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Join me for a Volunteer Paint Day! We will start a 1000 sq. feet mural to brighten the neighborhood! This June 5, I will be starting a new asphalt mural with the Jerome Gun Hill Bid and everyone is welcome to paint! Come prepared, with your messy clothes, painting skills, a hat and some sunscreen. We will provide water and some light snacks, but there are plenty of businesses to get food around the area. Go to this link to SIGN UP, You can choose between the 4 shifts and get ready to get your hands dirty! Once on site, you will be asked to sign a waiver in order to participate. First come, first served basis.
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Since May 2020 The Friendly Fridge Bx Has been helping the community by having free food available 24/7. If people has something to share, they leave it there, if you need something, you can get it. It mutual aid at it's best. Last week, the owner of the space hosting the fridge told them they could paint the gates because it is going to be closed for a little while. We did give it a clean up and a bright new look! It is located at Broadway and 242 Street in the Bronx. Give the gift of reading! And be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud, like Maya Angelou said. If you want your copy of “Eggie’s Adventures at Poe Cottage” you better get it now! Just a few hours left to pre-order to get your bundle before the holidays. Rendition to the mural I did during the summer for Uptown Grand Central
I was given the opportunity to create another mural at the Uptown Grand Scale Project. This time I choose part of a Maya Angelou's poem that really resonates with me and the moment we live in now. Life is tough and we all need someone else’s help sometimes to get out of the dark cloud. So, "Be a Rainbow in Someone Else's Cloud"  This painting was created live during the ARTE virtual annual fundraiser. The attendants answered to the question: What does your vision of a more just world look like? And from those answers I took key words and created this painting. Soon the painting will be auctioned and will find a new home. I really miss live art events. I miss talking to people, learning something from everyone. Interacting and being social. Sigh.  Last week through a chain of I know someone that knows someone, I got a text message if I knew anyone to paint a community fridge in The Bronx. As I am feeling better and now I can walk almost normal, I immediately volunteered. Sara and Selma have been providing free food to their community for two months already. They saw what other communities were accomplishing by having a fridge in the street, asking local businesses to donate food at the end of the day, coordinating with community gardens to get fresh produce and checking on the fridge every day a couple of times a day to make sure it is clean and working. While painting it I was impressed by the number of people that used it, to bring and to get food from it. We don't really know how people are struggling until you offer help. This is a mutual aid initiative that has been pretty successful in different parts of the city and I see it is being done in other cities. I will be hopefully painting a few more soon... This one is located at 242 Street and Broadway Ave. In the North Bronx. We had a couple of technical difficulties to paint the fridge. The first day it was so humid that the paint I brought to paint didn't dry, so I had to come back a second time. All worth!! "Amuleto" 125th Street & Park Ave. Harlem, New York. This mural was done trying to bring up a conversation about who is looking at us and how sometimes being out of sight is safer. When some communities start to be in the point of view most of the times is a bad sign, the people watching will try to change you, so you look more appealing for the ones to come. Resilience is the way to go, resistance, community United... I'm leaving here my "Amuleto" I hope luck is our side. It was done by uptown artists during a big celebration bringing the community together having fun and creating memories. Uptown Grand Central (particularly Ayana) coordinated over 50 artists to give color and beauty to the neighborhood. 
This summer I am working with WHEDco to create a Step Street Mural in the Highbridge neighborhood of The Bronx. We have done a couple of outreach events to let the community know this is coming and to gather volunteers to help with the painting process. Right now we are just waiting on some permits but I can already taste the paint!!! ____________ In the past years, some organizations and neighborhoods in the Bronx have started to fight back against the burden of being number 62 out of 62 counties in the health rank of New York. Part of the #Not62 initiative have been the community gardens that have sprung around the borough, promoting healthy eating. One of the issues we face is the food deserts, where you have to travel in order to get fruits and vegetables, and when you find them they are expensive and their quality is not great. These small gardens give the communities an alternative option, growing your own food, and at the same time they create community spaces where you get to know your neighbors and share time with them. This step street mural is an homage to those gardens and at the same time will make fun and colorful the fact that you have to go up and down the stairs, promoting exercise. In this project I want to involve the community gardens inviting them to help in the painting process and also bringing information about what they do and where they are located to get more people to join them. Public art is a great outreach platform. Once we are done we will write the names of the gardens in the steps.
 I am a firm believer that tradition is very important in our lives. The Bronx area has a big immigrant and blue collar community. What they have in common is the manual labor, earning the bread with your hands. I always remember the older woman in my family working at home taking care of the families but also sewing, crocheting and knitting. My grandmother used to make this crochet flower mats for everything. That's the inspiration for the background flowers, that lay on top of the blue of the Mediterranean Sea I grew up looking at. On top, the flowers to remind us that Spring always come and we can look forward good times. Finally I also wanted to pay homage to the neighborhood and the borough by using the frames already on the wall to write their names. Thank you Artbridge for this opportunity and for coordinating the whole thing. The installation took 3 full days to complete, aided by numerous community volunteers. It was funded by local council member Andrew Cohen, as part of the council’s NYC Cleanup Initiative. All paint was generously donated by Liquitex Professional. Thank you local resident Elisabeth von Uhl’s prodigious efforts were the spark plug for this project. We need more people like you. 
Sometimes there are projects that happen and you don't know how much fun they are going to be until they happen. The preparation for this mural was somehow long and uncertain because of the design. We went through several sketches and I wasn't even sure if the one we went with was what the school wanted. After all that work, my process is always “let it flow... there’s nothing wrong in art” you are working with kids, so whatever ideas you have in your head, most likely won't be what they want to do. I gave them some directions, and some of them were disregarded (like keep the hand prints in the sun) so we incorporated that in the design. I think after all, it ended up looking great. Over 30 kids participated in this community mural during period of 2 hours. They painted and wrote words that school inspired them and we all had an awesome evening.
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I am a...Graphic Designer, Illustrator, Educator, Community Activist... ARTIST! All Images COPYRIGHT © 2008-2021, are property of Laura Alvarez Fernandez. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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