[ Music ] >> You have to stop thinking that Newark is a boogeyman of New Jersey.

Stop.

Come here.

See what's going on.

You have good and bad.

There's good and bad in the suburbs too.

Welcome to public art.

[ laughter ] [ music ] Newark has such a long history as a creative city.

And to be able to make that visible and put it as big as we can on a wall is a really special thing.

We're all one community all working together.

And that's important is day and time.

There's a lot of stigma associated with Newark.

People kind of go into like certain situations or areas or communities with this preconceived notion.

What you need to do is appreciate the people who are there and acknowledge them.

The more I did that, the more I felt connected, which is kind of odd coming from somebody who's like from Brooklyn.

But I felt like I was home because I was seen as an artist.

In some ways it feels like the biggest small town, particularly within the art scene.

It's a really special place to be.

I'm a photographer and Armisey is a painter.

We were friends first.

We worked together and I feel like she's somebody that saw strength in me.

My work is straight about women.

Peri and Sap.

Women of color portrayed in positions of divinity.

I entered this muralism public art space, originally documenting graffiti and street art.

The first mural that I was brought into as a lead artist was with Armisey on the Golden Life.

So it's a really special thing.

Everything changed all at once and I took on a new role.

Now, in addition to an educator and a photographer, I'm also a public artist.

A lot of murals are very prescribed.

These are the themes that you have to address in a mural.

When this opportunity came along, I was like, can I do whatever I want?

And they were like, yes.

And I was like, really?

I said, so I can do a mural that's strictly about women of color and girls and use this color scheme and put nimbuses behind them?

They're like, "Yes."

I was like, "Rachel?"

[laughter] It was almost like a dream come true.

She's seen my work, I've seen her work.

I was like, "This is a no-brainer here."

We are aligned on our vision and the underlying meaning behind things.

Mm-hmm.

You're gonna make me-- I know!

Get me off the cliff.

I can't look at you.

[laughter] Such a sweetheart.

[music] Because it is a high-traffic area, the mural site was identified by the city of Newark as in need of beautification and safety and cleanup.

The Golden Life mural is really important because it spans generations of women.

To talk about the power of women of color, that is really important, especially for black and brown women and girls in an age that isn't necessarily kind to them.

And we combined both high-resolution prints and painted elements to create this multi-facade installation.

It features 14 women and girls of all ages, from toddler through elder.

And all of the women that you see here and girls are connected to the mural site, so they either live or work in the community.

The golden life just means internal agency and light and how you share that with others.

I feel golden when I'm teaching a student with developmental disability and a smile comes across their face when they feel that they get something.

Because this is an area that is so well used and has been neglected for so long, we wanted to highlight real lives of real women and really center their contributions and make people aware of how special ordinary people are.

The people in our mural are wearing regular clothes.

They're not posed specifically.

They were prompted with a couple of questions about what makes your life golden, when do you feel the best.

And then my job as the photographer was to try to capture that feeling, that emotion in the portrait.

We wanted to highlight the beauty in the everyday and the radiance of the everyday.

And that's intentional.

We could have honored historical people, famous people, and we didn't want that.

We wanted real people who would get to see themselves.

And I think it's our way of countering the hate and division that we seem inundated by these days.

So we're going to put it up on the wall.

Twelve feet tall.

As tall as we can do.

Ladders, scissor lifts.

How can we say it's okay to be who you are?

Embrace your golden side.

Embrace the warmth and the power of that in yourselves.

The nimbus is one of those kind of universal symbols that highlight saints or people who are of higher stature.

If you look at religious paintings, they usually denote saints or gods.

And I wanted to include this in the mural because it's connected to my personal work and how I talk about the power and the divinity of black and brown women.

This is how I perceive my blackness and the trials and tribulations and the joys of being a black woman.

We're very passionate about what we do and how we serve the community.

So accessibility is really important to both of us.

We both work with students who are disabled.

We thought it was important to try to get everybody that we could in the mural.

My philosophy on access is that when you make something inclusive for one population, it becomes more inclusive for all populations.

The photos were taken during our workshop, which was at Newark Public Library.

And it was open to anybody who wanted to come and participate.

A local young girl, Zora Stover, she's blind.

I talked to her about the prompt, which was, what makes you feel golden?

And she had this look on her face, and she just looked to the light.

And she said, I can feel the light on my face.

And this is the moment that we captured here.

This one will live in my memory as the peak moment of creating the golden life.

My absolute favorite detail is the text written on Zora's cane.

As I was prepping the photos to be enlarged, I noticed that there were words here, and it says, "Live the life you want."

It was an element that was unplanned but really captured the spirit of the mural.

That is a real activation of a corner that has been neglected and was unsafe for many years and now is such a place of beauty for the people that work and live in the neighborhood.

Working in this way really brings everything together in terms of the golden life and how Rachel and I see the women and children in this Newark as people who need to be seen and elevated.

Commuters walking past, they have to look.

There's a lot of selfies floating around too, which is really nice and especially when it's like I know that person and they take a selfie with it, like that's really nice.

People that I don't know, the first time I meet them they're talking about the impact that that mural has had.

And even if you're not an artist or like artistically inclined, you're still able to like connect with that.

Public art tells an amalgam of stories that are not only important but necessary.

It's a way for the artist to connect with people on an everyday basis.

Making art in public is a sign of a healthy creative community.

Any interaction, minuscule to huge, is important.

I'm just so proud to be a part of it and it is a beautiful legacy to leave.

We are visual people but we're also communicators and how we communicate the importance of black and brown women and girls is important.

It's critical and crucial.

We cannot forsake the community.

Our community cannot do it.

And it's an important marker that I can show my nieces, "Your auntie did this."

And like my mother, if she was still here, she'd be like, "My daughter did that."

Yeah.

I wish she was there.

I wish she was there to see it.

The mural is about the women, but it's also about the mothers that can be here and that are rooting for their daughters to make some impact somewhere.

I hope we can work together and make these places where people feel honored and recognized.

[MUSIC]