Updating an Icon by Positive Street Art
November 1, 2024
Positive Street Art, known for large-scale artworks on buildings across Southern New Hampshire, added a splash of color to one of Manchester’s most diversely populated neighborhoods. A new mural was recently unveiled at the historic Sheehan-Basquil Park after weeks of efforts this summer from a crew led by Yasamin Safarzadeh. With a program structure and mural design that Safarzadeh describes as “highly unique,” the work was completed by many hands, partnering with organizations like Opportunity Networks, Waypoint NH and MYTURN.
“An integral component to programming like this is having both youth and adults from different programs, both teaching and learning, and being compensated. Both being platformed and amplified in their expression, given access to higher quality of materials, raising expectations and living up to their potential,” Safarzadeh says. The team used this frame of mind to tackle the project.
Sporting three baseball diamonds alongside a soccer pitch, the park has supported city Little League teams since the mid-1940s, when the league was even photographed for Life magazine. The triplet set of fields is the home of Manchester Central Little League (MCLL), which offers multiple age brackets of baseball in the often-underserved neighborhood. The league provides adaptive teams specifically designed for children who may need accommodations due to disability. A small side field becomes a hard field soccer pitch, which MCLL uses to facilitate a visually impaired soccer team that hosts from global locations such as South America and Africa. In the heart of the field, a large green clubhouse served as the home of operations for all the park’s various activities.
On game nights, it serves up popsicles and chips to spectators. This summer, it became host to Positive Street Art’s mural program. The mural, which spans most of the east face of the clubhouse, was an intersectional collaboration between Positive Street Art and their partner organizations. A team of more than 50 artists created a unified vision for the design.
Facilitator Roger Balcom recalled the uphill battle the team faced in undertaking the project. “We endured a lot of harsh temperatures, working outside in the sun while grinding against a strict timeline,” Balcom says. “Even facing a lack of resources and so many complications, everyone was tireless during the project. With such a small team, we cleaned up what some saw as a lost cause and turned it back into a functional clubhouse.”
Balcom notes how the group upheld a strong team mentality through the summer. “We lifted each other up the whole time. Seeing everyone else pushing onward, despite exhaustion, inspired me to give everything I had,” he says. “Catching the student interns smiling and expressing the real fun they were having was another highlight.”
Based on contributions and personal touches from participants, the mural nearly comes to life in its dynamic motion, color and conceptual diversity that aptly reflects the community who created it. The art continues into a technicolor interior, which saw washes of paint across the two floors as the team faced uncooperative weather and the removal of decades of stubborn anti-graffiti paint. Unable to track down a proper solvent, the team took to the walls with concrete sanders and scrapers, exposing thick layers of past paint jobs. Even in the face of such challenges, the team pushed the execution of the mural from priming to completion in less than six days.
“A six-week program, and the mural was erected in the last six days. On the seventh day, we rested,” primary facilitator Nathaniel Pepe says.
The project culminated in an unveiling celebration packed with guests, including newly elected mayor Jay Ruais, alongside neighborhood families and collaborating artists. Guests were welcomed to delve into the clubhouse’s redesign, following each color to the awaiting gallery space created from the group’s conceptual drafts. Afrobeats tunes underlaid mingling as the afternoon built to featured performances from Akwesasne vocalist Bearfox and New Hampshire rock band Cozy Throne, alongside reflections from artists and leadership members. The team has once again stayed late to help clean up the festivities, as Safarzadeh shares her belief that the true lasting effect of this project is more than just the mural itself.
“It is living in each person who healed a little more in each facilitator, to each participant and each passerby, and each person who uses the park for shelter,” she says. “All of these things keep me going.”
This article is featured in the winter 2024 issue of 603 Diversity.
603 Diversity’s mission is to educate readers of all backgrounds about the exciting accomplishments and cultural contributions of the state’s diverse communities, as well as the challenges faced and support needed by those communities to continue to grow and thrive in the Granite State.
