NuVu students have started an exciting studio called, Art in the Public Space lead by international artist Shilo Suleman. NuVu students are painting the mural across the street from the NuVu studio focusing on themes relevant to the Cambridge area.
Read more about the mural: Belonging
Across Boston and Cambridge, the ancient river Charles etches it’s way through the landscape creating intersecting islands of people.
Woven between the transient populations of university youth, migrant communities, Cantabrigian locals and the ever imminent threat of gentrification, the river gently threads all of Boston’s diverse groups together. At the threshold of Area 4 (now being renamed the Port Neighborhood), old Cambridge and all the universities is our wall. In a place of so many intersections, we want to explore the question “What makes us feel like we Belong?”.
The mural itself will depict a multi-racial person, with locally found flowers growing out of her chest. The river weaves and snakes through her body and emerges into a ‘port’ of sorts. A port where one comes and docks, and is simultaneously welcoming, but also a checkpoint or threshold of sorts. In each of the small plots on the map of the Charles, we will have different members of the community “dock” and write one thing that makes them feel like they belong, to create a sense of ownership and community involvement.
We want to create something with the community that makes them feel central (in central square) to this intersection/port.