Focus On Neighborhood’s Longtime Residents
The Diana Jones Senior Center in Bushwick became an art studio last Friday, Feb. 24, as local photographer Daryl-Ann Saunders unveiled “Pioneers Of Bushwick,” a look at longtime neighborhood residents.
The seven color portraits in the center’s meeting room highlights those who lived in Bushwick during the 1970s and 1980s, when the area was known for incidents of crime and arson.
Saunders switched to color after experimenting with black-and-white portraits. “They’re just so vibrant,” she told the crowd at the Friday reception.
Each portrait comes with a short paragraph featuring the subject’s name and some comments from them about their neighborhood and their life in Bushwick.
Among those featured in the Jones Center exhibition is Board 4 member Avellar Hansley. A blurb next to her portrait speaks of the time comedian Eddie Murphy’s family moved into her home.
“He liked to stay in the house more than outside,” she noted. “He had his reasons: he was reading books and practicing his jokes.”
Also featured were local residents Jose Luis Colon, Elizabeth Colon, Gerardo Marengo, Adela Perez, Blanca Irizarry and Lucy Mendez.
Saunders’ project was sponsored by a joint program with the city Department for the Aging and Department of Cultural Affairs called SPARC (Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide). Through this program, senior centers throughout the city are given artists-in-residence who in turn bring the arts to seniors.
There are 45 senior centers across the city participating in the program.
In a Feb. 28 phone interview with the Times Newsweekly, Saunders said that the project was borne out of an experience that occured shortly after she moved to Bushwick from Manhattan in 2006, where she heard and saw the bloody result of a shooting outside her window.
After the incident, she began to wonder about those who have had to live in the neighborhood during the 1970s and 1980s, when it was considered less safe.
“I wanted to know more about the people who kept Bushwick going,” she said.
Her interest in the porject led her to seek a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council, which ran “Space For Art,” SPARC’s predecessor program, in 2010. When the program received funding from the National Endowment for The Arts and grew into SPARC, she reapplied and was re-accepted.
After joining the senior center, its director, Narcisa Ruiz, gave her room to store equipment so she could set up a makeshift portrait studio at the center. According to Saunders, she has spent the last two years working on “Pioneers of Bushwick.”
In her time, she learned “how community-oriented everyone is.”
“It’s almost like a small-town type of mentality,” she added.
Also helping to sponsor the project was the Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council.
The photos will be on display to the public every Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the center, located at 9 Noll St., through Apr. 27.
Saunders told the Times Newsweekly she hopes to place more portraits in bars, coffeeshops, restaurants and other places throughout Bushwick, possibly for the next Bushwick Open Studios event in the summer. She also hopes to set up listening stations where residents can hear oral histories from the residents themselves.
So far, 19 people have been sub- jects of Saunders’ project; as more people begin to find out about the project, more residents approach her asking to participate.
“I want it to be a really interesting cross-section of Bushwick,” she told the Times Newsweekly.
