New Mural Brings Flowers To Fair Haven

For nine weeks, they painted, enduring darkness of night, thick humidity, and driving rain.

The result: Las Flores de Esperanza, a mural color-saturated with flowers that spans 50 feet of concrete wall at the corner of Blatchley and Grand, and the latest street-beautifying creation of the Ghanaian-American visual artist and muralist Kwadwo Adae.

“A masterpiece,” Fair Haven Alder Jose Crespo proclaimed on a brisk, sunny Saturday morning on the occasion of the ​“Community Mental Health” mural’s unveiling. A spirited crowd of 30, many of whom were involved in the production, celebrated its completion. 

The mural was created through a partnership of The Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH) and the City of New Haven’s Office of Community Mental Health Initiatives, according to Billy Bromage, a social worker at PRCH, which does community-based outreach work around mental health. 

“This mural is meant to have an everyday impact on the neighborhood,” Bromage said, as community members enjoyed pastries and coffee from Grand Avenue’s Mi Lupita Bakery.

“We had one evening at the F.A.M.E. Academy (Family Academy of Multilingual Education) and one at PRCH, and we gathered 15 to 20 people at each and talked out themes of mental health, community, recovery, and then we used those themes to make the mural,” he said.

Those meetings, said Adae, clad in a black morning coat, bowtie and retro pink ruffled shirt, ​“translated into a copious amount of notes and papers that I pored over for the next few weeks, trying to find a unifying theme.”

He came up with flowers, with the mixed bouquet of purple iris, sunflower, Gerber daisy, and orange lily celebrating the diversity of Latino cultures in Fair Haven. 

“Across so many cultures when someone is sick, when someone is recovering, flowers are what they receive,” he said, as a neighbor greeted him with a hug. ​“You get them when you’re coming out of the hospital, getting back to society, getting back home, getting back to hope.”

He did a watercolor sketch, then had the walls power-washed and cleaned. ​“This location was the place to do it because of how busy Grand and Blatchley are,” he said. ​“We were able to give the community the opportunity to come and prime it with us.”

They set up a projection across Blatchley. At night, they superimposed the image on the wall. Sometimes cars would motor by, disrupting the image. Adae invited children from the neighborhood to paint. 

“I’ve been walking by it and I love it,” a woman told Adae as she passed with her dog. ​“I live just down there.” 

By then the ceremony was starting.

“This mural is about community and mental health,” Bromage began. ​“It’s about the idea that mental health happens in a community, a little bit through services, but really it happens in the one-on-one interactions we have with each other.”

“All of us will face sadness, anxiety, and hardship in our lives,” he said. ​“Many of us struggle to find purpose, and too many of us do not have the things we need — food, health care, a fair wage job, stable housing. Rather than shying away from this, we say ​‘it’s OK to feel down, but know that you are not alone.’”

For Cheryl Rabe, a member of FACE, short for Focus, Act, Connect, Everyday, a citizens’ community collaborative affiliated with Yale’s PRCH, ​“hopefully this mural brings awareness, light, and healing to our community.”

Another FACE member and artist, Do Walker, sounded a similar refrain. 

“We wanted to have a mural that addresses mental health in a positive light,” said Walker. ​“The idea is to reduce stigma around mental health issues so people feel comfortable talking about them.”

He said the flowers are an extension of FACE’s mission. ​“Our goal is to reach ten people a day,” he said. ​“When you’re out walking around, you say hi to someone, good morning, or good afternoon, recognize that they exist, see them, it just makes everyone feel better, brighter.”

For FACE member Mark Griffin, the process of realizing that mission in a mural was ​“amazing. We put all our thoughts into what mental health was, we found out that we’re all struggling with something — me, I’m in recovery from alcohol, drugs, and mental health — and he came up with this and looking at it, you just feel better,” he said.

Alder Crespo thanked Bromage and Lorena Mitchell, ​the city’s coordinator for community mental health initiatives, among others, then exhorted the crowd to reach out if they needed help. 

“There’s the idea that speaking about your mental health issues shows weakness,” he said. ​“It is not weakness when you talk about it. It’s strength.”

Fair Haven resident and neighborhood activist Lee Cruz praised all those involved in the project. 

“These things build on each other so the fact that this mural was painted has made us to think of all the murals in Fair Haven and all the public art,” he said. 

To that end, he announced ​“the first ever bike tour of murals” at next year’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas with about 20 stops to show the variety of murals in Fair Haven, as well as walls that don’t have murals that should have them. 

“We’re going to catalogue those spaces, so if you’re an artist and you’re interested, you’ll know who you need to contact.” 

That left Adae with the last word.

“I’ve traveled around the world and wherever I go the language of the city is in murals, in street art,” he said. ​“That’s how the people speak.”

He said ​“the beautiful part of mural making is that if you’re here in one spot for about two weeks, you start recognizing the faces that are here every day, and their feedback has been incredible.”

He described ​“people beeping when they stop at a red light, clapping, thanking me, in a really amazing outpouring of community.”

With that, he paused, seeming to take in the crowd, the sounds on the street, the bracing autumn air. ​“So many people who were involved are struggling, but they’re also striving to make things better, and that’s a beautiful thing,” he said.