Brownstoner: Where do you live, and how did you end up there?
Amy Sananman: I live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. My husband and I bought a house there a decade ago. It kind of feels like living in the country – especially when our dog caught a rooster that fell into our yard.

BS: What is Groundswell Community Mural Project and how did you come to found it?
AS: Groundswell is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit. Our mission is to bring together professional artists, grassroots organizations and communities to create high quality murals in under-represented neighborhoods and inspire youth to take active ownership of their future by equipping them with the tools necessary for social change. Over the past fifteen years Groundswell has worked with thousands of community members to complete more than 300 collaboratively designed and painted murals across New York City.

In 1996 I was working as a tenant organizer with low-income residents of city-owned properties who were organizing to convert their buildings into cooperatives, which they would then manage themselves. Despite the great swell of activity and organizing occurring within these buildings, the work was indiscernible from the street. I thought it important to bring that community activism from the walls inside to the walls outside. Public art provided the perfect vehicle for showing the swell of activity that came from the core or base of an individual, group or community. Serendipity led me to the great muralist, Joe Matunis, who taught me how to do a community mural and became one of our founding board members.

In the absence of such a group in New York City, a group of artists, educators and activists founded Groundswell based on the belief that there is something unique and powerful about the community mural making process, which combines the sanctity of personal expression with the strength of community activism. Groundswell’s programs are based on principles of individual, group and community development. Collaborating with communities and fostering community activism, we strive to physically and mentally build up the individual, group or community during the making of the mural. A groundswell is a sudden surge of growth or a wave of energy surfacing from beneath the ocean. At Groundswell—we support the energy and stories hidden behind walls to be expressed on the walls.

After the jump, Amy talks about specific Groundswell projects, the effect public art has on the neighborhood and lists a few favorite murals in Brooklyn…
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