“Tinker and Thompson created a celebration of how Grove Hall communities gather and enjoy each other year-round with their work.”
There’s been a lot of mural news over the past few years. Which makes sense since they’re typically done outdoors and are pandemic safe, and since they make any old place that much more inhabitable.
From the East Boston street art tour to a recent contest announced by a Dorchester dispensary, we’ve paid attention, and that includes Now+There’s work in Roxbury and Dorchester.
Following several months of their Mentoring Murals series, they’re wrapping up on May 14 (though of course the artwork will stay). More from their team about the project and closing festivities below:
After three installations of powerful murals along Blue Hill Avenue, Now + There will celebrate the closing of the final work, “Deeply Rooted in the NeighborHOOD, homage to Allan Rohan Crite,” by notable artists Johnetta Tinker and Susan Thompson on May 14 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The third and final installation has been part of Now + There’s critically-acclaimed “Mentoring Murals” project which paired six celebrated Boston-based Black muralists to create works together over the last year. First in the series was Paul Goodnight and Larry Pierce’s “No Strings Detached” followed by Ekua Holmes and London Parker-McWhorter’s “Honoring the past, seeding the future.”
For the latest series, longtime friends and first-time collaborators, Tinker and Thompson created a celebration of how Grove Hall communities gather and enjoy each other year-round with their work. “Deeply Rooted in the NeighborHOOD, homage to Allan Rohan Crite” depicts the vibrancy of Blue Hill Avenue past and present and all four seasons of activity in the neighborhood. Together, the artists blended collage, quilting, and painting techniques in this bright tribute to daily life in Roxbury, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, and Mattapan. It’s the third and final installation in the Mentoring Murals series.
Tinker and Thompson were mentored by Crite (1910-2007), a well-known Boston-based African American artist committed to creating images of African American life based on his lived experiences instead of stereotypes. Known as the “biographer of urban African-American life in Boston,” he nurtured a generation of Black artists, known as “The Boston Collective” to depict their daily lives, as well as Black narratives, as a way to claim space and broaden cultural representation. With this suite of murals, the artists pay tribute to Crite’s dedication to uplifting everyday life in Black Boston and bring to life a collaboration that has been 40 years in the making.
Now + There, a nonprofit organization bringing temporary, site-specific public art to all neighborhoods of Boston, in collaboration with Greater Grove Hall Main Streets (GGHMS) and support from Breeze’s Laundromat LLC. Within walking distance to several other important Grove Hall murals, the 13’ x 60’ wall is part Breeze’s, an anchor community business. The changing imagery and a mobile tour of all Grove Hall murals available at nowandthere.org/tour. Mentoring Murals is generously supported by Boston Main Streets Foundation, the Kensington Investment Company and a New England Foundation for the Arts Collective Imagination for Spatial Justice grant. The artists’ temporary, printed mural is mounted at 345 Blue Hill Avenue in the Grove Hall neighborhood between Roxbury and Dorchester and will be on display through May 31.
Closing event for “Deeply Rooted in the NeighborHOOD, homage to Allan Rohan Crite” on Saturday, May 14 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. nowandthere.org
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.
