The People Make The Place!

The People Make the Place!

¡Las Personas Hacen el Lugar! Le Persone Fanno il Luogo!

The Grand Street BID is proud to present:

The People Make the Place! ¡Las Personas Hacen el Lugar! Le Persone Fanno il Luogo!

“The People Make the Place!” is a temporary, interactive, hybrid installation which aims to engage the community towards a more inclusive vision for its future. The physical installation is set to run from 5/29/25 - 6/30/25 at 246 and 247 Graham Avenue, while the digital installation will continue to be updated here.

Featuring materials submitted by neighborhood partners, and inviting ongoing feedback and storytelling, the multi-media installation frames and reflects (literally and figuratively) the real people of East Williamsburg and their relationship with our shared spaces. It represents a collaborative effort to honor neighborhood history and leaders, a rich culture of co-creating public spaces, and public life through the medium of digital and physical windows.

We want to hear your story! Click the button below to submit a story, image, or vision for the future. Submissions will be collected and shared here, to present an inclusive vision for the future together:

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The People make the place!

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¡Las personas hacen el lugar!

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Le persone fanno il luogo!

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The People make the place! 〰️ ¡Las personas hacen el lugar! 〰️ Le persone fanno il luogo! 〰️

installation

The physical installation will live temporarily in storefront space along Graham Avenue, at 246 (Grand Street BID office) and 247 (across the street) featuring three graphic and architectural works. These include a Community-sourced Photo Collage Mural by L&L Studio, the photo series Toñita’s by Sylvia Riveros, and Re: Place (a series of sculptural elements) by Reframe Architecture. The physical installation is set to run from 5/29 - 6/30, with the digital portion living on here.

Photo-Collage Mural, L&L Studio:

L&L Studio worked with Grand Street BID to create a photo-collage mural that invites visitors to meditate on the past, present, and future of the East Williamsburg neighborhood. Spanning four large windows of storefront space along Graham Street, the mural combines images sourced from neighborhood organizations El Puente, Powers Street Garden, and Evergreen Exchange, as well as NYPL and NYC public archives. The artwork is framed by questions in Spanish, Italian and English (three languages historically spoken in the neighborhood) that prompt reflection on how viewers interact with and shape their community: 

1. How do local spaces shape my experience? | ¿Cómo moldean mi experiencia los espacios locales? | In che modo gli spazi locali influenzano la mia esperienza?

2. Where are opportunities for change? | ¿Dónde están las oportunidades de cambio? |Dove sono le opportunità di cambiamento?

3. What makes me feel connected here? | ¿Qué me hace sentir conectado aquí? |Cosa mi fa sentire legato a questo luogo?

4. How do I contribute to my community? | ¿Cómo contribuyo a mi comunidad? | Come contribuisco alla mia comunità?

5. What do I miss from the past? | ¿Qué extraño del pasado? | Cosa mi manca del passato?

Our team was inspired by speculative design of the 1960s and 1970s that combined photography and architectural renderings to reimagine the relationship between the built environment and culture. As viewers engage with the mural, we hope that they become both observers and participants in the evolving story of the neighborhood, reflecting on its history, transformation, and potential future.

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Toñita’s, Sylvia Riveros:

Toñita’s is a photo series by Sylvia Riveros that honors the Caribbean Social Club in Williamsburg and its remarkable founder, Maria Antonia “Toñita” Cay. For over five decades, this space has served as a haven for Puerto Rican and Latin American communities—offering free food, salsa music, and a deep sense of belonging. Through intimate images, the series reflects how people make a place by showing up for one another, sharing joy, and sustaining intergenerational networks of care. Toñita’s bridges generations, cultures, genders, and migration journeys through mutual aid, music, and nourishment.

To learn more, visit: https://www.sylviajulianart.com/ 

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Re: Place, Yalda Keramati | Reframe Architecture:

As part of Design Sprints: Building Creative Capacity (The people make the place!), ReFrame Architecture has designed a series of sculptural elements that emphasize the socio-spatial nature of place by highlighting memory and reflection. 

The materiality and geometry of the forms reference the built environment and mimic the folds and volumes of the storefront. It is the reflection of the audience on the sculpture’s surface that brings the installation to life, recognizing the vital role of community in sustaining and transforming the place. It is an invitation for everyone to share their stories and be a part of the collective memory of the neighborhood.

The people make the place!!

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¡Las personas hacen el lugar!

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Le persone fanno il luogo

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The people make the place!! 〰️ ¡Las personas hacen el lugar! 〰️ Le persone fanno il luogo 〰️

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Tell us your story! Use the questions below + your experiences being apart of the community to frame your answers. Your stories may be folded into the exhibit at a later date:

1. How do local spaces shape my experience? | ¿Cómo moldean mi experiencia los espacios locales? | In che modo gli spazi locali influenzano la mia esperienza?

2. Where are opportunities for change? | ¿Dónde están las oportunidades de cambio? |Dove sono le opportunità di cambiamento?

3. What makes me feel connected here? | ¿Qué me hace sentir conectado aquí? |Cosa mi fa sentire legato a questo luogo?

4. How do I contribute to my community? | ¿Cómo contribuyo a mi comunidad? | Come contribuisco alla mia comunità?

5. What do I miss from the past? | ¿Qué extraño del pasado? | Cosa mi manca del passato?

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submissions

Marilyn:

Chaney & Michael:

Joseph:

“My family has a long history here. In Bushwick, I walk past the buildings where my grandfather, fresh off the plane from Palermo with nothing but a dream and a few cigars, raised my dad, aunts, and uncles. Some of those same buildings he later owned, renting them out to other new immigrants, no matter where they came from or what their status was. In East Williamsburg, I see the factories where my grandmother and my mother worked sewing machines to make ends meet and put food on the table. Those factories were always there for them—steady, reliable work when they needed it, and when they had to step away to care for children, that was understood and accepted.

Right across the border, in southern Ridgewood, I remember the stoops where I would play with my cousins and friends. I was lucky enough to experience “stoop culture” as a kid. By then, my grandmother had left factory work and spent her days keeping watch over the street, chatting loudly with anyone willing to listen—or even just passing by. I think she just liked hearing the latest gossip and having people compliment the flowers she took such good care of. If she wasn't at her stoop, I knew I could find her chatting it up at Catania Bakery, did I mention she was not meant to eat sweets?

Today, things are different. The factories in East Williamsburg have become “lofts.” Some of the old apartments have been renovated, meaning they are painted white and rent for more. The stoop where my grandmother once held court now sits quiet and flowerless. With my grandparents gone and many family members having moved away, I’ve become something of a holdout in these parts. But even though it sometimes may feel like the place I knew as a child is gone, all I have to do is look around to see that it’s still being made by grannies sharing the latest gossip and children that keep on playing despite their scraped knees. It's fun to think that they are growing up with their own stories of how their families made this place.

The photo I’ve submitted has nothing to do with "our place" in North Brooklyn/Southern Queens at all, and this is intentional. This is a rare shot of my mother carrying me and my grandmother enjoying a ferry ride during a visit from relatives in Sicily. The ferry ride was just as amusing to them as it was to the family visiting for the first time. It always took a visitor for our family to leave the neighborhood. The community we had here was everything, so much so that there was rarely a reason to cross into Manhattan or venture to another borough.” - Joseph

Produced in partnership with OWLEY Studio.

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Join us to celebrate the exhibit at The Grand Street Neighborhood Bash on Monday June 9th at 5:00PM at The Last Call (588 Grand Street). Meet your neighbors, share your stories, and win prizes! Refreshments will be provided to RSVP Attendees.

Click here or the button below to RSVP:

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“The People Make the Place” is part of Design Sprints: Building Creative Capacity, an initiative of Van Alen Institute and the NYC Department of Small Business Services, exploring ways to creatively leverage vacant storefronts.

The installation was made in partnership with branding and digital designers L&L Studio and Reframe Architecture. It features work by artists Sylvia Riveros, Vanesa Álvarez Díaz, Los Muralistas de El Puente, Danielle Mastrion and SON-CORO, SINNED + Ria Burns-Wilder; With submissions by neighborhood partners St. Nick’s Alliance, Evergreen Exchange, El Puente and the Powers Street Garden; with assistance from Absolute Power Gym, Williamsburg Houses and the Brooklyn Public Library.

The physical installation is slated to run through June 2025, with the digital compendium of graphic and story submissions from community members living on this page indefinitely.

(be)longing: Art on Grand Street

The Grand Street BID is proud to announce (be)longing: Art on Grand Street. (be)longing is an Art exhibition activating storefront windows on Grand Street, from June 29th - July 23rd in seven different locations. The exhibition will showcase artwork from locally based artists from New York and abroad, reflecting the different types of people our neighborhood comprises. (be)longing aims to understand the different perspectives of feeling what it means to belong to the community. Partnering with curator Emily Markert, we’re proud to bring seven different artists' work to our neighborhood.

We are excited to offer two walking tours of (be)longing with the Grand Street BID and the exhibition curator on Saturday, July 15th and Saturday, July 22nd. Tours will begin at 1:30pm at 760 Grand Street outside of Williamsburg Animal Clinic. You can click the button below to RSVP.

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Curatorial statement - emily markert

Although the land between Union Avenue and Bushwick Avenue has been occupied for thousands of years, the stretch we know as Grand Street has been so named since c. 1858. Whether they are pre-war or were built just before the Covid-19 pandemic, the buildings here today have witnessed and held people through myriad unprecedented moments, providing spaces for food, shelter, livelihood, and joy. But what do we see when we catch our reflections in their storefront windows? How do we fit into this neighborhood; this history; this city? (be)longing begins to answer this question by investigating the complexity and challenge of finding one’s place. Featuring the work of seven emerging artists, this exhibition considers varied definitions of home and explores what it means to be part of a community or to yearn for one. While they are all based locally, these artists’ backgrounds are as varied as the materials they use; for example, some grew up in Brooklyn or Long Island, while others hail from as far as Taiwan or Spain. As a result, their artworks present numerous perspectives on finding or creating a feeling of belonging. Through site-responsive installations, their works—some newly created for this exhibition—convey relatable experiences while speaking with and to the specific context of Grand Street.

Whether by chance encounter or deliberate engagement, seen through storefront windows, these works offer viewers moments of literal and metaphorical reflection. By placing artwork that approaches familiar yet intimate struggles in this context, (be)longing brings private thoughts into public space. Thus just as the artworks blend the personal with the universal, the exhibition itself blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior, inviting viewers to consider the possibility of Brooklyn being a place for all.

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ARTIST DIRECTORY

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Helena Goñi (she/her)

Bird song (selections from archive, 2014–2023)

35 mm photography, printed on vinyl

Helena Goñi’s photographs offer quiet, poetic glimpses of bodies and gestures frozen in time. Yet, when and where each photo was taken is deliberately unclear. Some viewers might immediately recognize a city or individual in the images, while others may make their own associations based on personal memories of completely different people and places. As a result, these images transition from timestamped to timeless, alluding to the universality of our cravings for tenderness and intimacy. 

@helena_goni | helenagoni.com | Located at: 774 Grand Street (Vacant)

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Katie Levinson (she/her)

night shades, 2023 | Untitled (windows with gingham shades), 2023 

Pinewood, cotton cloth, embroidery thread, poplar dowels, ring pull

25 x 19 x 3/4 inches each

Blending vocabularies of minimal art, domestic architecture, and textile embroidery, Katie Levinson’s night shades and Untitled (windows with gingham shades) are at once familiar and peculiar. Small and delicate, and framed within the Williamsburg Animal Clinic’s own sturdy, industrial windows, these sculptures raise questions around what windows show and conceal, drawing our attention to the sometimes arbitrary nature of divisions between private and public space. Newly created for this exhibition, these works build upon Levinson’s ongoing interest in and experiments with the window form.

@levindottir | katielevinson.com | Located at: 760 Grand Street (Williamsburg Animal Clinic)

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Joseph O'Malley (they/she)

Excerpts from Secret Identities, 2023

Digital photography, archival inkjet prints

These photographs come from Joseph O’Malley’s series Secret Identities, which centers on two individuals dutifully executing mundane, everyday tasks around the city, all while wearing Batman masks. In the artist’s words, “The series draws a stark parallel between the gender identities of the characters and the so-called ‘secret identities’ of superheroes…Secret Identities aims to challenge viewers’ assumptions, asserting that what the cis-het majority sees as a performative spectacle may actually be the most placidly truthful expression for others.” While the images read tongue-in-cheek at first glance, O’Malley’s evocation of Batman has a poignant purpose: asserting the “inherent heroism in authentic expressions of self.”

@josephomalleyarts | josephomalleyarts.com | Located at: 537 Grand Street (Little Lion Salon)

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Estefania Velez Rodriguez (she/her)

Atardecer, 2021

Oil paint, spray, raw pigment on canvas. 61 1/4 x 67 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches

This large-scale painting by Estefania Velez Rodriguez features a pair of flower-trimmed archways that do not quite mirror each other; instead, they overlap, as if offering two pathways to the same alternate world. Born out of the artist’s ongoing experiments with pure pigments and other materials, the painting’s palette evokes the vibrant colors of her home of Puerto Rico. Like a bridge between Puerto Rico and New York, the painting serves as a dreamy portal to a hybrid world conjured from memory and imagination, perhaps a place where both cultures coexist in perfect harmony.

@estefaniavelezart | estefaniavelezart.com | Located at: 692 Grand Street (Vacant)

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wei wang (they/he)

Untitled (0); Untitled (1, 2, and 3), 2021

Dunnage bag, pencil, canvas, digital embroidery

This series of sculptures by wei commandeers the form of the dunnage bag, a type of airbag used to stabilize cargo transported via ships, trucks, and railcars. Emblazoned with words like “fragile,” these untitled works instantly evoke global interconnectivity and codependence through the lens of trade. Yet, positioned upright at an almost human scale, the sculptures also suggest bodies of migrants who may arrive to new places via the same routes as merchandise, but who must then adapt to new cultures and stigmas. In this way, by elevating this everyday yet rarely seen material, these bags stand “composing a scene that brings the often secondary narrative to the foreground,” as wei describes it.

@_.wei | itswei.me | Located at: 692 Grand Street (Vacant)

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wei wang (they/he)

Untitled (Photo Booth), 2021

Copper pipe, massage lightbulb, red flush lightbulb, modeling strap, cinder block

wei’s Untitled (Photo Booth) is constructed with utilitarian materials and bold, red lightbulbs, two of which are massage lamps typically used to warm the body and increase circulation. These mass-produced materials come together to create not a recognizable image but an intimate space of enveloping warmth. Questioning what a photobooth can “capture” and acting as a stand in for both the camera and the subject, the sculpture allows viewers to project their own images and ideas of comfort and closeness onto this pseudo body heat.

@_.wei | itswei.me | Located at: 790 Grand Street (Philomena's)

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Daniel Shieh (he/him)

Learning x3, 2018/2023

Chalkboard, oak frame, chalk. Postcards freely available. 2 x 3 feet

Daniel Shieh’s Learning x3 turns viewers into performers. Presented in the style of an instructional schoolhouse chalkboard, the work invites two people—be they strangers, friends, lovers—to speak various questions aloud, but while the performance is for two people, each question appears three times. This imbalance creates an unexpected yet productive space in which one can feel truly heard.

Like much of Shieh’s work, Learning x3 explores ideas of otherness and navigating spaces where one feels like a foreigner or outsider. As the artist writes about this work: “I’m thinking about ADD, about not being focused, about not remembering, about feeling anxious for asking someone to repeat; I’m thinking about my mother, deaf in one ear, and her trouble with hearing; I’m thinking about my partner’s grandmother who has dementia, who asks the same question every few minutes. I’m thinking about not being fluent in English in the United States. I’m thinking about the third time you ask someone the same question, they start to wonder what is wrong with you. I’m thinking about forgetting someone’s name, about forgetting someone’s birthday.”

@danielshieh | danielshieh.com | Located at: 588 Grand Street (The Last Call)

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Vee Tineo (vee)

Headstrong, 2019

Woodcut, muslin fabric. 55 x 48 inches

Vee Tineo’s Headstrong is a quilt of printed portraits that form an inverted pyramid. Building upon imagery Tineo began exploring in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, this work explores notions of power, especially the power held by—or owed to—women of color. Like a triumphant flag, the work’s upended, triangular shape invites us to imagine a world where hierarchies of authority and gender are reversed. Also legible as a funnel, Headstrong uplifts the relationship between the many and the individual, positing that one cannot exist without the other.

@la_vaina_es | veratineo.wixsite.com/vtineo | Located at: 679 Grand Street (BK Jani)

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Ellie Balk paints 4th “Math Driven Art” work on Grand

The Brooklyn artist is installing her latest project at Grand St & Humboldt Ave

Students from Williamsburg HS of Arts & Tech painting.

If you’ve walked anywhere out of the Grand Street L station it’s hard not to notice some of the bright, puzzle looking designs on the intersections of Grand Street at Humboldt, Graham, and Manhattan Avenues. Maybe you’ve stopped and read the plaques that are posted on the wall detailing each work. If you haven’t, you may be pleasantly surprised that there’s a story to be told for each one.

The paintings are all orchestrated by Brooklyn artist Ellie Balk, who made her name in the community by working with local public school students to create what Balk calls “Math Driven Art”. That is, art that’s conception + design comes from quantitative research, numerical formulas, and data.

With a portfolio of public art that crosses cities and expands internationally, Balk considers herself to be more of a composer. The process begins with an idea of transforming data + numbers into an artistic visualization. Balk’s most recent work seeks to map out students’ interactions throughout the day by genre (phone, face to face, social media) and create art by giving a color to each interaction in a pie chart.

The students of the Williamsburg High School of Arts & Technology were hands-on in bringing the piece to life. Each student involved with the project conducted research for 2 weeks, and contributed to painting the final work under the guiding hand of Balk.

With the completion of this latest installation, Balk will have led students in painting 4 walls on Grand Street alone, incorporating math with art and giving students a platform + opportunity to beautify their community.

See Balk’s work come to life this week at the southern corner of Grand Street & Humboldt Avenue, and explore her entire Grand Street collection throughout the neighborhood.