Culture & Community | Graffiti | High School in the Community | Public art | Arts & Culture | Wooster Square
Top: The Patel cousins in action. Lucy Gellman Photo. Bottom: The finished section of wall. Nicholas Perrone Photo.
Beneath a low-hanging gray sky on Union Street, cousins Jana and Priya Patel were thinking about the message they wanted to impart on their fellow students. After contemplating words already painted across the wall—Welcome! read one message. Be You / Do You / For You, read another with a heart—they dipped their brushes into thick white paint, and covered their palms and fingers to the tips. A handprint felt like the proper sign off after a year of hard work.
Those handprints have since joined a rainbow-patterned and graffiti-graced wall across from High School in the Community, where students completed the lower half of a mural on the very last day of the school year in late June, and graffiti professionals finished the work shortly afterwards. In addition to students, the collaboration features artist Michael DeAngelo, as well as graffiti writers Oista, Aoke, Rage3, Moab, Craze and Absrd.
This year, it’s part of a larger “rebrand” of the school—with a public art component baked in—that Principal Nicholas Perrone has launched to reimagine HSC for generations of students and educators to come. While the school has held onto its social justice core (it has, after all, turned out student leaders like Japhet Gonzalez, Diana Robles, and Jonaily Colon), it has pivoted to a focus on “Leadership and Exploration,” from within its classrooms to beyond it. More on that below.
“The community should embrace artistic expression,” said Perrone, who transferred to HSC from Edgewood School at the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year. He acknowledged the sometimes-ephemeral nature of public art and graffiti, and how important it is to him that the artwork endures. “And we want the art to stay up.”
Top: Students Josh Burton and Caleal Brown work on the mural. Lucy Gellman Photo. Bottom: Nicholas Perrone Photo.
That’s where the professionals come in. During the school year (which saw a new mural across the street), he and DeAngelo met to talk about a mural project that DeAngelo is working on later this summer, likely in August. At some point, DeAngelo mentioned that the school, located at 175 Water St., was a kind of landmark to many graffiti writers in the city, including himself: it used to stand next door to a vacant building that artists very much made their canvas.
By the time the city demolished that building in 2016, it had become both an hub for artistic expression and a launch pad for many artists in New Haven, including members of the group Hi Crew that had been tapped for the Under 91 Project two years before. So when the proposal to beautify Union Street came up, DeAngelo talked to fellow artists, who were happy to return to their old stomping grounds.
“I’ve been making art in New Haven my whole life,” said DeAngelo in an interview Wednesday afternoon. “There’s always a need to get people involved and excited. I think that what Nick [Perrone] is doing … he has incredible energy and it’s very clear to me that he is taking action and doing his best job.”
Top: Rising senior Daniel Smolnik. Lucy Gellman Photo. Bottom: Nicholas Perrone Photo.
On a humid Monday morning at the end of June, a handful of HSC students added finishing touches to their section of the piece, as Perrone checked their work. In one spot, he added an apostrophe, making a word plural. In another, he applied a daub of white paint to a large heart. Every so often, a student-turned-artist looked toward the sky, placing their hands in front of them to check for raindrops.
Rising senior Daniel Smolnik, who is already thinking about the schools he wants to apply to in the fall, contemplated where to add the words “You Are Great,” a message that he wants to greet students and passers-by with as they enter and exit the school. He settled on a lime green section of wall, framed by the city’s downtown skyline as he painted.
“It’s fun to paint! Plus this will make a lasting impact on my community,” he said. “Art is important to everything.”
Half a block down, rising juniors Jana and Priya Patel (the two are cousins) worked on a section of wall that glowed bright yellow, even as the sky continued to darken. This year, the duo stepped into student leadership long before the mural, as two of the three HSC students to compete in National History Day at the University of Maryland.
Top: Nicholas Perrone, who in late June completed his first year as principal of HSC. Bottom: Nicholas Perrone Photo.
For that project, the two focused on the Bengal Famine of 1943, and the sociopolitical and economic conditions that accelerated it. They delighted in learning—and then sharing—the often-bypassed history of M. S. Swaminathan, the scientist who saved millions of people from hunger and sparked what is now known as India’s Green Revolution with his understanding of seeds and growing. “He saved so many people from dying,” said Priya.
So when the cousins heard about the mural, they jumped at the opportunity. Like History Day, it was a chance to flex their leadership skills and provide a resource for other students.
“I feel like I get to show who I am,” Priya said. “I love being a nice person and I like helping people out. I feel like if we do that [kindness] in our own world, maybe we can get there in life.”
“I like how it fills up the space and gives it personality,” she added.
Maddie LaRose: "Happiness is contagious. I think it can be spread more.”"
Nearby, professional mural artist Madelyn “Maddie” LaRose completed a section of wall that read “Bring Joy / Be Joy” in thick block letters. While LaRose is not an HSC alum—she graduated from Wilbur Cross in 2016—she was excited when she heard about the chance to help out at the school. She’s been on the other side of watching people pay it forward: in 2022, LaRose was one of the lead artists on a mural project at Centra San Jose, at 290 Grand Ave. She jumps in to help when she can.
“I find joy in any sort of community event,” she said. “I think coming from our community, it’s important to not only bring joy, but to be the joy as well. Happiness is contagious. I think it can be spread more.”
This summer, the mural is part of Perrone’s larger hope in changing the perception of the school, which finished the year with 234 students. In the next several months, he is raising funds to pay artists Dooley-O, DeAngelo, Candyce “Marsh” John and Kiana V. Ware (who has worked with DeAngelo on a “cooling mural” at the city’s Armory) on mural projects around the school, including a history of HSC.
“We’re updating our image,” he said as LaRose completed the words “Be Joy” just before raindrops began to fall. Currently, he said, he sees HSC as a school in transition, where students and staff are figuring out who and what they want to be. Changes like beautifying the school, adding a “huge rope course” to the gym, and changing the school’s courtroom to a “community room” are part of that process.
“All of this came out of what the school community was asking for,” Perrone said. “Doing all these projects is revitalizing and bringing life into the school.”