Snyder High School Students and Teachers Complete Mural Project at MLK HUB
By Jon Whiten • Aug 24th, 2010 • Category: Arts, Blog
Clockwise from top left: Students Fatoumata Camara, Olivia Green, Simone Inmann and Calvin Laforte; teacher Kimberly Wiseman
There’s a new splash of color at the MLK HUB shopping center, as a mural project undertaken by students and teachers from Snyder High School was unveiled earlier this month. The project was conceived by Robert Antonicello, the executive director of the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency (JCRA), which manages the HUB.
“The HUB is the town center for the hill community [and] it should feel like a town center,” he says. “What the kids from Synder High School did this summer at the HUB began the process of reclaiming the center of the hill community.”
Thirteen students and three faculty members helped create the works, the largest of which measures 5 by 15 feet. There are eight large murals, and nearly 20 smaller murals, in addition to seven pieces that were painted on canvas and mounted inside the Extra supermarket.
“The kids really enjoyed this and are taking a lot of pride in their accomplishment” says Kimberly Wiseman, a teacher at Synder who coordinated the students. “This was an excellent way of getting the local youth involved while letting them earn a few dollars.” The students were paid $10 an hour by the JCRA.
“It was important to compensate these students during this very lean summer,” Antonicello says. “We were happy to help them earn some money before they head back to school.”
Ward F councilwoman Viola Richardson says the mural project is “the beginning of the rebirth” of not only the HUB itself, but the entire area.
“There will be many other artistic events featuring our young people from the community,” she says, “but most of all the development of the area is finally coming to fruition.”
This is just the beginning of art at the HUB; Antonicello tells us there will be two locations at the shopping center with galleries showing work at this fall’s Artists’ Studio Tour. He says the art is just one part of his agency’s work in bringing “vitality, spirit and ownership” back to the once-beleaguered plaza.
“It takes time and some financial resources to turn the property around, but most of all it takes a sense of caring and paying attention to details,” he says.
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Jon Whiten is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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