The Cortelyou Project
According to the 2000 census, Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park is America’s single most integrated neighborhood. Caribbean, African and American blacks share space with reform and religious Jews, black and Pakistani Muslims, Italians, Armenians, and Eastern Europeans. Lesbians and rude boys rub elbows at the food coop and the supermarket, and the children all eat at San Remo’s, whose fresh mozzarella and tomato pizza is possibly Brooklyn’s best slice. The neighborhood is also class diverse, intermingling blocks of three story Victorian houses with 1950s coop and rental buildings. Below is Amber Scoon’s Cortelyou Project, a series of paintings of the neighborhood, originally shown in the neighborhood.
San Remo’s (Pizzeria)
Salahi (Bodega)
“Da Pride of Flatbush” (Firehouse)
Harry (Editor)
Shoemaker’s Monologue
The Tailor
The Hairdresser (at the Antique Store)
Stone (Laundromat Owner)
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Several of the paintings were given to their subjects, the others to friends of the artist. But there's been talk of bringing them back together for another show in Brooklyn (they were first shown on Cortelyou Road, at the Brooklyn Public Library branch there). If that happens, there'll certainly be an announcement posted on NewPartisan.
I enjoyed looking at your paintings, and I also am a painter, currently working on a similiar project of portraits of vendors in the Flatbush neighborhood.
I would be interested in keeping in touch with you, as I don't know too many painters in this area.
Regards,
Nina Talbot