3 More Walls Add To Mural Mecca

While the city sleeps through a pandemic, the Ninth Square has come alive with outdoor murals — as local artists like Francisco Del Carpio-Beltran demonstrated on Wednesday.

He and other artists and supporters gathered in the frigid morning light to celebrate three recently finished works created through a new program called Straight Up Art.

Their murals join two other towering, colorful additions to the Ninth Square in recent months: The Sun Ra mural on the outside of Cafe Nine, which faces an eagle-soaring tribute to King Lanson on the side of the old Acme Furniture building.

The Straight Up Artists had a lot to show at Wednesday’s gathering, along with personal stories behind the murals to tell.

Over his years working at architecture firm Svigals + Partners, studying at Gateway Community College, and wandering back home ten blocks away, Del Carpio-Beltran has witnessed the Ninth Square neighborhood transform into an artistic and cultural center.

This fall, he documented that metamorphosis in a massive Center Street mural of flowers blooming through buildings and music flowing from artists. He invited neighbors who passed by to paint alongside him, and brush stroke by brush stroke, they each became a part of the renaissance themselves.

Straight Up Art is funded by the Town Green District, CTNext, and New Haven Innovation Collaboration. This year, Massachusetts-based landlord Beacon Communities donated the wall space for the three murals. (Read a previous story on the mural projects here.)

The goal of the Straight Up Art program was to ​“create an accessible platform for local talent,” explained Elizabeth Bickley, the head of public space development at Town Green District.

A panel of nine people selected the murals, she said. ​“We are not just looking for qualified artists, we’re looking for artists to do a public piece that is site specific.” The pieces had to be designed particularly for their Ninth Square settings.

Del Carpio-Beltran’s painting is divided into two parts, separated by an indent in the wall. The left side (pictured above) depicts the Ninth Square as bursting with color and life. Flowers grow skywards, past low hanging clouds, while larger-than-life human figures dance with one another and create the live music that Del Carpio-Beltran said he associates with the neighborhood.

The right side depicts the areas surrounding the Ninth Square as the mural fades to a black-and-white contour architectural draft. A hand in the corner is depicted drawing the scene, with more drafting paper left to unroll.

The mural can be interpreted from right to left or left to right, Del Carpio-Beltran said. The unfinished draft is either a snapshot from the past that eventually grows into the brimming city scene on the left, or a gesture towards the future that the unspecified hand will continue to draw into life.

The mural’s Ninth Square location is meaningful to Del Carpio-Beltran because, he said, ​“I basically grew up here.” His family moved to New Haven from Peru when he was 12; he has stayed here ever since.

And while the mural is personal, it was also a communal effort. He estimated that 60 people assisted in painting the mural over the course of six weeks.

A block away on Court Street, experienced muralist Michael DeAngelo zoomed in on two particular people of the Ninth Square community for his Straight Up Art project. In glowing red sits CT Transit bus driver Dave Higgins, looking straight at the viewer. Around the concave corner of the building, beaming in blue, surgery resident Michelle Salazar reaches out to his shoulder, a stethoscope hanging around her neck. Her hand touches his shoulder where the two walls meet. Higgins’ bus route snakes through Downtown New Haven; Salazar lives in the neighborhood.

While there’s a neighborhood-specific resonance to the mural, DeAngelo said his goal was to honor all essential workers, including those in the medical field, who have clocked in throughout the pandemic.

DeAngelo said he hopes to ​“connect people with my art.” That calling has gained a particularly urgent resonance during the pandemic. ​“The more disconnected we are, the more important that feels,” he said.

He hopes that people passing by can see themselves, or their loved ones, in the images he depicted. His mother is a nurse practitioner, he said.

Around the corner on Orange Street, another Straight Up Art mural adorns the walls surrounding Ninth Square Market and Deli: a creation by Alex Fournier split into two parts on either side of the storefront. The mural, like Del Carpio-Beltran’s, has an architectural focus. It depicts pastel-colored skyscrapers reaching up into a swirling black-and-white sky.

Fournier wasn’t able to attend the event, as he works by day at UPS, so Bickley read an artist’s statement on his behalf. Fournier is also a tattoo artist; his Ninth Square artwork was his first-ever mural. He moved ​“from skin to wall,” said Bickley.

On the Orange Street walls, the mural appears to gather inspiration from cities outside of New Haven, assembling a collage of urban styles that echo international cities.

It’s called ​“The World We Left Behind,” Bickley said, and reflects Fournier’s love of building design.

The painters in this year’s Straight Up Art program had a range of experience levels with painting murals. Town Green Special Services District sought to meet each artist’s varying needs, according to Bickley, providing resources that ranged from technical artistic guidance to community contacts. (Bickley was the one who put DeAngelo in touch with Higgins and Salazar.)

2021 will bring another set of murals; funding has already been secured. According to Bickley, the forthcoming paintings will likely be in other parts of Downtown New Haven, as opposed to the Ninth Square.

Meanwhile, this year’s batch is set to last at least five years, per a contract with Beacon Communities.

While his other field of architecture tends to plan for long-lasting projects, Del Carpio-Beltran has embraced the understanding that the mural might be temporary as part of the artistic project itself.

As part of the ever-growing neighborhood life it depicts, Del Carpio-Beltran’s art participates in a ​“cycle,” as he told onlookers on Wednesday. ​“One day, the mural will be replaced with new art.”