Specialness

1999 | Harlem, NY

PROJECT PARTNERS:

The Hale House
Powell Academy — The Center for Law and Peace
Strictly Roots Vegetarian Restaurant

The Specialness project was a collaboration between Cook and ten young people from Harlem that empowered the community by creating images of, for, and about its residents. The young people—from Harlem institutions Hale House, Adam Clayton Powell Study Center for Law and Peace, and Strictly Roots vegetarian restaurant—were each asked six questions about themselves in a questionnaire. With Cook’s assistance, they made collages representing the sentiments that they had written about, while photographer Alex Tehrani made photos of each participant. Cook then made drawings of the photographs that resonated most for him, considering the quotations of the model, and used both the text and photo compositions to determine the design of larger pieces he would create. After mocking up the figurative image, text, and borders, he made large charcoal or pastel drawings on plywood prepared with latex paint.

One of nine self-initiated, non-permissional public works installed throughout Harlem, New York City. Spray enamel, acrylic, student collages on wood, each 8′ x 8.’

“In the Specialness project, I combined an image of a sunflower with an image of the students. Formally, I wanted to create a variety of layers to magnify the complexity of the paintings. I wanted to have a repetitive element that would connect the images, but that could be rendered differently to emphasize the uniqueness of each painting. Conceptually, I was inverting the societal perception of the participants, their environment, and the season. While typically these young people of color are marginalized, living in a neighborhood with abandoned buildings during “the dead” of winter, I was making them powerful by surrounding them with a nimbus or halo, beautifying public space with radical color, and using the sunflower image as a metaphor for life.”