This selection of images from the work of artist Nina Talbot is presented courtesy of Bread and Roses, the cultural project of the Hospital Workers Union 1199/SEIU. For more information see Talbot's website.


VENDORS OF NEWKIRK

Nina Talbot: "Starbucks, Gap, K-Mart...not in my neighborhood. The reluctant visitor who emerges from the Newkirk Plaza station on the Q line in Brooklyn finds a hodgepodge of mismatched mom and pop shops with names like: "African Queen", "Asia Grocery", "Hot Bagels", and "Chou-Chou Express". Combination stores are popular here too; a flower shop paired with pet supplies, a beauty shop with an eyeglasses store, a bookstore with money transfer, and what shopping strip worth it’s soul won’t have Halal meat/video? In my part of town there are shops with storefronts that evoke a time past, inspiring nostalgia."

"It is the way the city looked twenty-five years ago. This new series of painting are portraits of shopkeepers from Newkirk Plaza. Combined elements of the storefront, signs, map of country of origin of the subject, and borders reflecting the items sold in that particular store, are woven together with the portrait of the shopkeeper in a tapestry like format. The depicted shops give the viewer an insight into the multicultural communities in the neighborhood. The cultures of the immigrants living in the area are embedded in the painted storefronts. "

GENERATIONS OF BROOKLYN

Portrait paintings of multi generational families of various ethnic groups from different Brooklyn neighborhoods. Nina Talbot: " I have interviewed my subjects, and intertwined their histories into the backgrounds of their portraits. "The subjects and their families are Pakistani, Haitian, Puerto Rican, Hungarian, Guyanese, African-American, Chinese, Japanese, Polish and Czech. The selection of these families was based on an organic process, with people I already knew, whose lives fascinated me because of how their personal lives intersected with history, and how that history affects who they are today."