CURRENTLY ORGANIZING IN FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN – GET INVOLVED!

Visit Community Heroes in Commodore Barry and Fort Greene Park!

Please join us this Saturday for the opening of Community Heroes: Fort Greene!

Community Heroes will kick off its 2018 portrait exhibition at 2:00 p.m. on August 18, 2018 in Brooklyn, New York at Commodore Barry Park and Fort Greene Park. The exhibition opens in tandem with the 11th year celebration of Old Timers Day, a reunion in Commodore Barry Park that is free and open to the public.

The exhibition, also by the name, Community Heroes, aims to coalesce the community in the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Farragut, and celebrate the residents who empower and nourish these neighborhoods—both the historic African-American social fabric of the area and its new residents. Twenty individuals were selected as representatives of the community, or heroes, from a pool of over 140 nominations collected during a seven-month community 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.

From December 2017 to June 2018, Zac Martin, Executive Director of Trellis (Community Heroes’ parent organization), Creative Director Jasmin Chang, and Community Liaison Ivan Valladares, attended dozens of community gatherings, such as at the Community Board 2, the Walt Whitman and Clinton Hill Public Libraries, the GrowNYC Fort Greene Greenmarket, the Fulton Street Business Improvement District, and local tenant associations, including those at the NYCHA developments: the Atlantic Terminal Houses, the Farragut Houses, the Ingersoll Houses, and the Whitman Houses.

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 on July 2019. On October 6, 2018, Community Heroes will host a potluck picnic in Fort Greene Park to celebrate the heroes’ portraits, the organizers, and their collaborators. This event is also free and open to the public.

HEROES

Althea Gaskin Feurich
Dorothy Berry
Ed Carter
Fresh Pantry Volunteers
Jamie Ramirez
Joan Gumbs
Kath Hansen
Lisa Isaac and Keith Getter
Lloyd Rodriguez
Nancy Ramos
Old Timers Day
Olivette Zarinah Shakir Thompson
Peace Fest
Ruth Goldstein
Sadiq L. Bellamy
Saleem Ali
Tracy Dickerson
Vincent Carolina
Ysolde Steinon

ARTISTS

Ari Barnett
Charles Merritt Jr.
Diana McClure
Elektra Babian
Erin Lefevre
Geralyn Shukwit
Gilda Caputo
Liz Latty
Melanie Rieders
Jocelyn Arem
Julie Hassett Sutton
Juquai McDuffie
Kevin Kim
Kiki Provatas
Kristin Reimer
Lauren Crothers
Martina Tuaty
Matthew Cylinder
Zoe L. Meeks
Zoe Smythe

Community Heroes, Fort Greene is sponsored, in part, by a Humanities New York Action Grant and the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

This exhibition is also made possible by the support of many community partners, as well as the generosity of local residents and businesses.

Thank you to Kisha Bari and Peter Fedak, Kiira Benzing, Julia Chu, Morgan Cruz, Korly DeVries and Joshua Levi, Farragut Tenants Association, Carol Fung, Jennifer and Stephen Giuliano, Krystal Grow, Stephen and Jenie Hanano, Ingersoll Tenants Association, Stephanie Kim and Jason Yow, Chris and Annmarie Koshak, Dana Krieger, Manisha Munshi, Brian Oei, Jessica Olah, Alexis Percival, Caroline Park, Kush Patel, Lauren Pond, Alexandra Roche, Laura Roumanos and Sam Barzilay, Shelly, Andria Seo & Ray Su, Habiba Simjee, Anastasia Soetanto, Rebecca Stevens, Marian Wang, Whitman Tenants Association and Sarah Yoon

For more than 50 years, NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program has been bringing contemporary public artworks to the city’s parks, making New York City one of the world’s largest open-air galleries. The agency has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, NYC Parks has collaborated with arts organizations and artists to produce over 2,000 public artworks by 1,300 notable and emerging artists in over 200 parks. For more information about the program visit www.nyc.gov/parks/art.