MAKING HIS'TORY/ Building Better Tommorrows
BUILDING BETTER TOMORROWS
Groundswell Community Mural Project ©
www.groundswellmural.org
Acrylic on Wall
Thirteen 8 x 4 Ft Pillars
2007
Lead Artist: Cornell Jones
Assistant Artist: Ryan Hartley Smith
Youth Artists: Brandon Cosbert, Jovan Crandle, Aaron Dore, Angel Garcia, Brian Harris, Anthony Huertero, Brian Jean Louis, Peter Kehinde, Andre McLaughlin, Daniel Pang, Danny Simeon and Ken Zheng
Location: P.S. 24, 427 38th Street (at 4th Avenue), Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Community Partner: P.S. 24
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
As one of six projects in Groundswell’s Summer Leadership Institute (SLI) 2007, young men in our Making His’tory program, explored what it means to be an immigrant father in Brooklyn. They used their investigation to paint a mural at P.S. 24, a bilingual school in Sunset Park that primarily serves children of Latin American immigrants.
“Building Better Tomorrows” connects with “Feels Like Home: An Immigrant’s Journey,” a mural completed the previous summer in our Voices Her’d program. The young men gathered information for the mural by interviewing community members and researching the different countries present in the community.
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The mural is comprised of thirteen separate walls. The first shows the silhouette of a father holding his baby against the background of a sunset, representing the hope of the father to make a better way for his children though immigrating. A traditional Mexican textile pattern is located at the bottom of this wall and also in walls two, three and four. The second wall shows a tropical environment and a boy wearing a mask common to the carnival celebrations of the Dominican Republic. In the third, a group of men do labor-intensive work. Several men mentioned that they had been dockworkers during the interviews. The fourth wall is based on an interview with a father who had farmed corn as a young man in Mexico. In the fifth, three men look into the distance, envisioning leaving their respective countries with the hope for greater opportunity. The sixth wall represents the bureaucracy that may intimidate, impede or prevent immigrants from entering the country. Many of the men interviewed expressed concern about the US approach to illegal immigration. The seventh expresses the feeling of frustration that some immigrants may face because of not being able to speak English or find adequate employment, two of the biggest reasons cited for frustration. In the eighth wall a man studies and a family hangs a Chinese lantern. The ninth depicts a family and the tenth a group of Chinese lanterns. The eleventh wall shows the businesses that immigrants have built in the community while the twelfth shows two men looking at photographs of special moments. |
The thirteenth and final wall shows a child sitting on a stack of books. He is holding a key that represents the access or opportunity that his father has afforded him by immigrating. An Islamic textile wraps around the edges of the wall to represent the growing community. A sunrise is in the background to represent a better day for the families.