New Haven Independent

Garcia, who runs a program called Youth As Leaders, started by studying local history with the 28 10-to-15-year-olds in her summer session. They also did a photo project on the neighborhood, taking pictures of local landmarks like the library and the Ring One boxing gym.

Now Garcia is incorporating those photographs into a larger expression of community pride, a new mural on the side of the Hill Development Corporation on Howard Avenue, across from the Youth As Leaders base in Casa Latina. On Thursday as the sun beat down on the sidewalk, Garcia was working alongside a dozen young artists to create a 70-foot long painting that reads “The Hill CommUNITY” in big block letters.

While young artists filled in the letters with colorful designs, Garcia was pasting their photographs into the letters that make up the word “Hill.”

The new mural is a joint venture of Youth As Leaders — a project of Easter Seals Goodwill Industries — and Channel One, a gallery and skate shop on State Street. The groups recently collaborated on a big downtown mural that reads “Experience,” in the parking lot behind cafe nine.

“We like to use artistic projects to bring kids together,” Garcia said. So far this summer, the young leaders have made their own comic books and written fables that they illustrated with Photoshop.

Working next to Garcia on Thursday was 11-year-old Audrey Young, who was filling in the letter M with bright strokes of pink. Pink and purple are her favorite colors she said, wearing pink glasses and purple shirt.

Farther down the wall, Alexis Ojeda explained her plans to fill the letter T with an intricate three-color design. “No one really uses red and purple and white,” she said.

It wasn’t all abstract colors and patterns. Ellyana Simon and Samantha Rios worked closely on representational art. While the 13 and 14-year-old collaborated on a rose inside the letter N, they had plans to make tree trunks out of portions of the N and the U.

Fair Haven Alderman Joe Rodriguez, who works at the Hill Development Corporation as a community liaison, stepped outside to snap some cellphone pictures of the mural in progress. He voiced his approval of the project. “It was due for an upgrade,” Rodriguez said. “Who better than these kids to do it?”

The new mural is being painted over a cracked and peeling mural from years ago. Fragments of the original piece were visible to the left of the new CommUNITY mural.

Lou Cox, who runs Channel One, said that he’s enlisted local graffiti artists to paint artwork over the left side of the wall and along the top. Having older established artists working on the wall will address the “disconnect between older and younger artists.”

“It gives kids a sense of where they can go with art,” Cox said. Young people without an outlet for creativity can “run amok” tagging and vandalizing property, he said, “That’s not cool.” Seeing the work of established graffiti artists may help them to channel their creativity into more acceptable outlets, he said.