After Losing A Beloved Mural, Park Slope Shelter Plans For New Art

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A Park Slope soup kitchen and transitional housing shelter is looking for an artist to design a new mural for its building, the organization announced.

In 2004, CHiPS, short for Community Help in Park Slope, partnered with Groundswell, a social change-focused arts non-profit in nearby Gowanus, to create a mural on the side of the Park Slope shelter.

Designed and painted by a group of young women, the mural — titled "I Deal, I Dream, I Do" — depicted some of the different struggles and accomplishments of women today — including parenting, learning and creative expression.

Then, in 2020, Hurricane Isaias hit New York City, damaging the CHiPS building facade and partially disintegrating the mural, leaving it with cracks and holes. In order to fix the building, scaffolding was put up, and the mural of 16 years had to be taken down during repairs.

Now, in an effort to replace what was lost, CHiPS is opening submissions for a new mural.

"We're commissioning an artist to donate their time and talent to create a new mural [on our building]," the non-profit announced last week.

Interested artists can submit an idea for a mural design over email to admin@chipsonline.org, the non-profit said. People who know of an artist are also encouraged to reach out.

While the original mural is now gone, CHiPS hopes that the next piece of art embodies its same kind of energy: the group said it's looking for a mural to be "a beacon of hope in the Park Slope community."

CHiPS, which serves food to nearly 200 people per-day six days a week and is a home to up to 10 mothers and their children at a time, recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in Park Slope, and is looking to expand further into the neighborhood in the upcoming decades, Patch reported earlier this year.