Love Letters to Brownsville - Tonight!
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presents
Love Letters to Brownsville
An Exhibition of Art by our Young Visionaries
Monday, June 23, 5-7pm Brownsville NeON 444 Thomas S Boyland Street Brooklyn, NY 11212 For more information, contact 212-632-4406.
Our Artists:
Emmanuel Agoroge, Courtney Browne, Chris Chaplin, Juana Echevarria, Quamel Greene, Kimani Jeekson, Monasia Larece, Ousmane Ly, Ya’eesh Muhammad, Abdul Nixon, Nia Odom, Keson Simon, Jamal Toney.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Rachel Barnard, Executive Director, Young New Yorkers rachel@youngnewyorkers.org(347) 720-0776
Brooklyn, June 23, 2014 – Young New Yorkers in partnership with the Department of Probation and Carnegie Hall wishes to announce a public art event created by twelve Brownsville teenagers in response to the issue of local gun violence.
Love Letters to Brownsville is an interactive, participatory, public artwork titled and created by the group of young local artists. They have themed the artwork around trust, love and generosity. These are the qualities the young artists intend for their neighborhood, particularly in light of their explorations on gun violence.
In Love Letters to Brownsville, 400 white roses will be weaved to form a sculpture that reads the word “TRUST". Guest will be invited to write a love letter to Brownsville on bright pink tags. They will then meet with the young artists attending the rose sculpture and exchange their love letter to Brownsville for a white rose, a gift from the young people to their community. Slowly the “TRUST” sculpture will transform from white roses to pink love letters swaying in the wind.
The roses are white because it is the color of surrender (de-escalation) and peace, which the young artists believe requires individuals to be centered in deep self-respect. The group also hopes to provide an opportunity for their community to remember the loved ones they have lost to gun violence. In this way Love Letters to Brownsville is a kind of living memorial. Several of the participants have lost friends and loved ones to gun violence.
Among those the young artists have invited are local community stakeholder groups, different criminal justice agencies and the 72nd Police Precinct across the street from the event. The art project aims to foster positive connections.
The artwork was the result of Young New Yorkers 8-week program called “Transforming Futures: Exploring Empowering Responses to Gun Violence through Art and Design Thinking”. The young artists employed photography, film, illustration, and design to tell local stories and develop creative and transformative responses to the issue of local gun violence.
Also presented at the exhibition will be artworks developed during the 8-week workshops including large-scale surreal collages of Brownsville and collaged self-portraits that represent the young artists’ imagined futures. There will also be video poems, plays, and interviews.
Our young artists: Emmanuel Agoroge, Courtney Browne, Chris Chaplin, Juana Echevarria, Quamel Greene, Kimani Jeekson, Monasia Larece, Ousmane Ly, Ya’eesh Muhammad, Abdul Nixon, Nia Odom, Keson Simon, Jamal Toney.
Each week guest artists came to assist the participants. They included founding artist Lunar New Year; Street artists Gilf! and Mata Ruda; photographer Rudi Diaz, and film makers Dave Regos and John Zaho. Sarah Cassel helped create the curriculum. Social Worker Ron Schneider, Youth Worker Lena Nufield, and professional Violence Interrupter David Grant also attended the sessions. Lisa Jensen, Leah Cohen, assisted the program.
The program was created and lead by Young New Yorkers Executive Director Rachel Barnard who was recently featured on NY1 as the “New Yorker Of The Week”. She said: “I was moved by the courage and creative brilliance our young artists brought to the serious issue of local gun violence. Their public art event aims to bring people together for meaningful and peaceful connection and create an opportunity to be proud of their community.”
Barnard is an architect, project manager and public artist. On graduating from Columbia University with a Masters of Science (Advanced Architectural Design) in 2011, Rachel was awarded the Goodman Fellowship for her public art proposal, Young New Yorkers, aiming to give voice to 16- and 17-year-olds who are sentenced classified as adults in New York State. Young New Yorkers is now an organization that provides community programs and programs as alternative to incarceration for young people.
NeON Arts is a program of the NYC Department of Probation in partnership with Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute.
Funding provided by the Open Society Foundation through a grant to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City in support of the NYC Young Men’s Initiative.