Young Artists Paint For Peace In Fair Haven

Thai Williams. Lucy Gellman Photos.

Thai Williams studied a black-and-white flower blooming on the side of Fair Haven Library, a brush hovering over its petals. On the tip, a smear of pink paint glowed gem-like in the afternoon sun. He paused, and then extended his arm, putting a brush to his power-washed brick canvas.  

In the sticky heat of Wednesday afternoon, Williams joined representatives of CITYarts, Creative Arts Workshop, and the Yale School of Art at the Fair Haven Library, as artists launched a new peace mural on the front wall of the building. Inspired by a “Pieces for Peace” summer exhibition and workshop at CAW, the mural integrates doves, flowers, vegetables, and silhouettes of buildings from 10 students at ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA). None of them came to paint Wednesday. 

The lead artists on the project include Perez and Mitchell Rembert, both of whom grew up in New Haven (Rembert is a son of the late artist Winfred Rembert). The project marks the fourth wall in the “50 States of Peace,” a nation-wide initiative from CITYarts to install exhibitions and public art projects dedicated to peace in all 50 states. There are currently peace murals in Harlem, New York, Bethlehem, Penn., and Anaheim, Calif.

“This is all about uniting our youth, giving them a chance to dream and to hope,” said CITYarts Founder and Director Tsipi Ben-Haim, who fled the former Soviet Union as a child, and has lived in Poland, Italy, and Israel in addition to the United States. “That’s the most important thing. It brings people together. We are all actually connected—why burn down the house we all live in?” 

The collaboration first came to New Haven earlier this year, in what CAW Director Trina Mace Learned called “a little bit of serendipity.” For years, Ben-Haim has wanted to bring a CITYarts project to New Haven, which she began to explore while in town for a wedding years ago. At the time, she said, she was struck by the town-gown divide, and left feeling like something was owed to the wider community. 

Back in New York, she kept thinking about it. She knew that when Connecticut became part of the “50 States of Peace,” she wanted to work with youth in New Haven. Then a few months ago, she and Learned’s daughter, Katherine Wright, struck up a conversation at an event in New York. 

Wright suggested—“in only the way your child can,” Learned said with a soft laugh—that any project in New Haven needed to involve CAW. In addition to its educational bent, the organization hosts four ECA classes during the school year, and already has the infrastructure to work with students. It was the first step in a summer of workshops, an exhibition, and the mural. 

Gardener: “It expresses community."

In addition to artists Perez and Rembert, CAW collaborated with the Yale School of Art, working closely with Dean Kymberly Pinder and current MFA student Lauren Flaaen. Ben-Haim also reached out to Fair Havener Lee Cruz, whose beloved walking tours and work with the Chatham Square Association have made him the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood. 

Kirk Morrison, branch manager at the Fair Haven Library, said that the library came onboard as a site roughly a month ago. At his request, Perez and Rembert included several vegetables as a nod to the community garden that lives at the library and has been yielding produce all summer.   

Wednesday, that vision came to life in black and white, as Perez and Rembert poured cups of bright pink and purple paint, keeping an eye out for kids who wanted to join in. Across the wall, a vision for peace took place: large doves flapped their wings, dainty flowers formed a chain that seemed to float through the air, across from a disembodied hand making a peace sign. Beneath it, wisps of not-yet-green grass wove upwards toward the sun.

As she left the library, 14-year-old Shyleina Gardener jumped at the chance to paint, taking a brush that was soon covered in a light purple. Lifting a cup of purple paint, she struck up a conversation with Rembert, telling him about the most recent meeting of the Fair Haven Library’s weekly anime club. 

“I like to draw anything,” she said. An aspiring animator, “it [art] makes me feel calm and relaxed, happy.”

“It expresses community,” she added as she filled in a demure flower to the right of center. The location is doubly meaningful to her: she loves the library, and is also a rising eighth grader at Fair Haven School. As a student and a resident of the neighborhood, she’s excited to see the mural several times a week. Already, she said, she’s excited to see the finished piece. 

Less than two feet away, Grafton Street neighbors Thai Williams and Kaiden Reyes jumped in, fitting white CITYarts t-shirts over their heads before they gripped their brushes and got to work. Standing beside Perez, 12-year-old Williams filled in a pink flower, smiling as the brustrokes turned each petal a dusty pink.   

“It’s a good thing,” he said. He pulled out his phone to show off his nascent brand Shine Bright, designed in honor of a cousin who passed away before her time. “We need peace.” 

Reyes, a rising sixth grader at Booker T. Washington Academy, said that he was excited to help with the mural, because he doesn’t often get the chances to make art outside of school. In his art class, he’s been able to experiment with portraits, crafts, and clay.

But he’s never encountered public art. So when Williams told him that there was painting at the library, he walked over.  

“It’s just kind of relaxing,” he said. “I like drawing. It’s like, calm. You just draw and you, like, chill.”

Perez, who has completed 38 murals across the state in the last three years (this will be number 39, including several in Fair Haven), said that it’s always special to return to a neighborhood that helped make him who he is. He likened it to working on the Black Lives Matter mural on Temple Street four years ago, and underpass mural with the public art group Nu Spiral. 

“This is just what the doctor ordered,” Rembert added. He explained that he’s found himself in a creative rut, and struggled to get out of it. Then he connected with CITYarts. He was excited to be working with youth and with Perez, who he considers a colleague.  

An accompanying exhibition runs inside the Fair Haven Branch Library through the fall.

Nearby, Fair Haven Alder Frank Redente called it a full circle moment. As a son of Fair Haven, he’s known Perez for decades, since he was in his early 20s and Perez was 13 or 14. Now years later, he sees the artist as an example he can share with the young people he knows in the neighborhood. “This is the kind of stuff we need,” he said. 

As she watched, Ben-Haim beamed. As a young child, she and her family fled religious violence in the former Soviet Union, fearing for their lives as they moved from country to country. When she made the U.S. her home, she built a life in New York, earning a graduate degree in Slavic languages at NYU before founding CITYarts in 1989. 

Since that time, she’s worked with thousands of young people across the globe. For her, the murals represent a kind of collaboration and cross-talk that has become increasingly and alarmingly rare. So a few years ago, it was a surprise to her when she looked around and no longer recognized the country she had made her home.  

“I saw it becoming the former Soviet Union,” she said. “Our youth really need role models. They need to know that all of them matter. For me, it’s important that every project plants seeds for creating caring leaders of the future. It’s not just a nice painting. It’s about the power of art to create something meaningful for our youth. They came together to say ‘Yes, we did that.’”