For Bridge 4, we had to create a project of a topic of our own that was historical in the context of The Bowery in Manhattan, New York City. On the first day, we went on a field trip to The Bowery and had a guided tour about all the different and fun facts about The Bowery. This trip sparked some interests and I was looking forward to my topic discovery.
The written work, such as the wall label/artist statement and The Bowery Boys timeline is here.
For my Studio project, I chose the Bowery boys because I was fascinated with their culture and why or how they came to be. I didn’t necessarily have any relationships with them, but I was just fascinated that a group, mainly consisting of volunteer firemen, could come together to become this gruesome strong boulder-like gang men who were territorial and fought in riots. The fact that people could transform so drastically is frightening and fascinating at the same time, thus, led me to my topic and my research. I finally came to a conclusion of viewing them as people instead of inanimate groups of objects or highly deemed people that are distanced because of how important they were to the people during the time of The Bowery. I wanted to view them as personable people, boys essentially that just had very strong opinions on things but had a soft heart, like most humans did. Most of the research I found did not have much about the boys themselves (I highly doubt anyone would dare interview them since they were brutal and had to be strong and intimidating in every aspect, especially during the riots against other rival gangs and members), therefore I tried to put myself in their shoes to create this project.
I first gathered a bunch of ideas and finally decided on materials.
The top hat is an iconic symbol of The Bowery boys, where these tall english-looking hats were worn everywhere and you could recognize one of the boys with this hat from afar. Thus, I ordered this on amazon but changed it by painting the insides with red strips and a blue and white gradient on the bottom of the top hat. This American flag, in an abstracted form, shows the patriotism that the Bowery Boys had for their country because of the influence under Mike Walsh’s lead for better human labor rights for lower class people. In this, they also became very territorial and wanted the better for people. They fought whoever went against their leader’s, politician Walsh’s, ways because of how strongly they believe in the better of their country. This top hat is filled with rolled up paper that was from pieces of a letter I wrote in The Bowery Boys’ perspective of their beliefs and how I would write if I was one of them, and made into cigarette looking paper. In this hat alone, there were about 30 A4 sheets of paper used for the amount of cigarettes made. Initially, I wanted to burn each rolled up cigarette and sprinkle their ashes on top to represent fire for their riots and battles they frequently fought during the time of gangs in The Bowery; however, I soon realized that I was incompetent of lighting a fire with a lighter (I don’t smoke and my thumbs hurt after making a single spark of flame), therefore, I bought charcoal powder and sprinkled it on to make it seemed like it was burnt and the ashes were there. To top it off, the top four rolls of paper-cigarettes are 1/4 of a 1800s Firemen emblem which I incorporated into my project because it is a symbol of the identity most of the Bowery Boys had and that was they were mainly consisting of volunteer firemen during the time. Overall, I hat turned out great and I am very proud of it because it is an abstract piece about the identity of The Bowery Boys themselves. There are many representations of how brutal the gang was but I decided to make it more personal that by saying they smoke, wear top hats (which was the trend at the time) and fight strongly for their belief, just like anyone else would but in a collective group.
Through the many difficulties and triumphs of this project, the research and my interest of this topic sparked a beginning of The Bowery history in my brain, and I am so glad I got to learn so much about The Bowery through this project.
