Reported by Torie Wells
Tuesday August 23, 2011
At the top of Castle Street, in the heart of Great Barrington, you can find beauty underneath the railroad tracks.
“It’s been this contagious art project,” said Paul McNeil, from the Railroad Street Youth Project.
“I like doing things that the public can see,” said Dan Slater, a graffiti artist.
“It’s for everyone,” said Laurel Zukowski, a mural artist.
For weeks now, Zukowski has been breathing life into a mural underneath the railroad tracks in Great Barrington.
Zukowskis work is intertwined with the work of local teens. It is a project through the Railroad Street Youth Project. The organization was started back in 1999 by a 19-year-old named Amanda Root.
“There were a bunch of youth that used to hang out in the railroad street area years ago and it was a hotbed of drug sales,” said McNeil. “So many people close to her were getting affected in horrible ways.”
Amanda wanted to give youth another option, empowering them to take part in the community.
“This is the heartbeat of the Railroad Street Youth Project it’s young people coming together talking about what they want to do that will mean something positive,” said McNeil.
“It feels good, we did a lot. Originally it just looked like a lot of graffiti. After we primed it with the white paint and got the color on it, it’s looking a lot better,” said Sergio Winston, a 14-year-old who volunteers for the project.
He says that if it weren’t for the project he’d likely be home for the summer. Instead he will go back to school, feeling accomplished.
“It’s something definitely to look back on, it’s a memory of the summer 2011,” he said.
Seventeen-year-old Dan Slater is thinking about going to school for graphic arts. But his first passion is graffiti, an art form that is growing. This project is giving him a canvas of his own and a platform to speak to his community.
“I want people to take away that graffiti isn’t just vandalism its also an art form,” said Slater.
Each moment you spend with the mural, you see something new. The ways it is affecting the community are layered too. On the surface, it is a gift to Great Barrington but, if you look closer, you can see it is a gift to each other and themselves.
“Everyone feels like the contributed so it’s theirs,” said Zukowski.
“Twenty years from now you can look back and say I remember this,” said Slater.
We are getting ready for another round of apprenticeships! Come and get involved and learn from some of the best in Berkshire county. Folks ages 14-25 can get involved. It’s free and we offer transportation to the site, leaving from GB, Monument Mountain and Mt. Everett! We offer apprenticeships at:
