Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
Raised in a Bronx housing project designed in the 1920s by Jewish socialist architects, Anna Elena Torres ’07 has been thinking about the effect art has on community for a long time. After receiving the Lang Opportunity Scholarship grant her sophomore year, Torres spent a year creating the unique Chester Mural Collective, a program that combines arts education with community outreach. The Chester Mural Collective finished its first outdoors mural in June and then led a youth mural camp at the Chester YWCA this summer. The Daily Gazette talked with Torres about what’s next for her and the Collective.
Daily Gazette: What was the inspiration behind the Chester Mural Collective, and why did you choose a mural as the medium?
Anna Torres: I was interested in creating a program that would allow residents to design and paint their own murals, to encourage community empowerment and self-representation while reclaiming public space. Chester has many incredibly beautiful, historic buildings, some from the late 1600s, but many of the houses are abandoned, and I wanted to use public art to transform some of the streets. With the help of students from Chester middle schools and high schools in our after-school program, we aimed to make a positive, powerful statement with art, while emphasizing the importance of collaboration to students. Making a mural is a fairly open process, and because there is a lot of painting within the outlines, it allows people without much art experience to fully participate. Ultimately, we wanted to do something that’d help children feel like active participants in their community.
DG: What kind of statement were you trying to make with the mural?
AT: I wanted to make a very large and positive statement that would also be honest about people’s experiences. The mural was really first and foremost giving people the opportunity to represent themselves through art and use the mural images to make certain issues more visible.
The location of the mural was also serendipitous, because it has so much visibility. The owners of Chester Hardware + Supply were incredibly supportive in donating their wall, as well as much industrial equipment. The mural site is a block away from City Hall and across from a trash plant, and it’s on a point of the highway between a prison and the new casino. We tried to use the colors of the mural to draw attention to its surroundings as opposed to just hiding it and decorating it.
DG: What issues did you specifically want to highlight?
AT: The mural uses images of an old map of Chester and the old houses, which is very political because it’s drawing attention to the incredible legacy of the city. And once you know the city’s pastóit was once a wealthy city, a hotspot for jazz, a focal point for Civil Rights Era activityóthen you have to ask certain questions about how it got the way it is today.
DG: Could you explain the imagery of the mural itself?
AT: It was designed by Joseph Church, an artist who grew up in Chester. It was done in sepia tones, to evoke an old photograph. The girl in the mural is holding a protest sign in one hand and a dove in the other representing protest and hope. The crown of thorns on her head speaks for itself.
The Collective also created a second big mural this summer in the stairway at the Chester Y while I was away studying Yiddish at Amherst. The week I returned to school, I went to see it, and it was incredible. About thirty kids designed it, with the theme of children around the world. It’s very bright and the pictures of kids all have a lot of character. As you climb the stairs, you are surrounded by art, and at the top there’s a tree that extends to the ceiling. The students this summer have a great sense of color and composition.
DG: What were you hoping to achieve? Did you?
AT: Well, our artistic goal was to make murals, which we did. Our spiritual goal was to create a hopeful symbol, a way of fostering unity that had never been tried before, and a unique way of youth education. It’s very empowering for kids to be part of something so big. My ultimate goal personally is to be able to step back and let the community run the program. Murals are an international art formójust about every culture has a tradition of public art and it’s very exciting to see how Chester will re-interpret and what role it will play there.
DG: What are your plans for the future and for the Chester Mural Collective?
AT: Arts and activism, I will pursue… I hope to travel and see how other communities make murals and what role public art plays in other cities. I do plan on coming back to Chester and helping people make murals.
This semester, we’re running an after-school program at Smedley Magnet Middle School. We are planning to create a series of smaller, indoor murals for the hallways, designed by students, as well as offering more art history to students. In the spring, we’re planning a block-long mural. This one will be even more collaborative: rather than hiring a single Chester artist, we will help residents themselves design a sort of large-scale collage, by bringing together residents’ photos, text, memories, etc, and turning that into a piece with the theme ìA Tribute to Chester.î The collaborative collage method is a much more direct process, and it will allow many people to interpret their community history, rather than just one artist.
