CROWN HEIGHTS — Buy your favorite local bagels, coffee, cocktails, books or bike tune-up this week and support an ongoing neighborhood art project at the same time.
There are two days left to support the Crown Heights Free Portrait Project, an endeavor by area resident and artist Rusty Zimmerman to paint 200 oil portraits of neighborhood residents — for free — to document “who we are now, amid gentrification and rapidly shifting demographics,” as he told DNAinfo New York when the project began last spring.
Now, he has 70 portraits done, completed in four-hour sessions with each subject — including local rapper Dyme-a-Duzin, Assemblywoman Diana Richardson and the founder of the Jewish Children’s Museum, Devorah Halberstam — in his studio space at 1000 Dean St.
But with all that work, the project is still only about halfway funded, he said.
To get closer to his goal of $54,000 for the year-long project, Zimmerman partnered with the online fundraiser platform RocketHub and many local Crown Heights businesses who donated goods and services to the project, which in turn can be purchased by locals who want to support the work.
Options include: $10 gift certificates at the Little Zelda coffee shop, Nagle’s Bagels, or longtime neighborhood staple, Kelso Panamanian Bistro; $25 in cocktails or food at Franklin Park, Crown Inn, Catfish, Branch Ofc. or Nostrand Avenue Pub; $25 in books from Hullabaloo; or $100 bike tune-ups from either Bicycle Roots on Nostrand Avenue or Excelsior Bike Shop on Franklin Avenue.
As the portraits are completed, they’ll be exhibited in local businesses and venues, and then given to the original subjects to keep, Zimmerman said.
For more information about the project, visit wearecrownheights.org.
