Court of appeal

PROVIDENCE — The basketball courts at Fargnoli Park look nothing like what you’d expect.

Instead of the drab expanse of green, blue or grey intersected by white lines that typifies the norm, these two courts are a crazy quilt of vibrant colors and interlocking shapes. A black-and-yellow checkerboard here, undulating waves of red, yellow and green there.

Somehow it all makes sense as a place for basketball.

“I love it,” said Elijah Woods, a neighborhood resident and regular player here, as he took a break from a pickup game. “It’s just great to see.”

Mayor Jorge Elorza led a ceremony Sunday to celebrate the refurbishment and reopening of the courts, complete with the new paint job designed by acclaimed artist Jim Drain.

The $80,000 project, which also included resurfacing the cracked and crumbling courts and installing new rims, backboards and fencing, was made possible with funding and labor provided by nearby Providence College, Friends of Friars Basketball, the Providence Parks Department and private donations.

Project Backboard, a four-year-old Los Angeles-based nonprofit group that rehabilitates public basketball courts across the country, directed the paint work, which was completed over the past two weeks by 130 volunteers.

“It’s a shining example of what can be reproduced throughout the entire city,” said Elorza, pointing to the project as the latest in a series of improvements at 90 city parks over the last four years.

“The strength of any city is the strength of its community,” he continued. “It’s parks like these that create that sense of community.”

Pete Peterson and Harold Starks, of Friends of Friars Basketball, came up with the idea for redoing the courts at the city park on Smith Street. Starks, who played basketball for the Friars in the 1980s, founded the nonprofit as a way to reconnect with former players and supporters, and it has grown into a community-service organization.

They worked with Wendy Nilsson, the city’s parks superintendent, and brought in Jamilee Lacey, curator of Providence College Galleries, who got in touch with Drain last spring.

Drain, a sculptor, painter and fabric-maker who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, has done other murals, but had never created anything as big as what was needed in Fargnoli Park.

To help make it happen, he worked with Sam Peterson and Ralph Sunga at Project Backboard, who’ve done similar public art projects this summer on courts in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and New Rochelle, New York.

Drain’s design aims to embody the energy that suffuses a basketball court.

“It was about creating lanes of color and really activating the different spaces in which basketball gets played,” he said. “So below the hoop I wanted it to be confusing because that’s where all the activity happens.”

Drain, who wore a sweater as colorful as his mural, said he would love to design similar works of art on other courts.

“It was a nice way to bridge being an artist and sports, and bring people together from such different areas,” he said.

Starks said he hopes the courts will become a gathering place just like the court known as “The Pit” that he frequented as a child in Harlem.

“That’s where we grew up,” he said. “This project reminded me so much of that, a place where kids can come, play ball, be safe and just enjoy the community.”

Before the ceremony, kids shot hoops on the courts, but they also played hopscotch using the squares painted under the backboards and chased each other over the swirling colors.

Jordan Wood, who lives nearby, watched as his daughters, 3-year-old Rayna and 2-year-old Edith, scampered about. He said Drain’s mural will make a fun place for them to ride their scooters.

“I think that’ll be cool for them to have patterns that they can follow,” he said.

And as Elorza cut a ribbon to signal the official reopening, Elijah Woods and his friends couldn’t get back on the courts fast enough to start an impromptu game of two-on-two.

— akuffner@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7457