Meet the UCA Muralists: Sherry Davis, Iglesia Pentecostal

Artist and neighbor Sherry Ginsberg Davis couldn’t have pictured herself designing a mural back when she first entered the workforce, but reflecting on how she got here, it seems almost the perfect trajectory.

“Following my instincts has led me down some better paths, including this Uncover Church Avenue mural contest,” she said. “I thought it was a great idea, a great community-building activity.”

With a varied background that includes majoring in history at Brooklyn College, a stint at dental school, working her way through desktop publishing as a production editor for trade magazines, raising her daughter as a stay-at-home mom, and some volunteer work, Sherry never really considered herself an artist until a friend pushed her to try a carving a stamp, and she discovered she was pretty good at it.

“I was not in touch with what my own talents were,” Sherry said. “Over the last few years, I found out things about my talent that I didn’t even know.”

One important element of her creative aspirations came as she was driving around New Hampshire with friends, looking for a picturesque barn where they could stop to paint it in a landscape.

“At one point a farmer had come to talk to us, and he wanted to know what we were up to,” she said. “To Phil, the friend I was with, this was a beautiful barn to paint, but to the farmer, it was where he worked, it was his life.”

The farmer gave them his address to they could send him whatever work they finished, and a few months later, Sherry wanted to send him her piece, but the friend has lost the address. She found herself at a bit of a turning point that led, in some way, to this mural on Church Avenue.

“I don’t want to just be an elitist tourist,” she explained. “Empathy comes into it. I’d like to improve the quality of other people’s lives. If I can help people, that’s good.”

Sherry built on her combined experience when she drew the design for Iglesia Pentecostal at 1115 Church Avenue. She gets to bring a little color into people’s lives, but she’s doing it in a way that is somewhat more connected to her past career in magazines than her fine art, she says.

“What will the people want, what will work for the street, what will work for the client?” Sherry said she asked herself while preparing the design.

It’s an ongoing process, and the design you see here may be a little different from the finished mural. When it is up and painted, Sherry for one hopes that it, and the other murals, will help bring some visibility, and ultimately positive change, to this strip of Church Avenue.

“It’s the psychology of how neighborhoods shift,” she said. “Anything that’s going to get more media attention is something that draws a little more to an area that’s not so well known. I walk through there a lot, but a lot of people don’t, and they’re missing out. You don’t want to change it radically–you just want people to use that street more.”

Sherry lives closer to the western stretch of Church Avenue in Kensington, and is currently gathering artists in that area for an Art Walk. If you’re an artist that would like to participate, contact Sherry at brooklynartistsherry@gmail.com.

All this week we’ll be introducing you to the artists behind the Church Avenue Business Improvement District’s Uncover Church Avenue murals, which will be painted this spring on roll-down gates along Church between Stratford and Argyle Roads. They’re going to need volunteers to help prep the gates for painting—we’ll let you know when, but if you’d like to sign up, contact Melissa Skolnick, Program Coordinator at the BID at 718-282-2500 ext 63237 or MelissaSk@churchavenue.org.