Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine
Artist in Residence, 2023–2025
Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine is a community-based public art project founded by Mildred Beltré and Oasa DuVerney in 2010. Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine is based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and creates art for and with their neighbors. Beltré and DuVerney have been neighbors in the same building for over twenty-five years, and their collaboration was born out of their regular drawing and sewing nights hosted in each other's apartments. As artists, educators, and parents, they learned that sharing their creative skills and time with each other helped to develop a close friendship that they could extend to the rest of their community. At the same time, they experienced intensifying gentrification in their neighborhood, which was displacing its most vulnerable community members. Their work addresses the insecurity and distrust among neighbors created by the over-policing that often accompanies rapid gentrification.
Their project aims to use their artistic practice as a way to engage neighbors and the wider community in art and organizing practices. Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine's workshops and projects take place on the sidewalk to encourage participation by all and foster a creative and generative public space within the community. Every summer since 2010, Beltré and DuVerney set out a tent, tables, chairs, art supplies, and snacks on their block in Brooklyn to engage their neighbors in activities. Specific activities have included: an ongoing family portrait project that helps to document the ever-evolving families in Crown Heights; community interviews for an upcoming book; an annual art installation known as “Fence Weaving”; screen-printing workshops; and organizing tenants’ rights booklets and meetings with lawyers.
Photo by Scott Dolan
Stay Connected
Residency Activities
Family Portraits with Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine
What we’ve learned is that the purpose of art-making or being an artist can be about making connections together in a community.
—Oasa DuVerney
Work is most successful when it is communicating with others and helping you to…bridge a gap.
—Mildred Beltré
During their CPP artist residency, Beltré and DuVerney interviewed community residents about their families and photographed cherished family-owned objects. Their neighbors' words and images will be published in a book documenting their concept of a community-based archive. As part of their ongoing practice, the artists interview members of the community and invite them to pose for family portraits every summer.
Learn more about this project, and watch videos from The Met with Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine.
Interviews with Neighbors,
June 16–July 23, 2023
Beltré and DuVerney sat outside with their Crown Heights neighbors to record interviews for their forthcoming book, which explores their concept of a community-based archive. Neighbors were asked the following:
- How long have you lived in the neighborhood?
- Can you tell us a story about living on our block?
- What is something you would like to see change?
- What is something you want to remain the same?
The interviews are part of their Archive to Survive project, which also includes family portraits and photo documentation of objects belonging to these neighbors.
Fence Weaving, June 16–July 23, 2023
Every summer, Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine installs a new fence weaving for the neighborhood by wrapping colored ribbons through the wires of a chain-link fence on their block. Previous installations have included messages, such as “We are the small talk, the banter, the laughter / We are the first words, and the parting ones,” and “We are the sashay and the strut and the swagger / We are the song that never ends.”
The Met Professional Learning Community (MetPLC) Artist Talk and Workshop, July 26, 2023
In summer 2023, Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine led a session about their work for The Met Professional Learning Community (Met PLC) educators, followed by art making that involved words sewn onto fencelike material.
MetFest, October 21, 2023
For MetFest 2023, The Met’s biannual fall block party, Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine hosted a community weaving project, for which Museum visitors contributed collaborative weaving on a shared loom, and created their own “fence-weave” artwork. The display featured their original design “The Song that I Sing is Part of an Echo,” based on a line from Assata Shakur's poem “Leftovers—What is Left.”
Interests and Inspirations from The Met
Crest (Tsesah)
This crest from Cameroon dates to the 18th century. For Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, the work represents how art objects and the practice of care can serve a community.
Throne Back
This artwork evokes the talking and listening that ground Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine's relationship with their community.
Learn more about the throne back.
Juan Sanchez, Un Sueño Libre, from the portfolio “Guariquen: Images and Words Rican/Structured”
Juan Sanchez's work and career has had a significant influence on both Beltré and DuVerney. DuVerney had the great privilege of studying with Sanchez as a graduate student in Hunter College’s MFA program. For Beltré and DuVerney, this work speaks to the power of unity and dreaming about a beautiful future.
Public Programs
- Interviews with neighbors, family portraits, and fence weaving, June 16 – July 23, 2023
- The Met Professional Learning Community (MetPLC) artist talk and workshop, July 26, 2023
- Community weaving project at MetFest, October 21, 2023
The Civic Practice Project is made possible by The William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust.