2022
The Welling Court Mural Project in Queens, NY is a public art initiative that I’ve been part of annually, repainting the same wall every year, for about a decade. On a July day in 2021, Cecilia, maybe 5 years old, sat herself down on the sidewalk in front of our freshly painted mural with a box of markers and a sketchbook. She was staring at our collaborative mural with John “Crash” Matos, scribbling away her own version of what we’d just created. Suddenly, I felt lucky to be finished late, that the day was timed just right, because otherwise I probably would’ve missed this endearing, very special moment. This piece is dedicated to Cecilia and is based on a photo I’d taken of her on that day.
Patersonc, New Jersey, USA, 1973. Stencil Artist.
Joe Iurato is a NJ based multidisciplinary artist whose works are built on a foundation of stencils and spray paint. Somewhere in between simplistic and photorealistic, his multi-layer stencils offer a distinctly clean and illustrative aesthetic. While Joe’s paintings have adorned walls since the early 2000s, he’s also become noted for the unique placement and photography of miniature painted wood cutouts set in public spaces. Utilizing the outdoor environment to create site-specific installations, and often manipulating our perception of scale and dimensionality, he creates windows into a narrative formed by personal experiences.
