This is 155th Street, this is the Bronx B-Train, the next stop is 164th Street.
Stand clear of the closing doors, please.
My name is Tiffany Claiborne.
I'm from the Bronx.
Yeah, I'm an artist.
I was getting nervous saying that.
It's like saying, it's like when you're like a new doctor, you're afraid to be like,
I'm a doctor because you don't want to get a patient and kill them.
You're a new doctor, and I feel like a new artist.
And I feel like it's a bunch of stuff that you need to accomplish before you get to call yourself an artist.
But I think it's like a self-esteem or confidence thing.
So I'm going to be confident in saying I'm an artist.
Is there art in my area?
I would have to say no to that.
Why isn't there art?
I guess art is only for places that are sophisticated.
I don't know, I think it's based off of the people that live here, the residents that live here.
And I guess it's like all we have here is stuff that you need to survive.
Like there's school, there's buildings, and there's supermarkets.
You know, it's just basic necessities.
You don't have anything that's like, like there's no close pool by here.
There's no art museums or movie theaters in here.
It's like you just have the basic things that you need for a neighborhood, I guess.
I'm just appreciating artists of color.
And artists of color, which is a minimum, which I know of, that are popular,
their work is taken all the way to Brooklyn.
Because there's no space to put it in.
Like even when we have the Bronx Courthouse, this would be featuring Bronx artists.
It was artists from Brooklyn and artists from Argentina.
Like, they were not trying to find any local Bronx artists.
And then like you said, the Bronx is not like the typical place.
You'd be like, there's art there, you know?
It doesn't have that name.
As in like, Brooklyn has that name.
It's like those are the art places to go to.
I think if you like something so much or you love something a lot,
you just kind of do it regardless.
You try to find ways to do it and pursue it.
And then it comes from like having, being surrounded by people that support that
or like do the same thing as you, you know?
Because if you're around with people constantly, then you're always wanting to pursue.
You're going to always want to like continue to do it because you're around with people.
It's all you know.
And if this is all you know, then you're going to, you're not going to stop.
My name is Danny Peralta.
I am currently the Executive Manager Director of the Point, CDC, which is based in Hunts Point.
And we are a community development corporation,
which means that my mission is to help revitalize the community.
And we do a lot of community development like building parks and community cleanups
and stewardship programs and a little bit of everything.
And all of it works hand in hand.
The young people are taught leadership via the arts.
Arts are very important to us here, especially Hunts Point,
because we live in a community that is typified by a lot of beak things, you know?
So what we do with that, again, we help kind of build people's self-esteem via art, you know?
Art is the one thing that you can't take away from people, you know what I mean?
You can do a lot of things.
You can compound them with a lot of the social ills,
but you can't take away their creativity and their desire to have a voice, you know?
And so that's why I think it's such an important space for us to have for young people.
I think that there are never enough spaces like these, honestly.
I had a plan to go to these art schools.
I went to all these art colleges, and I got into one school for education.
I also had in my mind that maybe I wanted to be a teacher.
So I got into these art schools, and then I got into education school.
And I said, I was raised like, you know, my parents were like, you know, you got to get a job.
You got to go to school. You got to go to school.
But you can't paint, you know? You can't make a living.
I didn't know anybody, I didn't know art.
All I knew, all my friends were vandals, painting walls, graffiti, there's graffiti.
All the art was done by the people, by people.
That's kind of all my idea of who artists were.
I didn't have anybody to go like me.
So I didn't go to art school.
I thought I was going to be broke.
I was going to be able to train.
I was going to be starving.
Art is cool, but I didn't want to stop, right?
So I went through a lot of education, but I ended up still coming back to art
because I still needed that space, but it's because of that reason.
I never saw it.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, like at your age now, if you see it, you see some art of yourself,
or you see a lot of the posters, and you're like, I can do this.
You know what I mean?
You can see it out here.
That's part of my community, too.
And I wish I would have had that.
That's why I feel this needs to be more.
And I came here when I was in my, I was 14 years old, and I was about 20 years old.
It's hard to see.
Yeah, you know, like me, like he's got, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was such a big deal to me.
That's why I've been here over the years.
You know, I wanted to be a singer.
You know, this little bitty, itty bitty kid.
It's like, it doesn't even be a singer.
It's because Ron, you know, I was like, and then I'm going to date him.
And he's going to be big.
Yeah, but look at me now.
It would have been bad.
And fifth grade, that's what I did.
It's still life.
Everybody's like, oh, you're so good.
You should go to art schools.
And somehow it happened to be an art middle school.
And then, yeah, it just, it was weird because we moved to Ford, like near the Fordham area.
And so, and so, um, yeah, I just did art there.
I had Dr. Abuquelo.
She was like the best.
She encouraged me.
I went to Fordham there.
I went to Arnaud's Eye.
And then, I don't know, I just do art.
I think I'm gradually becoming more.
I think every painting probably is becoming personal.
Like, I can't create art without any form of subject matter.
Well, I feel like I ever planned it out.
I just kind of, it just kind of happens.
And at the end, I'm like, whoa, why did I create this?
You know?
I guess now it's becoming more personal because I guess I'm learning more of myself.
And I'm recognizing how to acknowledge pain and growth and how to take.
I don't know what's going on in society.
I hate that word.
I don't know what's going on in society and just have a conversation with it on a canvas through a sculpture.
Come on, you're trying it.
Yeah.
That had a broken mirror.
Yeah, it was a bad look.
One buffalo over there.
I couldn't put a buffalo in the middle because I was just being too...
Have you ever thought of it?
Yeah, you did.
Oh.
Yeah, me, bro.
Oh.
I had to get out from the festival because...
Glad.
Yeah, she was pushing.
This is wavy.
Brassy, bro.
Do you see this?
She has paint...
Oh, the last one?
Yeah.
She has paintings on glass.
Yeah, it's very wavy.
Is that your concentration, like you?
My concentration was growth.
It's like growth and identity, I guess.
Growth within identity.
That's wavy.
Brassy.
Yeah.
How was that?
We're doing great.
I think the best time to see my neighborhood is in the summertime.
I think a lot of people come alive in the summertime.
Because, you know, the fire thing is spraying everywhere.
Kids jumping around into the thing in the summer.
And it's like the star crime had always come and closed it.
And they always make like some little spray thing,
but then you got the manager,
but they're coming with the pipe to open it again.
That.
And then you have the guy with the ice cream.
The mango, sherry, coconut.
Incorporate that energy of the summertime.
I use...
I get to try to get those colors, you know.
The reds and the oranges.
I always like...
It's like my palette.
It's always red in there somewhere.
I think you can move on.
Right here.
It could have been when I did the hearts.
The collaged hearts.
I think I had more of...
I knew where my mindset was in that moment.
So I knew how to...
I guess I worked from that.
So that was personal.
What does it mean?
Damn.
It was about everything, you know.
This is about the heart.
The heart is...
I don't know.
I feel like a heart can be fictional.
That's kind of a piece of fiction.
A heart is fictional.
You really feel love from your heart, you know.
Why is a heart like that and not depicted as an actual heart?
I don't know, you know.
It's just...
History is a heart.
If you think of everything that you felt like meant...
like fucked your heart up,
you think of everything from your first heartbreak
to the first time your mom yelled at you
to like...
This is a bunch of, like,
things that you went through
and how it felt like it can't...
It was a personal attack on your heart.
I'm also, like, learning how to take bad things
and not let it overshadow who you are as a person
because I'm actually a happy person.
But this is a lot of shit to not be happy about
when you're like a black woman or a black female
or just black or just a woman in general
with a bunch of tribulations, you know.
There's a lot to be angry about.
And I just...
Like I said, it's just a contradict to my personality.
So I'm just learning how to take those feelings
and put it in painting
instead of burdening myself with those things
and just releasing it that way.
I think it's just a constant
wandering of, like,
what other people think of you.
Like, even heavier than just, like,
it's not just, like, being a teenager.
It's like, you could...
It's like, I'm a teenager
and then I'm a girl and then I'm black.
And it's, like, another thing
that somebody could be, like,
I don't know, you know,
people could talk shit about that, too.
You know, it's just one of those things.
The fact that I'm black is always going to be, like,
a tagline for me.
I could never just be Tiffany Cable, you know.
I'm always going to be Tiffany the black artist
that came from this.
And all that, you know,
it's always going to be all that stuff attached to
who I am as an artist.
And whatever field I become, you know.
Like, I could become a doctor.
Tiffany Cable and the first black woman doctor.
Like, it's...
Like, that's shocking for people, you know.
So I guess that's...
Kind of what I'm trying to correlate
in my paintings, especially.
I go to high school that does art.
And I go to...
I attend a program that helps me pursue art.
So I try to go where the art is.
So I keep bringing it back
to me where I'm at.
I'm going to Parsons School for Design.
Currently, I'm designing a major
Fine Arts.
So hopefully that would do me some justice
in getting into the art field.
I found wonder.
Deep resounding thunder.
Infinite in number.
I found wonder.
I found wonder.
I found wonder.
I found wonder.
I found wonder.
