Mott Haven Herald

Mott Haven mural depicts immigrants’ dream

Posted on 10. Aug, 2010 by Toyin Adebanjo.

Last summer, a colorful mural titled “Y yo ya estaba! I was already here!” took shape on the parking lot wall of Iglesia Evangélica Española, the Bronx Spanish Evangelical Church on the block of East 156th Street between Tinton and Union avenues.

Artist Virginia Ayress invited residents and members of the congregation to pick up paint brushes and help create a work she hoped would start conversations about immigrants at a time of heated debate about the nation’s policies toward those who arrive from other countries.

In an interview, Ayress said she wanted to educate the public about the history of immigration, including the violence that accompanied the settling of the nation. “Native Americans were the first ones here, were killed and then other groups came,” she said. (more…)

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In the news, August 1-7

Posted on 01. Aug, 2010 by editor.

The work of the renowned architect C.B.J. Snyder, best known for his work on public schools, will be discussed by researcher Jean Arrington. The free lecture is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, August 18 at p.m. at the Mott Haven Library, 321 E. 140th St. off Alexander Ave, and is sponsored by the Bronx Historical Society. Call the library at (718) 665-4878 for directions or other details.

Success Charter Network is planning to open a new public elementary school in District 7 in Mott Haven in the fall of 2011. The group will hold a public meeting on Wednesday, August 11, at 4 p.m. in the auditorium of Bronx Success Academy 1, at 510 E. 141st St. at the corner of Brook Ave, so that residents can learn more about the school. Those wishing to attend should RSVP to Alexa Birnbaum at Alexa.Birnbaum@successcharters.org by Tuesday, August 10.

“Changes in The Bronx” is on view at LDR Studio Gallery at 137 Alexander Ave #10, through Aug. 4. “Changes in the Bronx” is a two-person show featuring the video of Benton-C Bainbridge and the photography of Luis D. Rosado who play witness to the changes happening in their home borough and beyond. The closing reception will be held from 5:30PM – 9:30 p.m., followed by an after party until midnight.

The killing spree continues. Carrel Ogarro, 25, was shot execution-style near his home in the Jackson Houses early Saturday. It was the fourth homicide in eight days. Police sources told the Daily News Ogarro, who was convicted in 2008 of drug possession, may have been dealing drugs from his apartment on East 158th Street.

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In the news, July 26-August 1

Posted on 26. Jul, 2010 by editor.

Beginning a string of three homicides in seven days, 18-year-old Troynisha Harris was killed by a man who jumped from a Lincoln Town Car and plunged a knife into her neck on July 24. Harris and a friend were sitting on a stoop on 166th Street at 3:30 a.m. when the attacker struck. When Harris’s companion struggled with him, he stabbed him in the stomach, then fled. On Saturday, police released video of the attack in an effort to find the killer.

Shortly before 6:30 p.m. Sunday a man was shot and killed at 681 Courtlandt Avenue in Melrose, the Daily News reported. Police did not identify the victim, who was in his 20s, and whose bodies was riddle with bullets, they said.

A well-known resident died Wednesday, four days after he was beaten and stomped by thieves who stole his cell phone. Surveillance cameras caught the attack by four men, who beat and kicked Juan Lopez, 54, as he was returning to his home on Cauldwell Avenue. “There wasn’t one person in the neighborhood who didn’t know my father,” his daughter Melissa Lopez told the Daily News. “Nobody can believe that anyone could do such a brutal thing to my father.”

Former waitresses at a Mott Haven strip club have filed suit in federal court, charging that were groped, had to fend off sexual demands from their bosses and had their tips stolen. “They degraded us, they insulted us. They touched us,” Jasmine Felipe, 26, of the Bronx told the Daily News about working at Sin City, the club on Park Avenue and East 138th Street that bills itself as “New York City’s # 1 Strip Club!”

When Congress voted to spend $37 million Tuesday to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rep. Jose Serrano, who represents Mott Haven and Hunts Point, voted No. Serrano called for an end to the Afghanistan war, and said e U.S. forces should leave Pakistan unless Congress gives specific authority for them to be there. “I believe that sending forces to Afghanistan after 9/11 to root out the terrorists, their supporters and their training camps was the correct move. Nine years later, I believe that it is past time to end our involvement in that nation, because it is clear we are stuck in a quagmire and not on the road to peace or victory,” he said after the vote, which won approval for President Barack Obama’s policy 308-114 with many Democrats voting against the expenditure while Republicans voted with the White House. If military involvement in Pakistan were to be put to a vote, Serrano said, he would vote No again.

Every year, police forces across the country hold a one-day summer event called “National Night Out” to bring police officers and community residents together to discuss local issues and concerns outside the tense environment of precincts and meeting rooms. This year’s event in Mott Haven will take place in St. Mary’s Park on St. Ann’s Avenue on Tuesday, August 3rd, where officers from the 40th precinct will be present. Among this year’s featured events, high school students and adult volunteers from the United Playaz organization will stage an event to promote the need for peaceful conflict resolution among young people. The event is scheduled to run between 3 and 8 p.m.

Brook Park in Mott Haven was the scene for the second annual Festival for Immigrants on July 24, as hundreds gathered to hear activists speak out against Arizona’s controversial new law, which many feel discriminates against Latinos. There were musical and dance performances, including the Mexican traditional dance troupe Cetilizli Naucampa, which performs dances based on the Nauhatl traditions. Speakers called on the public to join a planned protest against the Arizona Diamondbacks when they visit Citifield in Queens to play the Mets on Friday, July 30.

The Bronx Culture Trolley will make its next run on Wednesday, Aug. 4, with a number of stops in Hunts Point and Mott Haven, including 52 Park, The Point CDC, Bronxartspace, LDR Studio Gallery and the Bruckner Bar and Grill. The free ride begins at Longwood Art Gallery, Hostos Community College, 450 Grand Concourse at East 149th Street.

Cecil Joseph, who was briefly the interim Bronx Borough President when his boss Stanley Simon was indicted for corruption in the mid 1980s, has opened a new McDonald’s across from Lincoln Hospital. After heading the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, Joseph, who grew up in the Patterson Houses, turned entrepreneur, forming a company to acquire fast food franchises.

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Mass Transit Theater brings the streets to the stage

Posted on 23. May, 2010 by Alex Green IV.

Four high school students stand in a line, complaining about how their school treated them.

“Any morning when you get off the bus, you can find zillions of police vans
around your school,” says one, “and 60 or 70 extra cops setting up temporary scanners, and all the students in long lines trying to get through the detectors
without being late to class.”

The students were actors, performing a short play about the growing police presence in public schools and the brutality students sometimes experience at the hands of school-based cops. The play, “Guilty Until Proven Innocent,” was the centerpiece of a party at Hostos College to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bronx’s longest-running theater troupe, Mass Transit Theater and Video. (more…)

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Earth Fest reaches out with music and games

Posted on 12. May, 2010 by Nick Loomis.

Legendary emcee Grandmaster Caz has been packing parties in the South Bronx since 1974, but none quite like the one at St. Mary’s Park in Mott Haven for this year’s Earth Day on April 24. .
 

Soundslide by Nick Loomis

By noon on the beautiful spring day, the crowd was already dancing to the Staple Singers’ “I’ll take you there”–courtesy of DJ Jazzy Jay on the wheels of steel.
 
“Aw yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do,” boomed Caz’s amplified voice. “We’re gonna take you to a greener planet!”
 
One of the founding fathers of hip-hop, Caz said he was honored to be the emcee for the third annual GetGreen South Bronx Earth Fest in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.
 
On the first Earth Day in 1970, few would have imagined that the South Bronx would not only celebrate environmentalism, but, in many ways be taking a leading role in the green revolution.

Among the organizations represented at the Earth Fest, were Melrose-based Nos Quedamos, which has led the way for Melrose Commons to become the first neighborhood in New York State to be honored by the U.S. Green Building Council for its environmentally-sensitive business practices.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has just honored another participant, the Hunts Point-based Sustainable South Bronx, which pioneered the creation of the South Bronx Greenway. When it is completed, it will be a recreational trail dotted with new parks extending from the Bronx River to the Port Morris waterfront and a bridge to Randall’s Island.

More than 40 other local organizations and businesses set up tables at the event. To encourage children to visit and learn, each child who came by got a stamp that could be cashed for prizes like reusable water bottles, pens and plants for community gardens.

Four live birds attracted crowds throughout the day to the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy table. The birds, all found near the city’s waterways, drew flocks off children.

“The idea here is to try to inspire kids to think about nature a little bit,” said Ludger Balan, the conservancy’s executive environmental program director. “There’s nature in our urban environment, and we’re teaching them a way to appreciate it, learn about it, and hopefully inspire them to become some of the future stewards of this environment.”

“We think that children are at the prime age to absorb this information and teach their parents,” said Andrea Schaffer principal of CityMatters LLC and the event’s chief organizer. “But you have to start young so that it becomes ingrained, second nature to recycle and reuse materials instead of consuming and throwing out.”

Jehlani Bowers, 6, of Mott Haven got the message. She attended GetGreen for the second year in a row with her mother, Nedra Bowers. Jehlani bounced from activity to activity with a painted face, accumulating enough stamps for a plant for their community garden.

“It’s actually helping her out in school because they’re going through, with Earth Day, how we recycle and how we save and how we reuse. So she’s making that connection with being here today,” her mother said.

Participants in a SoBRO after-school program climbed on stage to compete in a “Music Gets Me Green” contest, performing a song they wrote accompanied by a music video. “I like music and I found the opportunity,” said Lenny Nivar, 14, who is in the 10th grade at Green Dot New York Charter School. Along with Ricardo Korsah, 16, Nivar, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 9, performed a rap song with some verses in English and others in Spanish.

SoBRO provided the prizes, as well—four cardboard trophies in the shape of trees. It took 30 students in its Education for Life program two weeks to make the trees, said Evalina Ruiz, a 22-year old who is working toward her GED at the community organization. “You have to cut, you have to paste, you have to just really be dedicated to it,” she said.

As the Bronx Borough President’s Office and the city’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education teamed up to hold a recycling drive to collect old cell phones, computers, printers, TVs, used clothing and sneakers, the music continue on stage.

One group in the music competition ended its performance with a variation of a chant as old as hip-hop itself, and almost as old as Earth Day.

“When I say ‘get,’ ya’ll say ‘Green.’”

“Get.”

“Green.”

“Get.”

“Green.”

Alex Green IV contributed reporting to this story.

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Mott Haven art tour attracts the curious

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by Sergey Kadinsky.

Barry Kostrinsky paused near the place where the bond trader Sherman McCoy took a wrong turn to the Bronx and disaster in Bonfire of the Vanities, the Tom Wolfe novel that cemented the South Bronx’s reputation as a terrifying place.

Some people still ask him “whether it’s safe here,” Kostrinsky said. But he wants to polish a new image for Mott Haven, showing it off to curious art lovers who may still be a bit timid about walking the streets alone. (more…)

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Show uses Mott Haven streets to tell story of the Bronx

Posted on 05. Dec, 2009 by Christina Herrera.

Experiencing the recent performance of a show about the South Bronx was like looking at a double-exposure.

When the audience for “The Provenance of Beauty” took a bus tour through the streets of Mott Haven and Hunts Point, this Fall, they viewed the neighborhoods’ streets through the window and its past on video monitors.

And the spectators were also the spectacle. (more…)

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Blast from Mott Haven’s past recalls an artistic keystone

Posted on 05. Nov, 2009 by Lindsay Lazarski.

Hundreds of people pass by Third Avenue and 147^th Street each day without a second glance at the storefronts that house a nail salon, a hair braiding salon and, hidden from the street, a training school for security guards.

There’s no sign that 30 years ago, this was one of the hippest spots in New York City.

For 13 years, the graffiti covered storefront known as Fashion Moda, housed a collective of innovative artists, break-dancers, performers and other creative minds who painted, printed and sculpted, silk-screened T-shirts and sometimes just hung out, feeding on the energy each brought to the spot.

But for 11 days during September, Bronx-based multimedia artist Hatuey Ramos Fermin brought together the work of artists from the past and the present to pay homage to the former artist space and concept known as Fashion Moda.

The name incorporates the word for fashion in four languages–English, Spanish, Chinese and Russian. The idea behind Fashion Moda is that art can be created, shown and appreciated by anyone, anywhere.

So using the walls of On Time, the security guard training school, Fermin curated an exhibit at the former Fashion Moda with the work of 20 artists, five from the past and 15 from the present.  

“We are doing a tribute to the space,” said Fermin. “It was a place for a lot of experimentation, street art and also fine art.  A place where a lot of different artists met and got their names out.” 

When he started Fashion Moda, Stefan Eins, fashion aimed to be trendsetting, something that was current and of the time–an appropriate concept, he believed, for his pioneering and chic art space. 

Born in Austria, Eins founded Fashion Moda in 1978, fixing the broken windows in the front of the building and inviting both neighbors from the community and artist friends from downtown to use the space.  

Eins added that graffiti artist, Keith Haring, was the first to design a T-shirt for Fashion Moda, and used Fashion Moda as a place to show his early work.  

Craig Howard, who owns the On Time Security Guard Training School said he agreed to have his school transformed back into an art gallery for a few weeks because he remembered growing up in the area with friends who painted graffiti throughout the Bronx.

“I just thought it was something good to do and show people out there something different than the regular norm,” said Howard.

As part of the exhibition, one artist created a bust of Howard that now hangs on the wall above his desk and just over a colorful drawing by his 9-year-old daughter. 

“I’m ecstatic,” said Howard with a smile about his sculpture. “Now when things go wrong I don’t really have to look in the mirror because I can look right up on the wall and see myself.”

Jeremy Nadel, an art teacher at a high school nearby, showed his work at Fashion Moda in 1986.  He recalled Fashion Moda as a place that brought together the melting pot of New York City, a place where he felt safe. 

The black and white photographs that hung on the walls of the retrospective, depicting a 1970’s boom box on a rickety park bench and of an oil drum fire reminded Nadel of a different era, a time he remembered when fireworks were lit the sky during the art shows at Fashion Moda and “regular folks” would listen to old school hip-hop music in front of the building. 

Stefin Eins, Hatuey Ramos Fermín, and Sandra Skurvida gather at the opening night of the exhibit Refashioning Moda

Bronx Artist Libertad Guerra, who moved to Mott Haven five years ago from Brooklyn, said she too appreciates the history of Fashion Moda. 

Among the paintings, the hooded sweatshirts covered with graffiti and a collage of Xeroxed prints, Guerra contributed a video installation piece that juxtaposed images from the Bronx with images from the movie Metropolis.  

Guerra, who founded her own artist collective out of her home on Alexander Avenue called Spanic Attack, hosts poetry readings, film parties and even academic discussions about urban issues.

“Fashion Moda is very important–what it meant historically and the imitations that came out of it,” said Guerra, who studied art history at New York University.  “Many of the things that define the canon of alternative art of the New York scene in the 70’s and 80’s were started by Fashion Moda.”

Another Bronx artist who became involved with Fashion Moda in the later years was, Miguelangel (Miky) Ruiz. He walked past the nail and hair salons twice before he realized where the retrospective was. 

“What I like about it is how anonymous it is,” said Ruiz.  “It’s a change of pace from the downtown scenes and the New York cliques.”

The exhibition at the one-time art space brought together the older generations of artists with the newer generations of artist.  

And although Eins, with a feather in his hair, remembers fondly the artists and his work of Fashion Moda’s past, he remarks,  “there is no reason to be nostalgic, because this is happening now.”

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

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Artists fret as tourists beat a path to their studios

Posted on 27. Jul, 2009 by editor.

By Azriel James Relph
Azriel.james.relph@gmail.com

“Ask about my art, not my rent” reads the sign posted at the door to Edwin Gonzalez’s apartment on Third Avenue and East 134th Street.

As Gonzalez pours wine and fixes lunch for friends and visitors who wander in for the third annual Mott Haven Open Artist Studio Tour, Melissa Calderon, one of the artists displaying paintings, photographs and sculpture in Gonzalez’s studio, explains the sign. “Last year people kept asking ‘What do you pay?’” she says.

This year they hoped the art alone would be the center of attention, but in a place like Mott Haven, the conversation inevitably turns to the neighborhood itself.

Calderon – who has a solo show in June at the Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos Community College – used to have a studio of her own in Mott Haven. She had to move to Norwood when the rents shot up.

“Artists come here for a year or two and have to leave,” she laments. “There is a history that is totally gone, but those of us who remember hold the torch.”

Despite the rising cost of space in the area, Mott Haven remains an attractive place for artists to work, as evidenced by the many studios open during the May 2nd tour put together by the Bronx Council on the Arts. The Bronx Culture Trolley ferried visitors to more than 15 studios and galleries.

Gonzalez, whose work depicts mythological figures like fairies, points out what makes the area so attractive to artists: “There are less distractions than places like Williamsburg, which I appreciate.”
“If you are a Bronx artist,” agrees Calderon, “you are here because you’re working – not because there is a scene here.”

The comparisons and contrasts to Williamsburg continue a couple of blocks away in the shared studio of the newlywed artists Darcy Dahl and Beth Brideau, above the Bruckner Bar and Grill.
“I wanted a nice quiet spot that’s not Williamsburg,” says Brideau. “On Sunday it’s quiet here.”

At the same time, Brideau – who has been working in the studio for five years on sculptures based on topographical images of forests, and who has a piece on display at the Museum of Modern Art– sees the other side of the coin: once a neighborhood becomes “this hip place where you’ve got to be,” she warns, “they raise the rents and then no one can live here.”

In a way, Dahl’s paintings reflect the changing neighborhood. He says his pieces are never finished, and he constantly adds new colors and shapes to them. He also projects videos with abstract images in pulsating kaleidoscopic loops, as in the three-month show he had at the Bronx Museum of Art.

A Dahl piece – like the neighborhood where he created it – never looks the same as it did the last time you saw it. “Everything has to do with context and the situation of the moment,” he says.
For this couple, the situation of the moment led them to begin to share their tiny studio space when they got married a year ago. They could no longer afford their own separate work spaces –even in the South Bronx.

Gerhard Frommel, an Austrian artist who has been in New York for eight years, had a hard time finding a place he could afford anywhere in the city. “The spaces I was offered as art studios in Mott Haven were more expensive than Manhattan,” he exclaims. “People are really greedy here.”

After two years of searching, Frommel finally walked up to some ironworkers to ask if they knew of any affordable work space. They pointed him toward a large brick warehouse near the mouth of the Third Avenue Bridge, where, in a piano repair shop, he created a tiny studio reached by a meandering path outlined by hundreds of dust-collecting and broken pianos.

“I didn’t find the space, the space found me,” he says, as he shows visitors his technique for mixing the paints he uses for his abstract works.

Up the street, Francisco Vallejo and Louis Nieves – two artists from Hunts Point – look up from the easels they have set up on the sidewalk.

“SoHo is no longer the sole owner of the art scene,” says Vallejo. The South Bronx art community, he says, has “been here a while, but it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.”

He acknowledges the double-edged sword of getting that attention however, noting, “It’s gonna displace people.”

“It’s the beginning of the end,” Nieves agrees. “Gentrification is coming.”

But Carey Clark, visual arts director at The Point Community Development Corporation in Hunts Point and a Mott Haven resident who also opened her studio for the day, says it’s more complicated than that. She argues that real estate speculators, not artists, cause displacement. The only fault she finds with artists is their tendency to keep to themselves.

“Artists get the label of the first wave of gentrifiers because they don’t get involved in the communities they work in enough,” she says.

Back at the Bruckner Bar and Grill, in a gallery behind the bar, two visiting artists from the North Bronx also try to wrap their heads around what is happening in Mott Haven.

Ira Merritt and Aaron Olshan, from Amalgamated Houses in Van Cortland Village, have had their work on display in Mott Haven since March. They were surprised by what they found.
“It used to be rougher here – let’s put it that way,” says Merritt.

Still, he added, the reputation of the South Bronx hasn’t caught up with reality. When we had our opening, a lot of people we thought would come stayed away,” says Merritt with a note of disappointment in his voice.

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Trees talk on the Grand Concourse

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by Jeanmarie Evelly.

By Jeanmarie Evelly
jeanmarie.evelly@motthavenherald.com

The Grand Concourse, the iconic boulevard that stretches along four miles of the Bronx, has 100 years of stories to tell. This summer and fall, Bronx residents are lending their voices to share those stories—through the trees that line the street’s parks and sidewalks.

The Tree Museum is the creation of Irish artist Katie Holten, who was commissioned to create a work of public art to celebrate this year’s 100^th anniversary of the Grand Concourse.

From 138th street to Mosholu Parkway, 100 trees tell their stories. Green discs on the sidewalk bearing the Tree Museum logo identify the trees and offer a phone number that visitors can call, either from home or from their mobile phones, to hear a short audio clip about the Bronx narrated by people who live and work in the community.

“It’s kind of like an Easter egg hunt,” Holten said of the markers scattered along the Concourse.

Call tree number 6, a honey locust in front of the post office at 588 Grand Concourse, and you’ll hear community activist Majora Carter talk about growing up in the Bronx. Harry Bubbins, director of the local environmental group Friends of Brook Park, narrates for tree number 13, an American elm at the entrance to Franz Siegel Park.

Call this tree outside the post office at 588 Grand Concourse to hear Majora Carter, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx, talk about growing up in the South Bronx.

Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan, who participated in the project, said he thinks using trees is an appropriate way to celebrate the street’s centennial.

“The Grand Concourse is noted for the fact that it’s tree-lined,” he said. “That’s one of the things that makes the Grand Concourse outstanding, so it made a great deal of sense.”

Ultan made recordings for seven different trees along the Concourse, offering historical facts and anecdotes about the street.

Opened to traffic in November of 1909, the Concourse was modeled after the Champs Elysees in Paris, and soon came to mark achievement in the borough, Ultan said.

“The Grand Concourse in the Bronx was the equivalent of 5th Avenue and Park Avenue in Manhattan,” he explained. “It was a symbol that you had made it.”

Holten said she knew very little about the area when she launched the project in 2007.

“I spent about two months researching and spending as much time as possible on the Concourse,” she said.  “I kind of fell in love with it.”

Organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wave Hill and the Department of Parks and Recreation, The Tree Museum debuted on June 21st and will run until Oct. 12th.

The audio guide is available by calling (718) 408-2501 and entering the extension for any tree, numbered 1 to 100. More information, including a map of the project, can be found at www.treemuseum.org.

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