Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  By Harold Egeln

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — Putting a face on civil rights heroes while benefiting creative arts high school students, an artist’s paintings based on stark arrest photo mug shots of Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other heroes of the Civil Rights Movement are on display here at 89 Montague St.

The venue, a campaign base for getting out the vote in city’s elections, hosts the riveting artwork of Brooklyn resident Charlotta Janssen, an owner of two popular bistros in Fort Greene. Her art illustrates the struggles highlighted by two historic events. They were the 1956 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott arrests sparked by seamstress and activist Rosa Parks and the 1961 arrests in Montgomery of Freedom Riders attempting to desegregate Woolworth’s lunch counters.

The exhibit now on public view at the corner of Montague and Hicks streets is the campaign headquarters of local resident Doug Biviano, a civil and environmental engineer running for City Council in the Democratic Party primary election on September 15. The show is the second in Biviano’s Free Open Door Arts Series for the general public featuring socially conscious art.

“The stunning election of Barach Obama affected me greatly,” said Janssen, co-owner of Chez Lola and Chez Oskar in Fort Greene. “President Obama’s inauguration created a wave of emotions, built up over many years for many of us. Sanity and truth won out over bias and fear. This all gave me a tactile feel for Black History Month, inspired also by a search I made on the Internet to transfer that tactile feel to art.”  Read article...

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