(upbeat music) - Public art and growing food in the community, they both kind of feel like giving back.

When you see something huge on the wall down the street every day, it does change you.

It changes the way you think.

It changes the way you operate, the way you walk, the way you talk to your neighbors.

It really does give you a chance to switch your perspective online.

[ music ] I am an artist, art educator, muralist, public artist, community worker.

Some people will call what I do graffiti or at least borderline.

They're all the same thing if you ask me.

One just has a stigma to it, and the other one, you get a grant for.

My family is from Camden.

I love Camden.

The stories that I grew up with are all about community.

It feels good to like walk down the street and not just know that my family's been there, but now literally have something that came from like hands of ours, of mine.

I'm trying to bring back the like essence of neighborhoods.

That like open door policy, that sitting on the porch vibe.

Everything I do is about feelings and like healing in the self so that you can heal collectively as a community because it starts with you.

[ piano music ] There's this big stigma and like idea of what Camden is supposed to look like.

Camden is a food desert.

That means we don't have access to fresh food and vegetables.

We don't have access to big supermarkets, which is why the garden is so important because a lot of our community members don't have access to their cultural crops.

Land is very important for communities to grow, not just our cultural foods, but also a place where we can just exist as we are and just really lean into our cultures and be in ritual with the land.

The farm history began with the Viet community here in Camden.

A lot of Viet elders had migrated to the U.S.

and really felt homesick.

They were missing the sense of community.

And so they saw this location as a possible site for a farm.

So they came together, cleaned it up themselves.

With their own blood, sweat and tears, they cleared it out and brought soil and built beds.

These trellises were built by our community members from old fence posts.

It's a lot of like makeshift of like people just trying to figure out what to do with what they had at the time.

But over time they noticed that there was a shift in who community members were to more Latine and black African American community members and transferred ownership of the farm back to the community.

And this will be our first season basically stewarding the farm as council community members.

Who knows what Camden is going to look like in five years?

We don't know.

I don't know what it's going to look like in two years.

But what I do know is right now, these are the people that are here.

Not everyone speaks English.

So it's a lot of communication that happens with signage and gestures and things like that.

But we're all community.

So everyone's always happy to see each other, even if they don't know what each other is saying.

You'll have elders speaking Vietnamese and some speak in Spanish.

And they'll point, say it in their language.

And then the other elder will respond in their own language, but they completely understand each other.

And that is beautiful.

- This is like a safe space.

- Hmm, nah, I think this can be easy fixed and I will gladly help y'all.

- When we were designing the mural, it was critical that the artists had a connection to Camden.

I'm very happy that the Vaughn was chosen.

- In public art, when you have the opportunity to tell the narrative of people, you should.

And especially if they can be included in it directly, you should.

We basically asked the growers, "What represents you?

What represents home?

What represents your place here?"

I collect the information, I write it down, I log it.

So somehow, some way, the artwork that we make collectively is also seen.

In the mural, it's more than just a pretty picture.

This really is the story of the farm.

These are literally moments from this farm.

They're all snapshots.

The story is really just a process of food, but food that we grow together.

So in the beginning of the mural, we have seeds, then transitions into planting the seeds.

You see sprouts coming out of the ground.

You see vines starting to grow up the trellis.

From that, we go to harvest.

We grow this together, we eat this together, we serve this together, and we sit together.

I also do things super organically, so everything is by hand.

Very hatchy, very loose, but that's on purpose.

I like the idea of sketchbooks because sketchbooks are how I started.

It's how most people who don't have the money to go to an art school as a kid, your parents give you a sketchbook and you just draw on it.

I say that because art should be accessible.

This is my way of saying you too can do what I'm doing.

Birds are my markers.

How you identify where you are in the world.

These kingfishers are Vietnamese.

When you hear birds chirping, you're usually in a safe space.

There's no storms coming, there's no immediate danger, close enough to make the birds fly away.

Birds are super important to me and my artwork.

They are something that we should include and think about.

A big part of their culture there is like eating and sharing like food and moments where we can like just talk and be neighbors and be people.

Sharing food and cooking together is such a like healing thing.

So this is actually supposed to be the plants that we grew in the farm together.

So this is them prepared.

We chose rice for the reason being rice culturally connects us.

We also chose a pot.

Originally I wanted this to be a bowl and the community members immediately told me no.

A bowl and a plate meant serving one person instead of like serving us collectively.

I really do include in all my projects the community feedback.

So I don't believe in putting public art up as advertisements.

I really do believe that it should include like what the people feel like they need, want, and see themselves in it.

It should reflect back who they are.

I didn't do this by myself.

I painted it and I designed it, yes, but this was truly a community effort.

The Growers Connection is through food.

They're interested in having a place where they can cook their cultural foods, especially during outdoor events.

That came to be this kitchen.

Having a kitchen in a space where they grow those crops is important, and they want to share that with other people in the community.

It only makes sense that collectively we had the food that we had grown together be served to eat also together.

At the end of last season, we had a community gathering.

We weren't sure what we were going to make, and the suggestion came of, how about if everyone just grabs something from their plot, and we'll just make a stew.

And it worked beautifully.

It was so good.

I dream about that stew, and I can't wait for more of our events for this upcoming season.

We were definitely the happiest when we were all eating.

Art is so important because it's a representation of who we are in the past, who we are in the present, and who we can be in the future.

My art is solely about healing.

Public art gives you a chance to see an outdoor gallery.

So if you see something huge every day, whether you think it's affecting you or not, it does.

When you put up art that speaks for people and to people and about people and educates people, you really do have the chance to either spark something or keep the spark going.

You're honoring them.

Public art is like altars to the living.

They're all little fragments of stories.

They all are linked to one big story.

This is what it looks like when we paint it on a wall.

It's a connection.

It's like a heartbeat, like a rhythm.

When you're out somewhere and you hear music in the background, you pick it up.

And I think the same thing happens with like good deeds.

You see it, you pick it up.

You just keep passing it forward.

It feels good.

It feels really good to do art here, especially to have these large-scale outdoor paintings where now the neighborhoods are my gallery.

That feels beautiful.

What I want people to think of when they think of Camden?

That they're people.

They wake up, they go to work, they might even make a mistake.

They make it right.

They level on each other.

And I think public art, those are the things that not only like how people change their view of these places, but it changes the way the people in these neighborhoods see themselves.

This is someone's home.

People live here.

I want them to see them as people, as family members and neighbors.

And I want the people in these cities to see themselves as family members and neighbors.

[MUSIC PLAYING]