Julia Vogl

Making art in person with community: Is it worth the risk in a pandemic?

Posted by Julia Vogl, Sep 23, 2020 0 comments


Julia Vogl

Whenever you make public art, there are risks—usually financial. But today with monuments being challenged, politics, history, and community emotions are often also at play. Oh, and we are in a pandemic. When everything was halted in March, I fell into a depression. The prospect of making art with community, if we could do it safely, felt like a mental health salvation. 

Dr. Sarah Litvin, director of the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History in Kingston, NY, was a brave commissioner. She saw a way, knew her community needed this opportunity, and her vision gave me purpose again.

Left: The Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History is located in an historic building that housed generations of immigrant families upstairs as well as Reher’s Bakery, a family-run bread bakery, on the first floor for nearly a century. Right: A youth participant spray painting on the mural. Photo by Verofass Photography.

Yes, Our Neighborhood Rolls became a beautification project to cover the cinder block wall at the side of the building, but primarily Dr. Litvin envisioned it as a point of pride that, in the making, would build community. Critically she saw it as a meaningful, fun, educational, and engaging project for local kids and Kingstonians.

At a time when everyone is evaluating what risks are worth taking for the greater good, maybe making art with people in public sounds like an unnecessary hazard.

However, after my experience in Kingston, I would argue it was an essential action. It greatly impacted my mental health, and visibly demonstrated the importance of placemaking and tangible engagement for community in these apocalyptic times.

Outdoor, socially distant workshops with Kingston youth from the Read and Write Program. Photo by Verofass Photography.

In brief, Dr. Litvin and I conducted four workshops with local youth, aged 10-14, to craft three multiple choice questions (and their answers) that we could ask the greater community about their relationship to Kingston. The questions’ answers were keyed to spray paint colors and stencils that I designed to reflect historic iconography of the city (Bricks, Canal, and Gradient to reflect industry, growth, and diversity, respectively). The students would spray paint their answers on the wall and then the larger community would be invited to join too. The project created a collective data visualization portrait of Kingston. 

Artist Julia Vogl administers the survey to the students who wrote it. Depending on how they responded, each student was assigned colors and stencils to represent their answers on the wall. Photo by Verofass Photography.

 

After students completed spraying their answers on the wall, we hosted two sessions (with timed entry) for the public to take the survey and share their answers on the wall. Photo by Julia Vogl.

Usually I spend 6 months to 2 years working on a project like this: getting permissions, getting funding, getting resources, getting people together to know when to participate, getting press. Dr. Litvin and I had 4 weeks. 

The pandemic’s silver lining was creating an urgency and flexibility for some funders. Dr. Litvin was able to re-route a small grant that couldn’t otherwise be used to this initiative. 

With funding, an enthusiastic Board, and a keen partner in Teresa Washington of the Rondout Community Center’s Read and Write Program, we could move fast. This was a true community lift: With only a week’s notice, Radio Kingston had us on to promote the project’s engagement. 

I was so happy to be engaged in art making, I didn’t care that I was working around the clock to design workshops and stencils, procure spray paint, and create schedules. I did this as Dr. Litvin was getting the word out, getting insurance documents, and making sure all our actions were in line with New York COVID laws and regulations. This also was her first public art project. (She hit it out of the park!) 

At first, I had low expectations. How good could a project be that was made in haste, compromised by pandemic limitations? But Dr. Litvin and the myriad Reher Center volunteers/friends demonstrated a sincere investment in planning and outreach. It became clear to me that the community needed this more then ever, and the project needed to be something exceptional. 

But would the people come? 

Sixteen students (although last summer the program had 150) braved outdoor workshops and were keen to spray paint on the wall. With lots of effort, including old fashioned flyering, the public turned out to participate. Online sign-ups were capped at five people for each 15-minute segment, ensuring we had participants and could track and trace them. Two days of participation created a buzz: When Day 1 participants shared with others that they had to sign up, people came on Day 2 reporting that they had changed their plans to participate. Regional press even showed up.

Participants were invited to spray a mini version of their roll and take it home.  Photo by Nancy Donskoj.

All remained safe, were patient to follow rules, and were delighted that they could do something physical, not on Zoom.

Participants impressed me and warmed my heart with their gratitude to do something tangible, communal, and collective. The youth who created the mural in the morning brought their parents in the afternoon to show it off. This cemented my joy and confirmed we had created pride and ownership of place. 

Our Neighborhood Rolls included 156 participants. It is a piece I am immensely proud of, because the way it was made reflected many people taking carefully considered risks. I hope the mural’s legacy inspires people to continue supporting community art even in challenging times, as its benefits outweigh its costs. 

I don’t mean to say we should risk lives to make art, but there is a value to mental health that is meaningful, now more than ever, and that must be considered when private and public organizations are facing program cuts. 

The work in meaning illustrates history, culture, student voices, and is a portrait of the community. The mural demonstrates simultaneously placemaking and community building, both big reasons why I make public art.

We showed the students the final work on our last day and asked what they thought. One 10-year-old boy, whose playground has faced the mural site for years, said “I never knew this wall was here, now I definitely will notice it everyday, and I am on it!”

The final mural representing the opinions of 156 Kingston community members as it appears on the courtyard wall of the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History in Kingston, NY. Photo by Verofass Photography.

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