The Mart Community Project, officially established in 2011, was a multifaceted, collaborative initiative designed to inspire individual and community transformation, inspire racial harmony, promote economic revitalization, and encourage educational innovation in the town of Mart, Texas. This experimental project was driven by a unique collaboration between the residents of Mart, Mart ISD, local and international artists, the Baylor University Oral History Institute, and multiple departments and schools at the University of Texas at Austin.  

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In 2007 American artist, social worker and grant writer, Paula Gerstenblatt collaborated with the association Portes et Passages to gain funding from the American Institute of Architects for the association’s first earth construction on the land of their Center for art and Holistic Development in Mbodiene, Senegal.  The project involved collaboration with architecture students from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.  During this time, Gerstenblatt collaborated with Muhsana and their professor of architecture, Coleman Jordan, to direct the students in the creation of a design-build installation on the land.  

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Inspired by this project, in 2008, Paula Gerstenblatt, a member of a Mart family by marriage, facilitated the construction of an art installation on her family’s land. The installation on the Davis family land became the catalyst for several oral history and community building programs in Mart which engendered MCP.

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Muhsana was first invited in 2009 to engage with the residents of Mart and again in 2010, when she initiated a number of children’s programs and produced her first community mosaic with the residents of Mart, Texas.  In 2011, she returned with artist, Amadou Kane Sy (Kan-si) and their three children to engage over a period of three months with the community.  Recognizing the community’s love for American Football, the artists chose it as a theme for the major work they would produce in collaboration with Mart residents on the concession stand of a former beloved football field, which held cherished memories for the entire community. 

 

Muhsana again returned to Mart in 2012 to produce a giant tree sculpture which the community worked to mosaic, entitled : “Family Tree”.   The experience was a major success in not only revitalizing the town of Mart, but in establishing positive interracial exchange and wide ranging participation and enthusiasm from the town’s residents.  With the Sy family appearing weekly on the front page of the town’s newspaper, the community members deemed what they had achieved as something they called “Mart Magic”: a new love and appreciation for their community and the energy and enthusiasm to transform it into something better for everyone.