May 21, 2013 By Bill Parry,
An internationally acclaimed artist who lives and works on 40th Street will be painting a mural on a Sunnyside building next month that’s been targeted by graffiti vandals for years.
Mark Salinas, the artist, will start painting the mural at 42nd St. and 48th Ave. on June 8 with the help of local teenagers.
The mural will be based around a theme of Rise-N-Shine. “It’s also a play on Sunnyside,” Salinas said, referring to the name of the neighborhood and the need to revitalize the 48th Avenue corridor that is full of abandoned stores.
“The idea came to me while I was taking part in a [Sunnyside] cleanup day last year,” Salinas said. “We were covering up graffiti and I started thinking of creative ways of improving things through neighborhood beautification.”
The artist enlisted members of the Sunnyside/Woodside Boys & Girls Club to help out.
“My thought was, if kids are involved in the creative process, their friends may stay away from tagging it,” Salinas said The project is funded by the Queens Council on the Arts, a non-profit group that dispenses $300,000 of grants each year in increments of $1,000-$5,000 per project throughout the borough.
The mural project has the support of Sunnyside Shines. “It’s outside the BID so I couldn’t help with funding,” said Executive Director Rachel Thieme. However, “I was happy to help point him in the right direction in finding the building’s owner.”
Paint for the project will be donated by Gleason’s Paints in Woodside, while Papa John’s will send pizzas to feed the kids.
Salinas has lived in Sunnyside for the past 15 years and has recently accepted an Artist Residency at Cite Internationale in Paris for the summer of 2014.
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38 Comments
And another thing! Who the hell doesn’t like popcorn????
Wow. Three people here have heard of Banksy. Guess what Banksy’s never heard of: Sunnyside, Queens. Be glad anybody does anything, anywhere, you buncha whiners! Yo Salinas, if you’re reading, I think the mural looks great!
From Brooklyn, I can tell you this is a start. Why not? It is a good spot to begin. More will follow.
this man aint no banksy!
I agree on banksy, I hope Salinas can come somewhere close to that.
real mural artist = banksy
i googled this so called artist… come on, you’ve got to be kidding. Anyone who uses Adobe Illustrator to design a mural in 15 mnutes…. is no artist.
Even Beiber threw around the term “artist” the other night… like the word “organic”, it means nothing.
It’s wonderful that something is being done, but the way it’s going to look doesn’t really fit in with the beauty of Sunnyside, Queens. It would be very nice if there are more suggestions of what should be painted on that exterior wall.
Rick, I see the anger management therapy is not working, I guess you are going to have consider the meds. The entire length of the wall was reprinted about three weeks ago with the off white color.
I think it’s wonderful that a local artist is doing something to spruce up a run down corner and involve local kids in art. How the commenters on this site manage to turn that into something negative is beyond me.
Many thanks to Mark, Rachel, Gleason’s, and everyone else involved. The silent majority appreciates it, I’m sure!
Love it! Now I wish this corner was part of my morning commute, so I could see it when I need to rise and shine 🙂
@SuperWittySmitty – Only thing I found was this…
http://arrowsup.com/whats-up.html
He is the creative director. From what I gather, he works with costume design. Not sure how that will translate into a mural.
@Anonymous – Maybe the residency for 2004 was a typo and SP meant 2014?
That is atrocious! One more reason for pigeons to congregate there. It’s bad enough that someone continues to feed them and, in this case, it isn’t dogs but PIGEONS! All this will do is encourage more *artists* to ply their trade.
Wait what year is the artist going to Paris?
The walls were always white OM. Just goes to show, yet again, that you don’t know much about what is going on just outside your cave, mr trollboy.
RD
Is this the same guy designing the 40st subway station playground between the boulevard of death? I see we get the bottom f the damn barrel in terms of talent.
WHAT A DUMP!
I agree with Krissi above ^
Like it! Look forward to seeing it finished.
I personally am such a supporter of this. I hope more commercial buildings get the same treatment!
Not crazy about this image- yellow? Rise & Shine? What does this mean?
Where can I find out more about this international acclaim? Google doesn’t offer anything substantial.
It should be said that the next time you need paint or paint supplies, it would be good tovisi Gleason’s in Woodside and when you feel like a change from the usual Sunnyside Pizza or 99 cent fare, give a call to Papa John’s.
Paint colors are chosed by the Parks Department. You know better than that. You do realize the Lou Lodati Park renovation is not completed yet, right? Next…
@Native, then why were the walls at the dog oasis painted white? Is the intention to highlight all the dog urine marks?
It should be a black and white murial.
Colors will make the area look to ghetto
just saying
An artist reaching out to local teens to help beautify the neighborhood is a great thing!! I like the mural and I would love to see more projects like this engaging local kids.
Dogs, urine, popcorn containers… really????
How about letting some vines and ivy grow all over that wall?
There is a reason we put murals like these on dishwasher containers. There is a reason why we put said containers under the sink closets: Mirror Breaking UGLINESS.
LOL @ Roxy! It DOES look like a popcorn container!
@ Oppressed Masses – the dog urine will blend in nicely with that shade of yellow! That’s why they did it…
clean the brick. plant a tree. patrol from 2-5am. keep painting over graffiti. murals say, we gave up here.
I have been saying this needs to be done on this exact corner forever! Murals are a million times better than graffiti and are rarely defaced. Although the school’s mural on 46th… how can people deface a kid’s mural? So sad.
Perhaps it will look different in reality, but how ugly this seems. And what makes anyone think this will not be covered in graffiti in a short time?
How can even this news lead to the offensiveness that is dogs? It’s a mural. It has nothing to do with dogs. Jeez.
Conceptual drawings always look different from the reality. Good luck on the project, and thanks for working on something positive for Sunnyside!
I’m just curious as to why the Sunnyside Shines BID is so limited in its service area. There are plenty of businesses between 40th and 43rd Sts. on Greenpoint Avenue, as well as all along 43rd and Skillman Aves that I’m sure would be happy to be part of an organization designed to help business thrive in Sunnyside.
I had to chuckle that Ms. Thieme had to say that they cannot assist with funding even though the proposed site for the mural is about 2 minute walk away from their office.
OM has a point.
That particular street is popular with dog owners who don’t pick up after their dogs.
Looks like a great idea, let’s hope the dogs don’t ruin it.
They’ve got to be joking!!! Looks like a gigantic popcorn container.