All around my neighborhood in Staten Island, there is so much different kinds of public art available for me to look at and appreciate that I didn’t even realize until I actively set out to look for it. It was hard to narrow it down to one work of art but this particular one was personally my favorite.
I have passed this wall millions of times in my life but I never really paid much attention to it in each of those millions of times I’ve passed it. The only part that I would always notice is the Sri Lankan mural on the bottom of the wall. It’s been there for the longest time and it is a part of a Sri Lankan restaurant me and my family go to eat from time to time. As a Sri Lankan, it just always caught my eye. It’s great to see your culture represented in such a public and beautiful way but it’s also a culture I’m not exactly in tune with. So, I’m always hit with a tiny side of shame as I feel like I can’t be completely proud of something I’m not really a part of.
The portrait of the boy on the other hand isn’t something that really caught my eye whenever I passed by that wall. I never paid much attention to the picture until now. This is much more recent compared to the mural as it was made about a year and a half ago. Out of all the art I saw in my neighborhood, this work is definitely my favorite. It’s so detailed and realistic in that it looks like an actual picture of a person taped on to the wall. The work as a whole looks damaged. The kid has what appears to be scars on his face and the painting as a whole looks to be fading away. There are also phrases in different languages spread out along the piece. On the opposite wall, there are more artwork with messages like “Don’t Be a Bully” and “Pillz Killz” written on it so the phrases could reflect messages like those since it’s made by the same group of artists, the NYC Arts Cypher.
The third piece of artwork appeared around the same time as the second since it was made by the same group. It’s definitely something your eyes gravitate towards as you drive or walk past that area. It looks like a psychedelic trip through the woods at night with an owl perched on a branch painted onto a wall so it’s particularly hard to miss. Even though it isn’t in your line of sight as you drive by, it’s still enormous in comparison to the other two and takes up so much more space on the wall that it kind of absorbs all of the attention away from them. The fact that it’s not at eye level and at an awkward angle for most people who would view it from the main street made it sort of a necessity that it had to be this big flashy painting to be noticed. This art piece is definitely the most intricate in the way it is was made and in the overall content. All of the globs of color that surround the owl are so meticulously placed and contrast to the less lively owl which is what seems to get my attention the most.
There doesn’t seem to be an underlying theme that connects all of these three works of art together, but it doesn’t seem to matter as the existence of each of these pieces together somehow bolsters the individual paintings in a way I can’t really explain. The artists simply wanted to paint something beautiful and meaningful to them on the wall and did just that and as a result, created an amazing mashup of art on an otherwise dull brick wall.
