What’s your favorite food? Where do you like to hang out? The Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District (BID) wants to pick your brain for answers to these questions, and others, as part of an art installation slated for placement this spring.

The installation, a project, between the BID and the city Department of Transportation (DOT), in the shape of a column, will display posters with quotes solicited from the community. It will be located at the intersection of the Grand Concourse and Mosholu Parkway, one of several gateways into Norwood’s commercial strip.

Jenny Hung was commissioned to design the project, dubbed the “Norwood Column,” which involves posters to be updated every eight weeks, rotating her collection to feature residents’ answers to new sets of questions.

The BID promotes some 200 shopkeepers in the area running along Jerome Avenue between East Mosholu Parkway North and East Gun Hill Road, and along East Gun Hill Road between Jerome and Webster avenues. Ingrained in its mission is beautifying the area in hopes of making the shopping corridor attractive to shoppers. The installation hopes to accomplish just this.

Hung beat out all other proposals because of her installation’s focus on community reflection, with her inclusion of community extending even to the typography in which the community’s thoughts will be presented.

In an interview with the Norwood News, Jennifer Tausig, executive director of the BID, said Hung will model the posters’ typography off the unique lettering styles found at commercial signs around Norwood businesses. “These are all letters that are reflected in the Norwood community, like that’s Bronx Sports, that’s Big G Deli,” Tausig said, showing an example of the letters chosen. “[Hung] wants to use familiar typography to make the different posters.”

Tausig said the artwork will be up for 11 months, with a rotating theme updated every six weeks. “So we came up with six sort-of themes with questions that we want responses from the community for. These are things like favorite foods, favorite places, favorite people – you know our leaders in the community, and sort of people’s visions.”

“We are hopeful that the community will see value in it and want to be a part of it… It’s art reflective of the community for people who are working here, living here, visiting here,” Tausig added.

Community members looking to submit responses are encouraged to follow the link to a submission form available online through the BID’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/jghbid/ or at their Instagram at @jeromegunhillbid.