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Supportive Housing Residents' Artwork To Be Showcased at MoMA

 Willie Buggs, a resident at supportive housing site Clover Hall in Bedford-Stuyvesant, will see his art featured at MoMA this fall.
Willie Buggs, a resident at supportive housing site Clover Hall in Bedford-Stuyvesant, will see his art featured at MoMA this fall.
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DNAinfo/Camille Bautista

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — Artwork from more than a dozen residents at one Brooklyn supportive housing site will be spotlighted at the Museum of Modern Art this fall.

In partnership with MoMA, the 13 artists — several of whom are formerly homeless — worked for months on a collection of pieces representing their community and city, organizers said.

The collage from residents at Lantern Community Services’ Clover Hall in Bedford-Stuyvesant will be featured at the museum’s Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, according to program coordinators.

“I was ecstatic about it,” said Willie Buggs, 33, who has lived at the Kosciuszko Street residence for more than two years and worked on constructing maps for the project.

“To have something that I drew and I created, and me being just a little country boy from down south in Mississippi, it really did have a big, influential part in what it is I may be doing in the future.”

Lantern, which provides housing and on-site social services for individuals impacted by homelessness as well as those with mental illness and disabilities, collaborated with MoMA this past fall as part of the organization’s arts initiative.

“We’re just looking for the all-around person. After mental health, there’s artistic health, physical health, just incorporating all the programs into an integrated whole,” said Karisa Antonio, Lantern’s director of arts, culture and fitness.

Participants drew their designs in Styrofoam and inked and printed the pieces, which were then cut out and organized on boards with different layers.

Photo credit: DNAinfo/Camille Bautista

“Some of it is very literal, thinking about maps and streets and buildings, and some of it’s also pretty more abstract, like the feeling of a place or the textures, the lines of moving in and out of a building, a space, a city,” said Kerry Downey, teaching artist with MoMA’s education department.

“Some of that busyness and creative energy of New York is represented as well.”

The brightly-colored artwork, titled “Block Party,” incorporates shapes, grids, blocks and more, and also depicts more specific sights, including a Department of Corrections building.

The participants range in art experience, from those who have little familiarity to former tattoo artists, organizers said.

Jose Goyco, who said he’s lived at Clover Hall for the past two years, explained that the art program helped relieve his “pain and embarrassment” after losing mobility in one of his hands following a stroke.

Goyco, 50, grew up doing graffiti, he added, then ventured into tattoo art.

“This kept me having a place to come to every Wednesday, I looked forward to having discussions, learn more about the people I was living with. It gave me confidence,” he said.

“I’m waiting for the day it’s in MoMA. I’m very excited, and told a lot of people.”

“Block Party” will be on display at the museum in October or November as part of a showcase with MoMa’s Community Partnership Program, organizers said.