Delgado Creates Bodega Signs and Wonders

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New England Foundation for the Arts Creative City Program announces Bodega Signs and Wonders, a public art installation in Jamaica Plains’s Egelston Station created by Denise Delgado.

A special celebration, Noche de Cuentos (Night of Stories) will be held on Thursday, Oct. 27, from 5-8 PM at Egelston Station

Since December 2015, Delgado has gathered Egelston Square neighborhood stories in both Spanish and English. With community partner Egelston Square Main Street, Delgado organized community activities including a neighborhood dinner, bilingual writing workshops, story circles, a Poetry Block Party, and oral history interviews.

With Dominican poet Frank Baez, Delgado has worked the stories into semi-permanent business signage to be installed along Washington Avenue’s commercial business district, making a way-finding poem on the built landscape.

“The goals of this community public art project,” shares Delgado, “are to document the social history, narratives, and current concerns of longtime Latino and working-class residents, and to develop literacy skills based on specific localized need. Bodega Signs and Wonders, with culturally-based small businesses, will help gather folks to tell their stories, and share them with the community.”

Bodega Signs and Wonders collaborators include the Egelston Square Branch of the Boston Public Library, El Hombrecito, and a growing group of neighborhood writers and story-tellers.