Bed-Stuy Arts Stroll
All photos by Aaron Pegg for Black-Owned Brooklyn
As the proprietor of Calabar Imports — a treasure hunt of a store with handcrafted items from around the globe — Atim Annette Oton has been a Brooklyn fixture for nearly 15 years. In addition to managing locations in Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy, Atim is the director and curator of Harlem’s Calabar Gallery and, now in its third year, she coordinates the dynamic Bed-Stuy Arts Stroll.
Held on the first Saturday and Sunday of each month, the Arts Stroll is a self-guided tour through the neighborhood with stops at murals, galleries and businesses exhibiting local art. “There’s a lot of context surrounding the work in this community,” says Atim. “I want to show a range of art that’s here, whether it was produced in the 70s, 80s, 90s or the 2000s on — and things that may come in the future based on the neighborhood’s changing demographics.” ⠀
Last weekend we picked up a schedule at Calabar Imports and set off for the central Bed-Stuy tour, lucky enough to have Atim leading the way.
“I want to show a range of art that’s here, whether it was produced in the 70s, 80s, 90s or the 2000s on — and things that may come in the future based on the neighborhood’s changing demographics.”
First stop on March’s Bed-Stuy Arts Stroll: a series of portraits on Tompkins and Halsey by Haitian-American artist Alan Aine. Recognizable across Brooklyn for thickly painted brush strokes and detailed, anime-like eyes, Aine’s murals carry a bold yet ethereal quality. This particular series has also provoked others to add their own tags: a wheatpasted poster from the “Stop Telling Women to Smile” series by artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, a small gallery of photo portraits by Back to the Street Photo, and the stenciled message “Warning Colonizers At Work.”
The interplay, Atim explains, is partially a reflection of tensions between old and new styles of street art. “The murals that have been here are really about affirmations of Black people and the struggles we’ve had,” she says. “With newer murals like this, we don’t quite get what the messages are.”
Other artwork along the tour represents the older style. A mural painted along the schoolyard of P.S. 305, for example, features Nelson Mandela, Venus and Serena Williams, Spike Lee, Maya Angelou, Florence Griffith Joyner, Louis Armstrong and Rosa Parks, among other intergenerational Black heroes. We also hit up Putnam and Franklin mural of an Ol’ Dirty Bastard album cover, infamously depicting the Brooklyn-born rapper’s public assistance card.
“There’s a generation of elders who don’t understand O.D.B.’s cultural value,” Atim says of the rendition, painted on the wall of a deli. “But for people who knew him in this neighborhood, who can tell you where he lived and what parties they went to with him, he’s loved.”
Key stops along the Bed-Stuy Arts Stroll also include local galleries and businesses, such as the Black-owned Brown Butter Craft Bar + Kitchen. Besides serving a mean bacon-egg-and-cheese on a biscuit, the cafe showcases local art, currently the work of Frid Branham.
Our final visit was to Zion Gallery, located on the garden level of a brownstone owned by artist Fedrecia Hartley. In addition to exhibiting her own paintings, self-described as “realistic with a primitive flavor,” and work by featured artist Ava Tomlinson, the Bed-Stuy born-and-raised Fedrecia is passionate about sharing art more broadly with the community. ⠀
