Art in the Parks

Healing on Fertile Ground is a multi-component public art exhibition. Paintings by community members are installed along Schenck Street, and depict different cultures uniting under the landmark arches of the Canarsie Pier. The existing planter boxes were painted, and a mural of a Native American headdress was placed in the gazebo to represent the indigenous people of what is now Canarsie. A life-size figurative sculpture made out of tape and polyurethane signifies the hard work the community has invested into rehabilitating this plot of land.

This exhibition is presented by Arfulliving, in partnership with GreenThumb, Canarsie Neighborhood Alliance, and Building Healthy Communities, funded through the Fund for Public Health NYC.

Waiting for the session to begin is a public art installation by Bryan Rodriguez Cambana that reflects on the seemingly disparate spaces in which music, therapy, and the confines of the criminal justice system commingle. Comprised of a sound installation and outdoor sculpture, Waiting for the session to begin, depicts observational drawings of sleeping correctional officers and incarcerated youth in Rikers Island. The title refers to the artist’s time as an educator working on a hip hop project inside the prison over two years (2017-2019). During his tenure, the artist noticed both correction officers and youth operating in a contagious trance-like state or completely asleep in what seemed like a stress-induced coma. Here, Rodriguez explores the surreal experience of sleeping under a shared toxic circumstance, in which these individuals, regardless of their different (and contrasting) roles, may cosmically engage with each other—perhaps in a common desire to escape the confines of the prison or more broadly the punitive system which defines American criminal justice.

The installation will be activated with spinning records and sound 3-7pm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays throughout the summer installation.

This exhibition is presented by More Art.

Community Heroes aims to bring together residents in the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Farragut, and celebrate those who empower and nourish these neighborhoods. Twenty individuals were selected as representatives of the community, or heroes, from a pool of over 140 nominations collected during a seven-month outreach process. Each park will exhibit 10 portraits printed in large banners and shot by local photographers. Community Heroes seeks to tell the stories of the neighborhoods’ unsung heroes through the collaboration of newer residents and long-time residents, often people of color whose families have lived in the community for generations. Community Heroes continues to collect nominations for heroes and seeks photographers to take their portraits. Twenty more portraits will rotate into the exhibition until its final month.

Tanda Francis’ work examines the African presence in public space as a powerful force of beauty and cultural relevance. Inspired by African sculptural tradition, including Ife portraiture, Francis also incorporates Victorian and colonial ornamentation into her work. Adorn Me addresses the underrepresentation of this demographic in public artworks, and provide a healing message during a time of heated debate over monuments erected as symbols of oppression and control.

This exhibition was made possible by the Art in the Parks: UNIQLO Park Expressions Grant.

As part of an inaugural collaboration to integrate the arts into civic life called CivLabs, Arts East New York and the New York City Department of City Planning (Brooklyn) have teamed up to activate Success Garden on Livonia Avenue in East New York. Artists Walis Johnson and Paul Sue Pat collaborate to create East New York: We Walk in a Field of Dreams, a socially engaged multi-media art installation that incorporates community oral histories, a labyrinth walk and sculptural creations. It explores the past and future of East New York, a predominantly African-American and Puerto Rican middle and working class neighborhood in Brooklyn long neglected by the city, now on the verge of enormous change as a result of city rezoning. It considers neighborhood history, hopes and dreams and the persistence of residents and institutions who have served as community place-keepers and healers in spite of many obstacles.

Working sustainably with materials already present in the garden the artists create an interactive sculptural “shrine” that incorporates East New York oral history recordings by Sarita Daftary-Steel from her East New York Oral History Project of the neighborhood’s vibrant immigrant past, the destructive practices of redlining, block-busting, and economic exclusion. The shrine becomes a place for reflection in preparation to walk the Red Line Labyrinth using thematic prompts to focus the mind and heart in meditation. Created from old shoes, The Labyrinth, poetically embodies footsteps of a resilient people who have come, gone or still reside in East New York. As people emerge from the Labyrinth, they enter into a new space, a field of tall grasses and flowers that speak of hope and with luck, a brighter future. Participant reflections are collected and displayed in the garden rain shed.

The Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine (Mildred Belte and Oasa DuVerney) has created a yearlong installation in conjunction with the exhibition Nou La – We Reach! Their weaving addresses multiple narratives around migration and immigration, as well as address the history of Brooklyn as a site of settler colonization. The woven message “Stories Tell Of Loss Each New Land Allows New Dreams” acknowledges the Indigenous population that lived in Brooklyn and how that history exists alongside the story of early Brooklyn migration and the stories of the current immigrant populations in the borough.

Part of Brooklyn Arts Council's Nou La--We Reach! program, supported by the Lincoln Center Cultural Innovation Fund, which is generously supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and administered by Lincoln Center. This project is presented with the Wyckoff House Museum.

Race and Revolution: Reimagining Monuments aims to bring the conversation of systemic race and racism from the past into the present by displaying excerpts from historical documents alongside contemporary artworks.

Reimagining Monuments questions the relationship between historical memory and historical monuments and the implications of the histories that remain absent. Sixteen artists respond to existing New York monuments or to sites they feel should have a monument. Alongside the artists’ work, quotations from historical documents about the corresponding monuments or sites open up dialogue regarding a need to re-examine these physical, selective sound bites of memory. Three public artworks by Zaq Landsberg, Rose DeSiano and Chip Thomas are displayed on the grounds in Washington Park.

This exhibition is presented by the Old Stone House.

Ziemia (“Earth” in Polish) is a public art project created by artist Martynka Wawrzyniak in collaboration with the Greenpoint community. The ceramic orb is glazed with a mixture of clay excavated in Greenpoint as well as soils contributed by participating residents from places that are symbolically representative of their identities, including: the United States, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, France, Japan, Serbia, Nepal, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Mexico, and Namibia. The sculpture serves as a collective portrait of the community. It is also a cultural locus focused on the social and ecological history of the neighborhood.

The meadow is composed of species which date to the pre-colonial times. Meaningfully, the same species can be found in the Polish countryside. Soils from foreign countries which were used in the ceramic glaze were imported with an official USDA Soil Importing Permit and Heat Treated at Lehman College of CUNY.

This exhibition is presented with the Polish Cultural Institute and the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn.