Saraghina

If you build it, they will come: and sure enough, from the moment Saraghina opened its doors to a just-burgeoning Bed-Stuy, diners have flooded this cool, multi-room, restaurant decorated in garage sale knick knacks, old butcher signs, and marmalade jars. It's downright adorable. Beginning with a mutual admiration, Shantell was commissioned by owner Edoardo Mantelli to use the exterior of Saraghina’s black walls as her canvas in 2013.

The mural has become an iconic piece of art, and also an homage to Brooklyn, a city Shantell loves and used to call home. She makes it a point to stop by whenever she finds herself in Bed-Stuy. Across one side of the establishment, and saddled beneath a window, lays remnants of Shantell’s pithy artistry “If life doesn’t open a door climb out of a window.”

(Brooklyn, 2013)