Trash Cans Sprout Wings To Keep City Clean

The next time you’re walking on Whalley Avenue, a bright blue, black and orange butterfly may catch your eye and encourage you to throw your trash away instead of littering.

That’s because the butterfly is on the side of an oil drum-turned-trash can. A product of Oil Drum Art, the city’s’s youth services department, and the under construction Escape Teen Center, the can is one of six new recycled oil drums making their way across the city, designed by New Haven’s youth.

Tuesday afternoon, the repainted drums made their debut in the lobby of City Hall, where about 70 young artists gathered with facilitator Edmund ​“Bwak” Comfort, Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett and Mayor Toni Harp for a short recognition ceremony and cookie party. (Oil Drum Art President Jack Lardis was not present, but submitted comments cheering the young artists on.) Funded by a 2017 Regional Initiative grant — from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, Department of Economic and Community Development in partnership with the Arts Council of Greater New Haven — the project aims at neighborhood beautification with an environmental bent, turning old oil drums into utilitarian neighborhood art.

The year 2017 marks the second time the drums have landed in New Haven; the first was 2014. This year, in addition to Escape Teen Center, participating institutions include the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven, Newhallville Youth Program, King Robinson Oil Drum Trash Can Project, the Farnam Neighborhood House, and the Neighborhood Place at Junta for Progressive Action. 

Calling the project ​“a most creative way to address an age-old urban challenge,” Harp lauded the bright, freshly painted drums as citywide attention-grabbers that will deter littering in the city’s parks and on its sidewalks. ​“This project rewards creativity, and it will keep New Haven clean,” she said. 

High schoolers Cecilia Payne, Ashanti Payne, and Taliyah Stanley were three of the eight artists behind the ​“Butterfly Girls” design. After learning about self-respect and self-care with Butterfly Girls facilitator Leslie Mozell, the three proposed the pattern. It was, said Stanley, part homage to Mozell, who taught her ​“that we are beautiful, colorful, attractive.”

“When I started this program, I didn’t know what the outcome would be,” said Mozell, who owns Creative Styles on Whalley Avenue. ​“I realized I could teach them the stages of a butterfly — the egg, larva, the chrysalis, you know? I feel like as women, we are like a butterfly.”

It took the students four weeks, with two or more sessions a week, to execute and finish the design. Each week, Comfort supervised, offering suggestions on transferring designs onto the oil drum, spreading paint to create a vibrating night sky, filling in a city’s black outline, and working with brushes, aerosol, and tools to create edges.

As the students painted, they took a path to self-discovery, learning to trade self-deprecatory phrases and quickly-flung insults for ​“self-esteem, and sisterhood,” Ashanti Payne said. ​“Being in this group has taught us a lot of things,” she added. ​“I think we learned more about how we should appreciate our environment. But we also know how to be different, as women. That we evolve, that we go through stages.”

The students’ oil drum will be placed in front of Mozell’s shop, at 504 Whalley Ave. Other drums will make their way to Junta’s playground, behind King Robinson School, to the intersection of Columbus and Howard Avenues, and outside the Farnam Neighborhood House.