10/05/09 Forays into the Neighbourhood

This week and last, Tom Carroll and I visited the Stiffel Center, first to meet with Susan Hoffman, and then to introduce ourselves, talk with people, and start to get a sense of the area. We also did a lot of walking around, talking, and looking making visits to various sites such as the "Little Shul" on Emily Street, the converted shul that is now a Cambodian temple, as well as visiting with people who run an after-school program in the neighborhood for local kids. I hope to make it to an art session they are doing on Oct. 20th.

I will be back in the area next Tuesday to meet with a local artist and talk about community connections. I hope to bring a slide show of my work to the Stiffel residents in the next few weeks. I'm also lining up meetings with Rakhmiel Peltz and Harvey Finkle. Thinking about possibly a public shoot in the neighborhood even before the actual art creation starts as a kind of ice-breaker and way of feeling things out; possibly doing it as part of the help-portrait project which does free portraiture around the December holidays.

Also, Tom and I found some "marker points" that I hope to investigate with the help of a friend who does house histories...places that once were occupied by Jews but are now Southeast Asian or African American. There is a place at 2118 S. 7th that was a gold and lapidary supply house called "Shapiro's." Also we found a Church at 6th and Cantrell, near Snyder that had much Yiddish/Hebrew writing. I could make out: "Toyre Tamud (unreadable) Eshrun." This appears to have been a religious school. It's now an African-American storefront church. We also walked to Dickinson Square to see where merchants from Seventh Street used to live. Lots of Pompeian brick houses whose interiors I'm sure have rich wood and pocket doors, but are otherwise fairly modest.