XML FeedsBoarded Up: Damaged Community Action Center gets a beautiful band-aid
By admin on Apr 8, 2009 | In Visual Art | Send feedback »
by: Lauren Hodges
Community Action CenterRepairs in progress soon
4th and Castle streets
www.meetup.com/seacc-ilm</b>
By now, plenty of people should be familiar with the back story explaining 4th and Castle’s vibrant community center and its temporary lack of a front wall. But for those who aren’t, I’ll recap:
At about 3pm on April 1st, an extremely intelligent being was texting on her cell phone and ended up driving her gold Honda Accord straight into the building, damaging all furniture, speaker equipment, computers and a large mirror that covered the back wall. Thankfully, no one was inside at the time. One thing that was spared was the right window, which features a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. As of now it is the only recognizable piece left of the center.
“I think a lot of people thought the building was bombed until they were close enough to see the car inside,” Steve Lee, a board member of Southeastern Alliance for Community Change (SEACC), the organization that rents the building and allows its many progressive sub-groups to use the space for events, said. “We are just glad she didn’t hit the beauty parlor next door. She could have killed some people.”
SEACC rents half of 317 Castle Street, and that particular half, which lost two-thirds of its front wall, will stand condemned until repairs can be done in the next month or so. In true SEACC style, the board members decided to look at the ruins as a giant canvas until renovations can begin. On April 5th the Really Really Free Market and Food Not Bombs (two of the SEACC sub-groups) set up at the lot across from the center on 4th Street, and volunteers brought brushes and paint to pretty up the chipboard covering the front. For members of the alliance, the damaged building was just another excuse to congregate and create.
“It’s not exactly a funny issue, but we can at least make the best of it and laugh about it,” Selena Schissler, an organizer of Be Your Own Queero (another of the groups housed in the action center), said. Schissler was busy recreating the scene of the crash at the bottom of the boards with her paintbrush. In the painting a car covered with text message slang was headed straight for a trembling building. Everyone who walked by the depiction got a good laugh when they noticed it. Yeah, I thought it would be funny to have things like ‘WTF?’ and ‘OMG!’ coming out of it, just to remind people why this happened.”
It would be a Sunday afternoon to remember. The sun was shining, and conversations were cheerful mixed with horror over what a seemingly little thing like texting and driving can do. One peek inside the center said it all: twisted chairs, collapsed bookshelves, torn carpet, giant shards of glass and pieces of wall littered the once clean and organized room. Today, the Really Really Free Market and Food Not Bombs would have been inside. “Well, a little car crash isn’t exactly going to stop us!” Lee laughed.
Across the street, the market was carrying on as usual, with giddy patrons carrying their free finds back and forth to the parked cars. Meanwhile, a mural had started to form on the boards. “This is just another opportunity for groups like the market and Food Not Bombs to improvise, and groups like Art for Action to create something great. We are making lemons into lemonade.”
Whether people were there to help or just to observe, a crowd had gathered at the scene of the crash. It was now a work of art in tribute to the action center’s will to survive. Flowers symbolized the growing community garden, which was in progress in the lot next to the building. A large peace sign was in place to honor the Wilmington Peace meet-ups that worked to end the war in Iraq. It was colorful and bright, but mostly the painting was a reminder to the neighborhood that its beloved community center would be back.
It seems that the cracked mirror on the back wall would only be seven years of bad luck for the one who cracked it.
The mural will be up until the center begins its repairs. The Community Action Center is located at 317 Castle Street on the corner of Castle and 4th. Visit www.meetup.com/seacc-ilm for more information about the Southeastern Alliance for Community Change.
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