine with the resources we have,” Pristoop said at the event.
This is the third exhibition that ArtBridge has helped make possible in Red Hook. Last year they had one with Red Hook Art Project.
“They had a collective of youth who designed art works themselves and then we had them printed on vinyl and had them on fences around Red Hook,” Pristoop said.
Massah Fofana, who is an artist who works with Red Hook Art Project, created futurist collages that incorporated portraits of community members. Pristoop said many of the portraits are on Columbia Street.
The other previous project that ArtBridge helped make happen was finished in September, 2020.
Lifelong Red Hook resident and photographer Alden Parkinson and Japanese sculptor Harumi Ori were selected by residents of the Red Hook Houses to participate in the Bridging the Divide: Artists Residency Program.
