Artwork In and About East Harlem (El Barrio)

Located on the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and East 106th Street, Manny Vega's magnificent homage to poet Julia de Burgos includes verses from her collection and an assortment of Puerto Rican/Taino symbols surrounding the writer's likeness. Commissioned by Hope Community, Inc. in 2006, the initiative was organized by Marina Ortiz and Debbie Quinones of East Harlem Preservation and funded by JPMorgan Chase, Congressman Charles B. Rangel, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, State Senator José M. Serrano, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, and many local supporters. The mosaic also compliments the re-naming of East 106th Street from Fifth Avenue to First Avenue in her honor.

The Legacy of Puerto Ricans (El Diario/La Prensa, 6 de noviembre de 2006)
Un mural marca la presencia puertorriqueña en El Barrio (El Diario/La Prensa, Oct. 29 2006)
Honran a poetisa Julia de Burgos con mosaico, calle con su nombre (Hoy, Oct. 28, 2006)
Julia De Burgos Mosaic Unveiled! (East-Harlem.com, October 27, 2006)
Mural In [East] Harlem Honors Poet (NY 1 News, October 27, 2006)
Julia de Burgos Remembered (New York Daily News, Oct. 24, 2006)
Barrio Plans Tribute to Julia de Burgos (Tiempo NY, Oct. 18, 2006)

The Crabapple Tree Chapel
Architect/Builder: Ben Yeomans
Date built December 2005

Located in the St. Francis of Assisi-themed backyard of the LuLu LoLo and Dan Evans residence at 331 East 116th Street, the "Crabapple Tree Chapel" was completely crafted by hand by Ben Yeomans, a friend who builds houses for the homeless throughout the world. The architectural construction of the Gothic cathedral structure includes Federal style wooden pegs throughout instead of nails.

Click here for a video presentation of the cathedral produced by Lisa Wolfe.

Marina Gutierrez
Untitled, 1996
Painted aluminum

Location: Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center, 1680 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan
Architect: Borrero/Plumey Joint Venture
Sponsor Agency: Economic Development Corporation

Marina Gutierrez’s installation for the renovation of the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center features suspended mobile structures of silhouetted aluminum cut-outs and painted images inspired by the work of the Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos.

Twelve silhouettes are suspended from seven points in the atrium, which are visible from both the lobby and the second-floor balcony.

The air currents cause the double-sided images to move and reconfigure themselves, resembling a kinetic, visual poem.

L. Brower Hatcher
El Arbol de Esperanza, 1995
Stainless steel, nickel-plated brass, bronze

Location: Thomas Jefferson Park, 2180 First Avenue, Manhattan
Architect: Miceli Kulik Williams
Design/Sponsor Agency: Department of Parks and Recreation

Brower Hatcher’s 18 foot (5.4 m) sculpture of a tree is sited among the trees lining the walks of Thomas Jefferson Park. The polished stainless-steel trunk supports a globe constructed from a translucent matrix of color-coated stainless rods connected by nickel-plated brass fittings. With the guidance of the artist, students from River East School and the Thomas Jefferson Park Recreational Center created small bronze figures that are now displayed on the tree’s branches. These objects, which include pizza slices, dogs, worms, and a bird in its nest, represent what the students recognize as common sights in the park.

Melvin Edwards
Tomorrow's Wind, 1995
Stainless Steel

Location: Thomas Jefferson Park and Pool, 2180 First Avenue, Manhattan
Architect: Miceli Kulik Williams
Design/Sponsor Agency: Department of Parks and Recreation

Melvin Edwards’s stainless-steel abstract sculpture, entitled Tomorrow’s Wind, features a large disk tilted upwards to mirror the sun. Adjacent to the disc is a towering vertical form, bisected at its base by a shape reminiscent of a stairway or building block. These three elements balance each other and reflect the shapes of nearby buildings. Edwards said of this work: “The sculptural forms, site, and creative imagination are combined to give a new experience to the community of viewers.”

Street Murals and Artwork

"The Spirit of East Harlem"

One of el Barrio's s most famous murals, "The Spirit of East Harlem " was created in 1973 by Hank Prussing at the behest of Hope Community, a local housing group. The mural, which features characters from the neighborhood, has since become a local landmark. Hope Community later commissioned and funded the restoration of the four-story mural in 1978. Badly weathered, "The Spirit of East Harlem" was painstakingly restored by Puerto Rican artist Manny Vega, who, 25 years ago, was Prussing's apprentice. "With a mural you can access the aesthetic of a community," says Manny Vega.

Graffiti Wall of Fame

The first legal and organized wall for graffiti writers to showcase their skills was the Graffiti Wall of Fame, located on the northwest corner of 106th Street and Park Avenue during the early 1980s. What began as the expressions of angry youth, has since grown and matured into a formidable means of artistic expression. By the 1990s, artistically inclined writers began to seek out legal walls to paint murals. Competition among artists led to the creation of a loosely nit group of 'painters' who annually strive for a place on the "Graffiti Hall of Fame," one of the few legal "Graffiti" sites in New York City.

There are many other "freelance" artworks on display throughout East Harlem. Take a walk, and a look, at the powerful intricate aesthetics temporarily embodied on our walls. You will definitely like what you see.

See also: Ordinary Stories: East Harlem Murals (ReynoldsWolfe LLC, June 25, 2007)

Andrea Blum
107th Street Pier, 1991

Rustic and polished terrazzo, concrete, exposed aggregate, steel

Location: East 107th Street Recreational Pier, 107th Street/FDR Esplanade
Architect: Cavaglieri and Sultan
Design Agency: Department of Parks and Recreation
Sponsor Agency: Economic Development Corporation
Art Commission Award for Excellence in Design 1991

Andrea Blum’s work features a number of elements designed to bring the 107th pier to life without undermining the existing structure. Blum created a new paving pattern executed in yellow, black, and white terrazzo and brushed gray concrete, and refurbished the concrete benches that encircle the lower level with yellow and black polished terrazzo. Materials were chosen for their ease of maintenance. Together with the renovated East River Esplanade, the finished pier provides much-needed recreational space for the East Harlem community.

Jorge Luis Rodriguez
Growth, Painted Steel Sculpture, 1985

Location: East Harlem Artpark,Sylvan Place and East 120th Street
Architect: Housing Preservation and Development Open Spaces Program
Design/Sponsor Agency: Department of Parks and Recreation

Dedicated in 1985, Jorge Rodriguez's Growth was the first project completed by the Percent for Art Program. Growth rises directly from the cobblestones of the East Harlem Artpark, a park created by combining Sylvan Place and a formerly dilapidated park between the landmark Harlem Courthouse and The Casabe Houses, a housing project for senior citizens. As stated in Hispanic Arts News, "It is intended to portray a metamorphosis taking place. The inter-relationship of the sculpture is part of the surroundings in the park and is intended to echo the metaphor of life." The sculpture's flowing shapes, at once reminiscent of plants, birds, and insects, reinforce the theme of renewal inherent in this park.

El dolor de una madre

(The Sorrow of a Mother / A Mother's Pain in East Harlem), 1972
Angel E. Allende (d. 1997), Oil on canvas, 70 x 50.
Signed lower right corner: A. E. Allende / 1972
Museum of the City of New York Collection

A modernized pietà theme envisioned with a local audience in mind, Allende's painting represents a mother grieving over the corpse of her son, dead of a heroin overdose, in a litter-strewn lot off a bleak East Harlem street. The scene is touching in its allusion to the universality of maternal love while at the same time blunt in rendering the ugliness of drug addiction within an environment itself derelict and devoid of compassion - a concept underscored by the boarded-over windows of the empty tenements forming the scene's backdrop.

The incident memorialized was an outcome all too common for young men of color living in East Harlem by the late 1950s, when the progressive availability of French Connection heroin was wreaking havoc in America's northern urban ghettoes, finding its most vulnerable victims among minority teenaged boys. At a congressional hearing held that same decade, welfare officials detailed a particular three-block area of East Harlem as an exemplar of how drugs were infecting the "slums," testifying that heroin addiction among young male residents had reached "epidemic proportions" and enumerating twenty local establishments where illegal hard drugs were peddled -including an athletic club for teenaged boys. In his autobiographical novel Manchild in the Promised Land (1965), Claude Brown took measure of heroin's deepening inroads through Harlem, noting, "It seemed to be a kind of plague. Every time I went uptown, somebody else was hooked, somebody else was strung out." In the meantime, neighborhood activists protested the slow public response to the escalating tragedy of local drug use and read this delay as a result of the profile of East Harlem's typical addict, whom statistics identified as young, black, poor, and lacking the cause or credentials to vote.

Art in Transit: Subway Mosaics

Muralists: Nitza Tufino and Manny Vega
110th and 103rd Street Stations (Lex. Ave.)

Through the Permanent Art program, MTA Arts for Transit has commissioned local artists to create site-specific artwork that is permanently installed in subway stations. MTA Arts for Transit also administers to two temporary programs, the Transit Poster Program and the Lightbox Project for photographers.

MTA Arts for Transit selects artists for their programs through competitive processes. Artists are pre-screened by reviewing the portfolios on file at the Percent for Art Slide Registry of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA).

Several internationally renowned Puerto Rican artists have their artwork featured at subway stops along 110th and 103rd Street in el Barrio/East Harlem.

Among them is Nitza Tufino, whose "Neo-Boriken" (1990) can been seen at the 103rd Street station, and Manny Vega, whose "Sabado en la Cienta Diez" (1996) and other works are installed along the 110th Street station.

Vega has described his evolution as an artist and the consistent influence of Puerto Rican culture on his life: from the drumming he learned as a youth, to the cultural dislocation he experienced visiting his home island for the first time, to his contact with art institutions in the East Harlem community such as the Taller Boricua and El Museo del Barrio, which helped nurture his artistic talent.

Crack is Wack Park

Pop artist and New York resident Keith Haring produced graphic and colorful public art that quickly made him one of the most popular New York figures of the 1980s. In those two short years he had created and refined a visual imagery that was political, poetic and celebratory.

Located in the East Harlem Triangle (near the FDR at 128th Street and Second Avenue), Crack is Wack Park exemplifies Haring's ability to work within a neighborhood to develop pride and community. In this instance he worked with neighborhood youth to create the Crack is Wack mural.

Keith Haring died in New York on February 16, 1990 at the age of 32. He has marked East Harlem, and all of New York City, with his enthusiastic and spirited murals.