When Nadine Horton set out to start a community garden near her New Haven home eight years ago, she considered several sites before finding what she considered the perfect spot: a patch of land in front of the vacant Goffe Street Armory, an historic building that many in the community would like to see revitalized.
So when one of her fellow gardeners, Elihu Rubin, who is also the Henry Hart Rice Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Yale School of Architecture, later suggested that the armory wall might make an ideal canvas for a climate-themed mural the university and the city were partnering on, she thought it made perfect sense.
“Where better to put a beautiful huge mural about climate change than in a garden and on the wall of a building we’re trying to bring attention to?” Horton said.
That massive mural in Dixwell, believed to be the largest in New Haven, is now both a whimsical backdrop for the garden and an eye-catching conversation starter for passersby. Officially unveiled in late October, it is the result of a cooperative effort between three of Yale’s professional schools — the schools of Art, the Environment, and Architecture — and New Haven’s Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism.
It also marks the launch of a newly created Mural Apprenticeship Program that will train local artists in the art of large-scale mural making. The program “is really important because it was this idea of growing your own,” Kymberly Pinder, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art, said during an announcement event, held last month, in front of the mural. “We have so many talented people here in Connecticut and especially in New Haven. Why don’t we make sure that all of these many empty walls in New Haven actually have enough artists to cover them?”
This mural is part of an initiative called Public Art as Urban Climate Solutions, which is part of Yale Planetary Solutions, a university-wide initiative aimed at developing practical responses that will have an impact on Earth’s global crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and the disruption of biogeochemical cycles.
Its design, headed up by local artist Mike DeAngelo, is intended to promote awareness of the disproportionate impact of climate change on urban communities of color.
At the same time, it is also helping to mitigate one of those impacts: rising temperatures in cities due to the heat island effect. After DeAngelo hand-drew the design on the building, the color was applied with an innovative cooling paint technology that reflects UV radiation and lowers surface temperatures. (The same paint was used on a smaller mural in Fair Haven that served as a test run of sorts.)
Climate change [is] not always top of mind here … So you have to reflect the neighborhood itself, and there are lots of little pieces in this mural that you can pick out from the neighborhood.
The mural stretches across the entire length of the building, the spectrum of colors gradually shifting from reds and oranges at one end, which reflect rising temps in the world’s cities, to cool blues at the other, a nod to the natural environment. Artfully embedded throughout are images that call to mind the mural’s surroundings: utility poles and a pair of sneakers hanging over overhead wires, and the garden’s insects, flowers, and the white tubular arches that are used to structure and organize the beds.
Horton, who works as a community research assistant at Yale School of Medicine, said she believes the mural captured the neighborhood “beautifully,” something that was crucial if the intent is to engage residents.
“Climate change is a big concept,” she said. “It could mean a lot of things. It’s not always top of mind here because the immediate thought in neighborhoods like ours is, I just want to make sure my family’s taken care of. So you have to reflect the neighborhood itself, and there are lots of little pieces in this mural that you can pick out from the neighborhood.”
The final design came together after the team gathered input at community workshops and brainstorming sessions, and, not insignificantly, obtained the approvals necessary to apply paint to a building that is on the National Register of Historic Places and a designated site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail, said Daniel Pizarro, an artist who oversaw the mural project as a Yale Climate Engagement Fellow at the School of Art.
It sparked folks’ creative imaginations in ways that I didn’t expect.
“It sparked folks’ creative imaginations in ways that I didn’t expect,” said Pizarro, a 2012 graduate of the Yale School of Art. “Everyone was excited about the potential of what this could provide to the Dixwell community.”
And once work was underway, the mural began sparking conversations immediately, said Kiana “V” Ware, a local artist who was one of four selected apprentices.
“Every day that we were out there painting we had regulars that would come by,” she said. “A young boy and his sister used to come by after school and they would show us their drawings. A lot of people wanted to know what we were painting. I think the level of conversation that the mural will start will be very positive for the community.”
