Bank Swallow, Common Redpoll, Northern Shoveler, White-faced Ibis by Creative Art Works

Painted: 8/9/2018

About the Birds: The Bank Swallow requires vertical embankments in wild or disturbed settings for nesting colonies. Audubon's climate model forecasts a mass migration northward for the species if climate change continues apace. Urban centers like New York, Boston, and Cleveland would no longer host local populations. Meanwhile, the Common Redpoll, a treat for birders in cold northern winters, is predicted to lose 86 percent of its current breeding range, from Fairbanks, Alaska, east to Newfoundland. The charismatic Northern Shoveler inhabits open wetlands, which makes global warming impacts on rainfall a big concern for the species. Audubon's models show a 35 percent drop in the duck's summer range. The White-faced Ibis, which enjoys freshwater marshes in the Western United States would face a similar loss of its breeding habitat.

About the Artists: A 32-year-old nonprofit, Creative Art Works empowers young people through the visual and multimedia arts. It works in underserved neighborhoods of New York City in public schools, community centers, parks, and libraries to provide dynamic art-making experiences for youth who otherwise lack access. Students are never charged for participation in our programs. Instead, Creative Art Works hires Youth Apprentices directly and as a worksite manager with the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development Summer Youth Employment Program.

The long, low walls edge of Jacob Schiff Park, where this mural is painted, edge a tree-lined pathway leading into a co-located public school. Tying in crucial themes of safety and freedom for immigrants who currently face flagrant political adversity, the group of young artists chose to tell a narrative through the sequence of parapets and wall. The narrative reflects the migration of birds traveling from one end of the park and transforming through spatial art elements and seasonal landscapes to the school wall. There, children from diverse backgrounds are featured in a nest where they are fed knowledge from the less migratory Common Redpoll, which represents school personnel. Surrounding imagery reflects the site's history and illustrates relevant themes of childhood development. The positive and negative space arrows among the parapets and the school wall further symbolize patterns of migration, immigration, and gentrification as it pertains to the area.

Teaching artists:

Jessie Novik is a permit-holding, board-certified creative arts therapist, teaching artist, and muralist with a masters degree from Pratt Institute. She earned her BFA in 2009 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where she concentrated in painting and sculpture. Drawn toward fantastical realism, Novik loves to paint landscapes and figures based on observation and travel, filtered through her rich imagination. 

Lauren Genutis specializes in sculptural fabrication and has helped produce costume relief sculptures and props for music videos such as Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood.” She was also part of the model-making and -building team responsible for fabricating Manhattan island at the new Times Square attraction, Gulliver’s Gate. Genutis's most recent project consisted of sculpting four life- to large-scale ghostly figures for Daniel Arsham’s latest show in Moscow. This was her third mural program with Creative Art Works.

Ro Garrido was born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Queens, New York. She is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist who works with collages, mixed media, archives, and installations. Her work predominantly grapples with themes of memory and intimacy and further explores migration, history, violence, trauma, and their effect. Garrido’s work has been featured at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Goddard College, Flux Factory, and The Laundromat Project.

Youth Apprentices: Alexis Taite, Britney Roache, Anaya Damon, Colin Zhang, Denisha Wright,  Jada John, Gasser Bagoga,  Jaheem Davis, Jayvon Richardson, Lakia Munnerlyn, Jerome Johnson, Larry Espinoza, Malachi Riley, Priom Mouri, Musfika Moshahid, Rafael Morales, Roberto Cruzado, Stokely Scarlett, Shanice Buddington, Tasia Goodner, Simone Alwanse, Aisha Konate, Ryan Bagot, D’laja Martin, Tiffany Guzman, Zachary Johnson