His friends call him “Mack,” and he has been dead for about ten years. He always wears a baseball cap and a handsome grin. It’s been about twenty months since I first noticed him. I see him every day when I walk to and from the subway station, whenever I go out to meet friends or buy milk or walk the dog. Shawn continues to be a presence in my life. In touching on many facets of Bed-Stuy - popular, granular, built, and perceived - Sanford’s account embodies how personal and collective memories are embedded in our public spaces and how time simultaneously erodes and enhances them. Sanford’s difficulty learning more about one mural’s subject and its fading face speak to demographic shifts in a neighborhood that saw a 20% decrease in its black population and a parallel rise in white residents from 2000 to 2010. The memorial murals provide a unique lens into the community and its evolution. In the personal essay below, Kristian Sanford, a relatively recent resident, investigates this one aspect of his neighborhood’s visual culture. The memorial murals are just one part of a much broader tradition. Boys & Girls High School houses a renowned collection of pieces by local black artists the 56-year-old Fulton Art Fair showcases art from the African diaspora in Fulton Park each June (the forerunner of the now-Fort Greene-based Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, founded in Bed-Stuy in 1999) for the past two years, STooPS has carried on this legacy by showcasing local artists’ work on the neighborhood’s stoops, yards, and streets. These murals fit into a broader lineage of public art in what is one of the city’s iconic historically black communities. Sometimes, this paint is literal, as is the case with the rich diversity of murals in memoriam found throughout Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn - public artworks that reflect a particular history of violence, racial prejudice, and, in some cases, the mixture of the two. They are collages fashioned from layer upon layer of small accretions that we plaster and paint onto our environments. Neighborhoods of contemporary New York are primarily defined by the choices and actions of the people who call them home.
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