Sasha Wortzel
Sasha.wortzel@gmail.com
On Hunts Point Avenue, a smiling woman in green pulls a fresh vegetable from a thriving garden. Another woman is perched atop an apartment building, enjoying the warmth of the brilliant sun as birds fly overhead. A father reads to his child at the foot of a large tree.
These images form part of the new “Uptown Girl Power” mural at 825 Hunts Point Avenue. Unveiled on Nov. 24, it’s the first in a series titled “Yes SHE Can” sponsored by the Majora Carter Group.
The murals aim not only to expand public art in Hunts Point, but to present positive images of women of color.
“We wanted to bring attention to some of the issues that young women are dealing with in the community,” said Majora Carter, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx who is now president of the environmental consulting firm that bears her name.
“We’ve got a really high rate of teen pregnancy, poverty, all sorts of problems, but what we wanted to show is that women could and should be portrayed in a positive light.”
“Powerful women,” said Kellie Terry-Sepulveda executive director of The Point CDC, “are the foundation to our communities.”
Terry-Sepulveda is one of the nine women from the Bronx to be honored with Carter’s Uptown Girl Power! Award at a ceremony in September that raised more than $30,000 for the mural project.
After conducting a month-long survey of Hunts Point residents, artists from the Brooklyn-based Groundswell Community Mural Project got the permission of the New York City Housing Authority to use the building as their canvas and got to work.
“One of the things that we’ve noticed in this community, is that there is not enough public art for our children, and the thing that is missing from the art we do have is fair representations of women,” said community activist Tanya Fields as she addressed the crowd of people who came out to support the event and to get a look at the massive new piece of artwork.
A group of young women, ninth-graders from nearby Hyde Leadership Charter School, lined up against the wall of the building for a photograph. Behind them the bright blues, greens, yellows, and oranges stretched up along what had once been the decaying façade of a burned-out building.
“It used to be graffiti and just vandalized and now they replaced it with beautiful art,” said Connie, 14, who, like all the students visiting the mural with their art class, did not want her last name published. “It makes me feel strong as a woman.”
Lupita Alvarez, the development officer of Hyde Leadership Charter School believes the vibrantly colored mural depicts hope in the neighborhood. For her students, she said, “To actually see the artist working on this mural, they can feel as though, ‘okay, I’m doing this with pen and paper in the classroom, but it can actually go up as artwork on a building.’”
Another student, Leroy, 10, said the mural is “about people cleaning up the community and making it look like a better place.”
At the top of the mural in bubbly yellow lettering is the message “You don’t have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one.” The words of Marta Rodriguez, lifelong Hunts Point Resident and the Community Outreach Associate at Sustainable South Bronx, have become a powerful call to action for many community activists in the Bronx.
“The message is take care of your community and your community can be just as good as any other community,” said Joseph Sanchez who works for the Department of Parks and Recreation. He continued, “A lot of people here think that when they grow up or get a better job, they’re going to leave to a better community, but that doesn’t have to necessarily be the case. This community can be just as healthy, just as beautiful as any other community.”
Terry-Sepulveda agrees, “It really does sum up the sentiment of a lot of us who grew up in the Bronx and have a lot of love for our community. Moving up is not moving out.”
Police Officer Ada Haddock, the community affairs officer at the 41st Precinct, has lived in Hunts Point for 18 years and remembers the days when many buildings were abandoned and she felt unsafe to walk around alone. Now, she says, Hunts Point is a beautiful neighborhood with new parks and buildings everywhere.
Looking at the mural, she said, “I hope that the children do learn from this mural, and they will feel powerful and proud of this community they come from that has made such a huge bounce back, and that they themselves go out and try to improve and plant a tree or build.”
A version of this story appeared in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of The Hunts Point Express.