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From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of NJ Spotlight News.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

Tonight we're taking a journey through public art in New Jersey with our new digital documentary series, Painting Community.

From the neighborhoods of Newark to the boardwalks of Atlantic City, we'll explore how murals and installations are doing far more than just decorating blank walls.

They're telling stories, reflecting identity and culture, and helping build community.

In our first episode, we travel to Atlantic City where artist Manuela Guillen brings together themes of heritage, nature, and public space to craft a bold mural and spark creative dialogue.

We examine how one image can become a gathering place and help shape the story of a city.

Take a look.

- I think I'm going to keep these.

I still have my sixth grade art trophy, so I'm going to put these next to it.

This is kind of emotional being here, like seeing ten years past.

My first mural.

It survived all this time.

It's nice to remember where everything started, you know, to humble you.

It's like all these different concepts collaged over.

Very amateur, very beginner.

I used to joke that I wanted this to be painted over.

Now that I'm here, I'm kind of like, yeah.

It's kind of nice to see the progression I've made as an artist.

I almost cried.

[Speaking Spanish] Most people think of AC, they think about the casinos or the beach or the tourism.

There's like a whole nother world there that people completely don't even acknowledge, which is like the locals.

- A lot of changes are visible in Atlantic City.

We have vacant spaces.

People look at that as a blank canvas.

We also look at some of the walls that are available as places for us to reflect our creative consciousness, to champion artists and art.

- As humans, we definitely absorb our surroundings.

I got into community arts because it was wholesome, because it was very, very real.

We want to make sure that people can have some exposure to our city culture.

People are excited to see more murals and just supporting the artists and the organizations that make it happen.

Public art was my first experience just experiencing art in general.

I lived in Miami when I was young, so I remember driving down the highway and just seeing the back of buildings covered in graffiti and all these colors.

I moved to Jersey when I was 16 with my family.

Going from a place where predominantly my culture is celebrated and then going to Jersey, I lived on the outskirts of Atlantic City in a place called Mays Landing.

And it was a little bit of a culture shock for me.

I felt a little ostracized too.

It was a really hard time for me back then.

There was a period where I didn't want to make art.

I honestly felt the most comfortable when I started going to AC.

It reminded me of something I was like nostalgic and I missed.

So I went to school for fine arts painting and I got to experience seeing people create murals.

I decided I don't want to do gallery stuff.

I just want to be a muralist.

I also was connecting with artists in Atlantic City who are from AC.

There was just a lot of art happening in such a small city.

That really was really special.

My first art community really did blossom in AC, like more than anywhere else.

- The Atlantic City Arts Foundation is a community arts organization and a public arts movement.

Our organization had always wanted to make 100 murals in Atlantic City.

- When I was offered the 100th mural, it was such an honor.

They knew my history with the city.

They've seen me grow as an artist.

Atlantic City is where I started.

That is where a lot of people gave me a shot.

I was like, "I need to make a piece as a thank you to Atlantic City."

It was incredibly meaningful to bring back an artist who was from the region, had participated in some of our earliest mural efforts, and had really incubated her talents and then had achieved a certain amount of acclaim elsewhere and was able to bring their talents back to Atlantic City as a demonstration of their journey as an artist.

[music] So I'll paint these in my studio and I can work with multiple.

I have like two murals I've worked in here that I'm waiting for the sites to be ready so I can install it.

Depending on how large the piece is, it goes up pretty quick.

I feel like once we started painting, it was smooth sailing.

Little things would be like working around a cylinder object is pretty difficult.

So I had someone on the floor kind of guiding me to make sure it looked pretty even.

This is the 100th mural.

It's a big milestone.

And when you're in the art world, sometimes certain things get to you.

You don't always want to tell people you're from Atlantic City.

I'm proud to say I'm from Jersey.

When I was thinking about the theme, I came to the space just to get a sense of it, and I did notice already a theme of florals.

I later came to find out, too, about this restaurant that the chef, his mother plants all these flowers that are native to New Jersey.

And I got to talk to her, and she's like, "Yeah, like, you know, we're planning this because, like, the monarch butterflies are coming through, and we want to make sure we have, like, their native plant, the milkweed."

-I included the florals, and, like, sometimes things just fall into place.

The plants were really blossoming, seeing butterflies just fly over you.

There was one that was, like, hanging out with me the whole time, which was super special for me.

My sisters and my parents were immigrants, my neighbors, friends.

So that butterfly symbolizes migration.

We did have some fans, the Rican Poppies, but I think it was Jose.

And he said he would watch the mural for us and make sure nothing happens to it.

Michael, one of the chefs here was like giving us a spread of like delicious food.

And I like here's a sandwich like I had a mural once where they bought me hoagies.

I thought I was living the high life.

And then they came out with oysters.

I was like, what?

All of us like covered in paint.

- We're very fortunate enough to have the hundredth mural on our building in Atlantic City done by Manny, an incredible artist.

- It was really nice seeing like Michael again, because I'm like, hey, I remember we had to build a scaffold and neither like you're the chef, I'm the artist.

And we're like, neither one of us had to build a scaffold.

It was just me and Michael, like literally.

Only Atlantic City.

Only Atlantic City.

- Most cities in New Jersey face a certain number of challenges, each of them unique.

We're all working together to promote the life of the city.

- When you're not a tourist and you're like here with the community, you really see them trying to make the city better.

It's my job to make sure people see those things because I care about the world we live in.

I'm trying to leave it better than the way I found it.

That is not a job I take lightly.

I'll chat with them, ask them what they think about the piece, like anything that's missing.

Come in knowing that there are people who live in the area that come by every day, making sure that I'll make a piece that highlights the people here.

You have to kind of let go of the ego a little bit because you're entering someone else's space.

So it's no longer what you want.

It's like, what do the people want to see?

They know that there's an artist here that's listening.

It just hits different for them and me.

I don't even put like anti-graffiti sealer.

I just know, I'm like no one's gonna touch it.

They're gonna respect it.

And it has for the most part has always been like that.

When I was a fine art major it was just me and the canvas and you know that could be great too but there's something about like the involvement of others.

It's like that moment of pause.

Maybe you'll see like a parent and a child stop for a moment off their cell phones, just looking at the art and like very, very healing.

- Art has a tremendous capacity to bring people together.

Mural arts in particular are a great capstone to show the efforts of an artist, an organization, a neighborhood to express their values, their talents.

- You don't have to pay anyone to see public art.

You could just walk in any space and just experience it.

Something nice about that openness.

>> Murals are incredibly accessible to people to experience.

And then to celebrate as a broader community of residents and artists, that progress that we have made, just reflect the true creative spirit of an individual artist, are beginning to shape the city itself as we kind of reimagine places and spaces that we all inhabit here.

>> Art after a while, when you release it, it's not yours anymore.

Whether people use this site to take photos in front of, or to leave their trash cans, like this is for them.

The art is just part of the space, part of the ecosystem now.

It's a feeling of hope.

People connecting the dots that like the value that comes from creating art, like what that does to a neighborhood, what that does to the area.

I like to think that people who are from Atlantic City are like, look what happens when you give people resources that are from this area.

We made it to 100, but there'll be like 100 more and then 100 more because of that grit that the people here have.

It's like a reflection back of who they are.

Always dreaming, always growing, and seeing what happens.

(soft music) >> And joining us now is Michael Atkins, Executive Director of the Atlantic City Arts Foundation, the organization behind much of Atlantic City's recent public art movement and the partner behind tonight's episode of Painting Community.

Michael, thanks for being here.

I want to ask you what it means, what's the significance of having Atlantic City as the inaugural episode of this, and how it really speaks to the changes that we've seen there.

Well, thank you so much for having me here.

It's an honor and privilege to be here with you.

Atlantic City is a place in New Jersey that almost everyone has visited, had formed some memory there.

We are a city that has a tremendous amount of tourists, whether they're gaming tourists or convention tourists.

So a lot of eyeballs see the walls of Atlantic City, and we've heard that directly from artists, that it's a privilege as well to erect their public artwork there, knowing how many people will see it.

The first episode obviously highlights, we've been calling her Manny, but Manuela Guillen.

What drew the foundation to her?

Why was her work, her artistic voice, why did that feel like it worked for what you wanted to achieve?

Manuela was the perfect embodiment of what our organization has been pushing forward for nearly a decade.

She's someone who's a native daughter of Atlantic City, worked in casinos, heard every language that's spoken in the back house of the casinos, studied at a local university, and worked with our organization as an emerging artist to assist in murals, get her first chance at a panel, and has grown tremendously as an artist.

So it was the right choice to bring her back to install the 100th mural, showing our journey and evolution as an organization through an individual artist who has also benefited.

Well, what about her work?

I mean, she comes from an immigrant family.

She talks about that in the documentary, how much that influences her, influences the mediums that she uses.

Why did it feel like this is a type of work that we need to display?

And not only display, but make it this milestone, this 100th mural.

As an organization, we prioritize commissioning high caliber artworks and also supporting emerging artists.

So, Manuela's ability to embody both halves of that charter was really something that we hope to make sure was installed in a permanent way in the walls of Atlantic Cities because she's a role model for artists here and graced us with the beautiful message that if we continue growing and dreaming, we're going to continue to improve the city and ourselves.

We saw in the piece, and we know, I mean, you know from firsthand experience, these murals can turn into anchors for the community, right?

I mean, it's where people go, they take selfies, they have picnics, they, you know, make this the background of wedding photography shots.

Why is it that they expose the community, though, to public art in a way that maybe folks wouldn't be exposed to?

What does it bring to people?

A very important vital aspect of public arts is that it never charges admission, right?

That people in Atlantic City, about one-third of our population is below the poverty line and our median income is still below $40,000, right?

So our murals are a primary way that people can access art, similar to ways that public libraries help you access literature or public broadcast helps you access the news or media.

What about from your firsthand experience about how residents respond to this work, to Manny's work, to the other artists that have been commissioned?

- One of the artists who installed A Little Bit of Everyone, that's a piece that has been installed in the city for a while, but he kind of arrived to town, Denton Burrows is the artist's name, and when you're a muralist and you're up on the lift, you see a lot.

You have a bird's eye view, a lot of people try to talk to you, ask you what you're doing, and his approach years ago, he refurbished this mural this summer, but years ago he kind of just crowdsourced what people were telling him on the street.

So it's a, the title of the mural being "A Little Bit of Everyone" was an homage to the inputs that he received from people driving, shouting, shouting ideas, sharing their stories.

Like, I think it'd be great to have this in our city, add a bird.

So there's a very organic process.

And is that how it typically goes?

I mean, or do these artists come in with something in mind and you approve it and say, here's what we'd like to see there?

In most cases, artists have some starting point, and then something happens along the way.

And that's true whether it's performing arts or visual arts.

The process to finalize something in the arts is a very magical thing in its own right.

And so we're very proud of that.

And many of the artists are very, like I said, very reverent about their opportunity to have something that's so public in a city that attracts so many people but has a special meaning for those everyday residents.

So since you mentioned it, obviously Manuela's work, the 100th milestone, but since then more pieces have been added.

Can you just share with us a little bit about what those are, how many?

Yeah, we have now installed 105 murals total and a few more teed up for next year.

So we just want to keep the march going and continue to install public art in the city of Atlantic City.

Two of the other muralists that came back this year outside of Denton depicted, they had a little bit of a cultural nod to the exciting bird life of South Jersey.

We had an oyster catcher installed by Felipe Ortiz and a very exciting project called New Jersey Osprey Project by Evan Lovett.

The osprey is a very important bird species, especially in the South Jersey marshlands, and an indicator species to the health of our broader ecosystem.

So that's an artist who found some reference materials, rode in the marsh flats, took some photos and made sure that we have a place in our urban zone to acknowledge what extra urban activities there are outside of the city.

Yeah, because I mean folks know Atlantic City as a coastal community, but they may not connect all of the ecosystems, all of the environmental impacts that happen there that ripple throughout the state when they're just thinking of the urban zone or the casino area or just the boardwalk.

And that's the imperative of art, right?

Art can allow you to expand your consciousness, think about something in a new way, see it in a new light, and the true talents of every artist are to find something, to pick something that's unique to their talents, but allow for many people to touch base with it in their own way and avenue.

There was a recent post on the Foundation's blog describing the momentum as the work of migratory muralists.

What is that exactly?

Why is that something that Atlantic City is seeing as a crux to what you're trying to achieve?

Like I said, we hold these two key initiatives of commissioning high-caliber work and drawing as much attention as we can to it and to support our emerging artists.

So almost every one of our programs, whether it's a mural installation or other public activities and events, balance those two imperatives.

So in this instance, we were funded to restore and refurbish some murals in a city like Atlantic City.

Sometimes walls have to be touched up.

There's a lot of, it's a coastal community, so there's these muralists.

- That salt air reeks havoc.

- Exactly.

And so muralists, these group of muralists who had come back had done a work before and were reinstalling it into the city or touching up a piece that they hadn't visited in eight years or so.

So that was really great.

They also shared with us a lot of reflections of changes over time from 2018, 19 to 2025 Atlantic City.

And it was really great to kind of have that step back and see what folks who have an authentic, unique experience in Atlantic City have charted over that time.

Why do you think it's caught on in the way that it has?

Is it just, as you say, because it creates this sense of community, it brings people together.

What do you think about it?

Because over the last decade, couple of decades, it's taken off.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, Atlantic City is always, it has an identity and we're always searching for ways to express it.

We're a South Jersey city, so the place that people come together.

Like I said, many of your viewers, I'm sure, have had an experience or formed a memory in Atlantic City or their grandparents loved going or something.

And our ability to support arts contribute to our broader citywide effort outside of arts to have an identity together, to cross cultural boundaries, to bring people, to be a place for people throughout South Jersey and the state to come and experience arts, performing arts.

And so I'm very proud of our mural program as being a depiction of that.

That is just one piece, though.

The mission goes beyond murals, as you and I were talking about.

The 48 Blocks Festival, art mixers, what are some of the extracurriculars, if you will, some of the other initiatives that the foundation puts on to bring the art to the community, bring the art to the people?

We are using art to build community, right?

And the imperative to build community is consistency.

You need to see people over time.

You need to see each other once a month.

So we've been really trying to think through the ways to have regularity, touch points, opportunities for people who are vending artists to vend, gallery artists to propose, to put their works in galleries.

And the 48 Blocks Festival was an all day, 12 hour affair in a park where we closed the street for pedestrians to enjoy and had 48 featured artists.

>> Because there's 48 blocks in the city.

>> There's 48 blocks in the city, that's correct.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

So we aim to incorporate artists and creative individuals and just the public through all 48 blocks into our events and programs because public art has no barrier, because we're working to advance our own city identity.

And what do you hear from the artists when they take part in that or from the community members now that this has become somewhat of a staple for them?

Well, like I said, our city faces challenges, so establishing events that are free and open to the public and allow for people to contribute their own creative piece, whether they're performing artists or they're doing glass demonstrations or neon, it allows people to kind of see that showcase of how talented we are as a local community.

And it was incredibly well attended.

We were very proud of the diverse attendance that we had.

Just honestly, there's something beautiful about closing a street to people.

It allows people to let their hair down a little bit.

>> Reclaim their neighborhood and their community.

What about the art mixers and some of the other programs that the foundation is doing?

We throw a quarterly art mixer at an independent rock venue that we have in town.

That's mostly to get people together.

It allows us as an organization to share what we're going to be up to in the next coming months.

We put out a lot of calls to artists or share resources throughout the state of art fellowships.

So constantly churning that group of creative people who want to support artists buying artwork, which is a very vital step.

And also artists who have completed works that are looking for places to exhibit.

And do you find that it brings them new opportunities for that support or those networks that maybe they wouldn't have had otherwise?

>> Certainly, certainly.

I mean, art is a collaborative expression of people's own talents and creativity.

So sometimes people can receive feedback or, like I said, find a patron who's looking to support them.

And again, it's just very imperative for any nonprofit, for any community effort, to make sure that you're regularly working with people and taking feedback and providing opportunity because that helps you go farther together than fast alone.

I want to just circle back about some of the public art and what it means for the future of the city and where you see it going in the next couple of years or what the foundation's vision is for that.

Like I referenced briefly before, the arts along with urban farming and state agencies and city efforts, we're all working together in Atlantic City to show that there's a city identity outside of our gaming industry and to promote more residents, right?

There's a more residents in our city make every endeavor, every business, every restaurant, every bar, et cetera, more viable.

And so by having an identity, by putting forward opportunities for artists, letting them contribute to shaping how we engage with the city, is advancing our ability to improve the city's health and the civic health.

So that's where we do our part, but we're a part of a broader community advancing Atlantic City.

Yeah.

When I look at Manuela's work, it really feels like Atlantic City.

Does that make sense?

It just feels like the people, the community there, is that something that when you're vetting artists or seeking them out, because I'm sure it goes both ways, right, where they come to you and you go to them, how do you make sure that the work really speaks to the city?

Do they need to be natives?

Do they need to be locals?

We very frequently have a jury review, you know, and convene members of the public, whether they are residents or they have a professional life in the city.

It's really great to have a small group to look through artist proposals and help both shape by providing notes but also even to select that that's the thing that feels right for that building or that property.

This is an artist that is ready for an opportunity.

This is the right time for them.

So it is really a public effort.

And that's how we ensure that these themes that are important to include, whether they be historic or whether they be environmental, that we're making sure to, in the broad catalog of over 100 murals, making sure that there's homage to the many different people, places, and things that make it unique.

And what do you want folks to know about this public art, about how it goes beyond revitalization or shaping up a blighted area, a blighted wall?

I mean, what do you think is the overall message that people need to know?

Well, when you're working to improve a city, right, abating graffiti, increasing street lights, increasing foot traffic, those are all some of the basic things that we're working on for that civic health.

And murals contribute to that.

They give people a sense of identity, whether they're driving by or they're on the bus or jitney or whether they're walking by.

So the many walls of Atlantic City, our ability to transform them through art, gives civic pride and contributes to that.

So that's the type of thing that we really prioritize and recognize is central to understanding Atlantic City and giving it another chapter ahead.

And then for the folks who want to learn more, who want to support the initiatives, where can they go?

What can they look to?

We invite all of your viewers and everyone in New Jersey to look up the Atlantic City Arts Foundation.

It's hard to miss a mural when you drive into Atlantic City.

>> They become landmarks.

I've been on the phone with folks and say you have to go past this.

>> You have to drive past the wizard and make a right there.

>> But for people who want to become involved.

>> We would love them to check us out.

We've got events quite regularly.

So you should go to AtlanticCityArtsFoundation.org.

We list our events there.

We've got a bunch of great events coming up.

And to join our newsletter.

That's a great way to stay involved.

>> You take volunteers as well.

>> We take volunteers and we also have an artist insider.

So artists who might be in the area, anywhere in New Jersey, they should join our artist insider because that's where we'll put out opportunities to work or earn a commission in Atlantic City or even just to be aware of other opportunities throughout the state.

Very cool.

We love that.

Michael Atkins, thanks so much for coming in.

>> Thank you.

>> Appreciate it.

>> Very much for having me.

And that's going to do it for us.

You can check out the Painting Community documentary series at mynjpbs.org.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

For all of us here at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for watching.

Have a great night.

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(upbeat music)