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♪♪ -From NJ PBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Brianna Vannozzi.

-Hello, and welcome to a special edition of "NJ Spotlight News."

I'm Joanna Gagas.

As we continue our journey through public art across the state with our digital documentary series "Painting Community," we take a look at Jersey City, where the artist El Secas has put his talents on full display.

Now Secas grew up in Santiago, Chile, where he was drawn to murals that were created during the political unrest of the 1980s under the authoritarian rule of General Pinochet.

While Secas taught himself to paint and discovered his own self-expression, which later led him to connect with the Jersey City art scene after moving to the U.S.

He's now painting murals on two schools in the city, the Julia A. Barnes Elementary School and President Barack Obama Community Middle School, where he's helping other young students find their voice.

Let's take a look.

[ Music ] -Images, they're very powerful, because sometimes for a kid, you don't know how to read, but you can see an image and read it in a way.

[ Music ] Art comes before that knowledge of reading or understanding something.

It's about how color makes you feel.

You're more like feeling it.

I'm a city kid from downtown Santiago and I was raised there during the 80s.

We were under a So there was a lot of protests and people that were going to the protests at the same time they were painting murals.

So that was my first impression of what art could be.

Junior high school, they started drawing more graffiti style images.

That was my school in a way.

I never had like a dream of becoming like an artist or become like a great whatever.

I just was painting and I knew I was going to lead me to another opportunity.

I'm an immigrant.

I came by myself and I went through being somebody from another place to become somebody new.

Coming to New York was a big shock, you know, a big change.

I was reborn in a way.

Meeting new people, working with other artists, I started expanding my view on art and what I wanted to become.

Because I had to rediscover what I was and what I wanted to be.

The mural program here in Jersey City, we started it in 2013.

We have been able to put up over 200 murals.

The way this program has redefined the street experience has been astounding.

Jersey City has been very good for me.

They believe in my visions.

When I started working with them in 2016, not too many places see the importance of public art.

We have traditionally been a city that hasn't had any permanent arts institutions, and in the last 12 years we've seen that change quite a bit.

Before we had this stigma that we were like criminals because we were coming from graffiti and graffiti was illegal so it was super hard to get permission to do a mural.

I think now it's changing.

I hope the city recognizes it more because the people already are doing it.

People here grew up with graffiti or grew up with art.

Our art scene in Jersey City is fairly young and growing very quickly and has the challenge of being located directly across the Hudson from New York City.

Our actors and painters and dancers want to be proud of the city that they live in and so there's been a real movement to make art here in Jersey City.

The cities are so like saturated with information, with advertising, with people, cars, everything.

So art is a way of making the area or the space more livable.

So many dead areas that are begging for art.

(upbeat music) - Talking to the kids themselves, they have an immediate reaction to having a mural on their building.

They know that it's a source of pride and that they have a joyful reaction to seeing this piece of art on their school.

- I like the bright colors.

- The colors make a building happy and bright.

- It's so cute and it's so colorful.

- My first murals I ever painted was in Chile, Santiago, at my school.

I saw the high school kids doing these amazing murals and that influenced me to do it.

- Which grade are you?

- Second grade.

- Second grade.

- You paint so good.

- I love your painting.

- I love the jaguar the most and the flowers.

- Where I grew up, I want to be like you.

(laughing) - I grew up in this neighborhood, came here in the '70s just to see how this is a reflection of where we're going as a community in terms of just inclusivity and diversity.

This reflects what our children have done, reflects the diversity of our school.

- I created an image using the flora, using the landscape of that part of Jersey that is really close to the city.

Within the days that I started building this painting and the colors started coming, people started getting very excited.

It was a good experience for me.

You realize you're doing something positive.

Looks cool.

I remember when you were 6.

Yeah.

Good job.

Thank you.

My way of painting, this was mainly done with spray paint.

The spray paint can be a little scary when you're starting because it's hard to control it.

You gotta be very close to the wall and very fast at the same time.

And for like shapes that are more like organic or like curves, you can do it freehand, but for this I used painter's tape to create like straight lines.

It was very tedious and slow work for that.

It took me a lot of time.

I think that putting murals in educational spaces helps to build a sense of pride and joy in the day-to-day experience of going to that building.

They asked me to create something about identity.

I wanted to mix my own style with this concept, so I came up with the idea of a school as a garden for the community.

My idea was to compare the importance of education with the pollination process.

Both are important to survive.

I made an image where pollinators are doing their job and I'm comparing it to what the teachers are doing for the community.

The bees go to each flower.

They get something out of each child.

It's like, oh, this child has this potential, or that child has that.

That's what it needs to be.

The street signs is what makes them more local.

I think that was the last part I did in the mural.

The flowers really caught my eye, and I like the street signs too.

Keep it local.

When I paint a mural, it's not to transform the whole thing, but it's to bring up some new energy, some positive message through color, mainly through color.

Sometimes color is more important than just the image, because it's just energy.

The colors were amazing.

It makes it look lively.

This brings a lot to how we're schooling for that, we think.

Appreciate it, nice meeting you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

It's diamond in the rough.

You know, this isn't necessarily the greatest area, but you can still make something beautiful, still make it look nice.

And this neighborhood is not really colorful.

It's kind of gray, but the painting brings out our school.

I think colors and imagery has that power to take you somewhere else.

It can be a place to take a break of what is happening around.

What he's brought to the schools has been a beautiful gift that's going to keep on giving for the whole neighborhood.

It's investments like the investments in our mural program really do help with the health of our city as a growing city.

It becomes more than a building.

It's a living work of art.

It's colorful.

It's vibrant.

It draws you in.

It makes you want to enter the doors.

Thank you, Artists.

Thank you.

Being here in the area of New Jersey is not only one type of people.

It makes no difference if you're black or Asian or Latino.

We're all in the same trip, in a way.

Mural art is open for anybody.

I think art should be like that.

Public art does so much for social isolation, to bring communities together.

I like to see my work as an addition to the city, like as a part of the city.

It's there for everybody.

Public art is there with us.

It is a critical part of who we are as a city.

The conversations around the murals being created, the ideas behind them, have really come from the community itself.

Whatever they see from the mural create a change in the area.

The mural has that ability to transform a space and people are affected.

This mural project has highlighted just how transformative the arts can be, not just on how a student feels about their space, but the ways they envision themselves in the world around them and in their own futures.

I'm joined now by two remarkable individuals who can speak to that impact and more.

We have Christine Goodman, Director of Jersey City's Office of Cultural Affairs, and Dr.

Donald Howard Jr., who's the principal at the Julia A. Barnes School.

Welcome both of you.

So great to have you.

That was such a moving piece.

Christine, I want to start with you.

You said in the piece that this mural arts project in Jersey City started in 2013, but tell us how and why it started.

Sure.

It happened because our administration for the city looked around and said, you know what, art is an important component of any healthy city, and we want to find every avenue possible to boost the arts.

And part of that is having an outdoor gallery where you can walk down the street to the grocery store or go to your local school and see art on the walls everywhere you go.

And since 2013, we've put up over 100 murals across the city.

That's remarkable.

Dr.

Howard, I know you've said that this is transformative.

How -- you grew up in Jersey City.

How has it changed your city?

It's changed the city in ways I can't even begin to describe.

I look at the cultural dynamic of my particular neighborhood.

I grew up in the neighborhood.

I happened to attend the school I'm the principal of now.

And since the time I grew from the time growing up to the time I moved away a few years ago, literally just seeing how it's just shaped the culture of the neighborhood.

It's become very, very, very diverse.

When I was growing up, it was just primarily just Afro-American and Latino neighborhood.

And now there's just folks from all walks of life.

And I think the art is very reflective of the new dynamic that's shaping the neighborhood now.

I have to tell you, just as someone who I don't live in Jersey City and I never have, but I will drive through or I'll take 139, you know, to the Holland Tunnel.

And I remember when those first murals came up and it was like, what what is happening there?

This is interesting.

And then see more and more pop up.

How do you vet the artists who you select?

There's a lot of different approaches.

So we do have an open form on our website for cultural affairs where interested artists can submit.

We have property owners able to submit if they have a wall and they'd like to be paired with an artist.

We also work with community groups.

So if there's something that they would like to see or maybe they have an artist in mind for a wall that could really use some art on it, we'll all come together and have a conversation.

But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that the murals that are going up are rooted in community conversation and that we're having not only conversations with the artists but making sure that those artists that are paired with the walls are really a good fit for our neighborhood.

Some of them have political undertones, yes?

Some do, some do.

And, you know, all of our walls tell different stories.

And they might come out of really wanting to put a piece of artwork on a brand-new construction.

It may be in partnership with a public space.

It could be a wall that has been tagged and dilapidated and really needs to be addressed in a neighborhood.

Maybe there's some activity happening on the street and the neighbors really want to address that.

And we found that putting artwork on the walls through a mural program has a big impact and it also contributes to community pride.

Yeah, and how they feel about the spaces that they live in, right?

Dr.

Howard, I love the moment in the piece where the students looked at the artist El Secas and they said, "When I grow up, I want to be just like you."

And I'm wondering what you've seen in your students as these artworks, you know, as the artwork went up on their school but also around their communities and the places where they live.

Are you seeing a transformation in your kids?

I absolutely am.

They've actually really just taken a deeper interest in becoming artists When we queried the students as to how the mural made them feel, they gave a host of answers.

It was beautiful, it was nice, but the thing that struck me the most was they said it makes me feel safe.

And given the tenor of the times, I think that's something that's in big supply right now.

We need our children to feel safe because they were able to make that connection to their own culture, which is really, really helping me to bridge that gap between home and school.

So, and it's a very low-key way of getting the parents also back involved because they see the mural and they know that this is a safe place to bring their students and this is something that's really, really befitting their culture.

So I'm able to make that bridge.

We know representation matters so much, right?

They see themselves represented in a way in that art?

They do.

They absolutely do.

And they're able to make those connections.

Christine, in many ways, the arts have become somewhat of a luxury for those who can afford it.

We see that across all aspects of the arts.

How is community art really creating that accessibility for those who can't afford it?

I think it's important that we create opportunities in all different areas of our city.

So that could be a project like the one that we did at PS12, where we have an artist in dialogue with the students at the school.

We also do a program for young people where it is a summer job for them, and they are trained with a professional artist.

And this is the only summer job program focused around creating murals that is a government-funded program.

of its kind in the state of New Jersey, so we're really proud of that.

But it's about training young people, getting brushes in hands, spray paint cans in hands, showing them how to work together for a cohesive vision, and letting our students that are in our schools apply to be a part of this, to get paid to do the work, and to realize that putting a mural together, creating art, creating art together as a community is possible, and can open up a world of professional opportunities and support systems to other people who are working professionally in the field, that they can turn to as they continue on their artistic journey.

That's one thing that we do in the community.

I think public art events, whether those are our festivals, our Jersey City Art and Studio Tour, these are all entry points to the arts, and keeping the arts vibrant and making them accessible to everyone really is at the heart of the work that I do in cultural affairs.

I want to follow up on that.

There's a lot of differences that I saw in some of the art pieces that have been painted.

Some are really historical images that conjure up stories that are very important to be told, and others, as we heard Alisekas talk about, are really graffiti artists who have in the past really been kind of denigrated for their work and ostracized from spaces.

How have you changed the perception of graffiti and graffiti artists?

I think that it's important in a mural program that the art comes out of conversation with the community and that also the artists are at the center of that conversation.

And what that means is when you're having an authentic mural program, there's space for different types of artists.

So we're not just making walls pretty or boosting property values.

We're providing an opportunity to have an artistic conversation in a very public space, the exterior of walls.

And if you're having a conversation through art and that conversation is part of your vision for a healthy community, then a lot of voices need to be involved with that.

And that means different artists.

We have international artists who have participated in our mural program.

We have graffiti artists.

We have local artists from Jersey City.

We did an incredible Harriet Tubman mural in our Berry Lane Park.

And that was a local resident.

And he submitted a proposal and it was chosen by our local parks group.

So very much rooted in community and opportunities for a wide range of artists.

Yeah.

I know there's another art project coming to your school.

Dr.

Howard, tell us about it, where it's going to be and what that plan is.

I am so looking forward to it.

We actually are going to have our courtyard renovated.

And there are going to be additional murals put in the courtyard, including sensory walls that will actually speak to our students with disabilities, our students with autism.

And I did want to circle back to one thing you were saying about art being, we have to stop looking at art as a luxury.

It's more of a tool for social cohesion, particularly in the neighborhood that we, in my neighborhood where we are, because it's becoming so rapidly, much more diverse.

I think even in my school, I look at how my students interact with each other since the project.

They literally, because I'm a bilingual hub, I'm a hub of a-- we have students who speak at least 10 or 12 different languages, but they can express themselves universally through art, much like mathematics is a universal language.

So that has really just been kind of a great font for us to open up rich dialogue, discussing colors and shapes, even before they've mastered fluency in English.

So when you say social cohesion, you mean that this literally transcends language, this transcends your cultural backgrounds?

100%, 100%.

And we're seeing the results that now, because the people in the neighborhood, the parents are coming in, people from the high school across the street are just remarking on, "Wow, that's great.

Look at this mural.

How did that come to be?"

And they ask us wonderful questions, and more importantly, they're engaging the students.

So it really, really has become a bonding, a kind of a bonding thing.

Christine, how many schools have been included in this project?

I would, well, we're going back to 2013, so if I was to take a guess, I would probably say 10 to 20 schools.

So over the course of that time.

Let's go back to, though, I want to kind of zero in on not only how the students feel coming into the building and how the parents feel about their students in that space.

Are you seeing an impact on the way they learn because of how they're feeling in their school?

Absolutely.

I think, literally, I always say students who are safe at home, they feel they're safe at home, they're safe at school, they learn that much more readily.

I think the fact that they can now take a look at that piece and make a connection to their own homes and make a connection to their culture, particularly, as I said, being a bilingual hub, that certainly makes it easier for us to make that connection with students who are truly struggling to master their target language.

>> And can you tell us about how the program is actually, There's an arts program being rolled into the curriculum in Jersey city.

How is that playing out in your school?

>> Oh, well, I'm going to give a shameless plug if I can.

The jc arts program in jersey city is just absolutely dynamic.

It's now housed in njcu, which will soon be kane university.

I had the pleasure of being the vice principal over the program At one time.

Literally millions of dollars have come through in scholarships, grants and fellowships.

The students are doing work that is just absolutely phenomenal.

And Jersey City really, really takes a very, very, very prideful look at how we integrate art into our learning.

And really just bringing that back to how that expands across the other curriculum.

Christine, has there been an effort to engage young people in this program in particular?

I know you said there's an international now group of artists involved.

Are you looking for students?

Yes, so I had mentioned it a little bit earlier, but let me talk a little more about our summer youth mural program.

So that is where students apply to have a job over the summer, and some of those JC Arts high school students have been students in our mural arts program.

And what's really remarkable about this program, it's about six weeks long over the summer, and they work with professional artists.

They work on a theme.

So they have done a mural on Ferris High School that was celebrating all the different sister cities that Jersey City has.

They've done murals that are meditations on gun violence and the impact that's had on the students' lives.

So a very different tone.

There's been murals about sustainability.

And it's just wonderful to see the scope of work these young people are doing and the skill.

I mean, we're talking about 50-foot walls.

Really, really tremendous work.

And they learn how to work safely with the equipment.

They work in different mediums that they might not have used before as artists.

And then they're able to take those skills with them.

I saw the artist say that he had to tape the building before he painted.

And I thought, how in the world do you get a straight line?

I mean, just the tangible kind of tactical effort that goes into that is remarkable.

We have just a few minutes left, but I want to hear from both of you what's been the most rewarding part of this project for you personally.

Dr.

Howard, I'm going to start with you.

I can say hands down just watching the reaction of the children when they come in.

They see that every day, looking up and then the rich dialogue that it's increased, that it's engendered since then.

How'd that happen?

Where's it come from?

We see our jaguar.

We even named the school jaguar because she's painted into the mural.

I love that.

That is great.

And that jaguar is so impressive.

Christine, for you, what's been the most rewarding part?

Hearing stories like Dr.

Howard's.

This is incredible.

I mean, I saw it firsthand with the young people in El Sequis, but when you really start telling these stories and seeing the impact on the young people, and, you know, people say, "Hey, I was in Jersey City the other day and I saw this mural that's incredible," and we can talk about the story behind it.

And it's just the work continues to live on and have an impact and that always surprises me in such a good way.

Not only does it have an impact on the folks in your city, but now through this work that this collaboration with PBS, it will live on and gain more and more attention and traction.

And I think you're setting an example for what other cities can do and how they can beautify their spaces and start these kinds of conversations.

So thank you both.

That is going to do it for us.

You can check out the painting community documentary series at myNJPBS.org.

I'm Joanna Gaggis for all of us here at NJ Spotlight News.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

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