Norte Maar Mural Project
Visiting potential mural locations on a frigid day in January. Pictured: left to right top row: Melissa Trasky, NM Board President; Paula Part, artist; Darma Diaz, City Council Member 37th District; Elisabeth Condon, artist; Kiana Vega, artist. Bottom row: Julia K Gleich, NM Co-Founder and Estefania Velez-Rodriguez, artist.
The Pine Street mural in progress on July 15
Joy, color, light, beauty, nature all brought to a wall in our neighborhood.
Norte Maar is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Norte Maar cuenta con el apoyo, en parte, de fondos públicos del Departamento de Asuntos Culturales de la Ciudad de Nueva York en asociación con el Concejo Municipal.
“The murals celebrate art and life together. Painting landscapes on the scale of buildings while getting to know neighborhood residents, who generously brought drinks and pillows for us to sit on, revealed shared love for what art can do."
Norte Maar gathered a group of artists to create a series of murals in the 37th District—Cypress Hills, East New York, and Bushwick. Artist/ collaborators Elisabeth Condon, Paulapart, Kiana Vega, and Estefania Velez-Rodriguez, began designing for several 37th District locations this spring. In June 2022 they began priming and painting with help from Norte Maar intern, Prince White, and volunteers.
Additional locations are planned. Please tag us in your photos @nortemaar !!
The Murals
The Artists
Photography by Stephen Olweck.
Kiana Vega lives in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, and is a close neighbor of Norte Maar. She is an art vendor and instructor for school-age children and volunteers for art projects in the local community. Kiana graduated from F.I.T in 2022 with her degree in Fine Arts and continues to advocate for others to embrace creative practices.
Elisabeth Condon paints scrolls combining wallpaper patterns and landscape. She recently completed an MTA Art & Design commission for NYCT Astoria Ditmars Blvd. Station. Condon is represented by Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami.
Paulapart (Paula Pino) is a Brooklyn-based acoustic sculptor and painter. They grew up in Miami, FL and studied sculpture and electroacoustic music at the University of Florida. Movement is paramount in Paula’s artistic practice, generating graceful other-worldly forms with a basis in biology, acoustics, and material science. Their work is definitively synesthetic and interdisciplinary, translating 2D drawings into 4D sound sculptures and audible sound into visible gesture.
Estefania Velez-Rodriguez utilizes the symbolic language of painting as a bridge between many cultures and spaces. Her work often uses abstracted landscapes as well as non-objective visual spaces that are somewhat open field and bright. Her landscapes meander and distort physical spaces like mazes which are meant to be misleading. Utilizing chemical reactions within painting, Estefania experiments with raw pigments, spray materials, oil mediums, and acrylic polymers. Her painting language ruptures visual spaces to open the viewers receptivity to fleeting spaces, times, and emotional presence. Estefania is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, and lectures at Rutgers University - Newark, Brooklyn College, and Montclair State University. She is represented by Praxis Gallery New York.
Stephen Olweck is a photographer who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Olweck has had numerous group, and solo exhibitions, including Walk Back The Cat at The Collective Art Tank Gallery, Asbury Park, NJ and Wake and Wane at Klimat Lounge Gallery, New York, NY. Olweck’s work appears in print and online publications, including Float magazine and Spotz editions, to name a few. He holds a BA from William Paterson University. His latest body of work includes a series of documentary-style photographs that are meditations on his relationships with women and how the conceptual past leaves imprints to influence the current day.
Special thank you to all who volunteered to work on the mural!
Cole Bespalko, Karl Kelly, Emmaline Payette, Stan Tassy, 7 yr old Augustin and many neighborhood kids, Maru, Javier, Alejandro, and many others in the neighborhood who offered assistance and words of cheer!
And we celebrate our beloved Norte Maar intern, Prince White, who worked with the team everyday and brought tenacity and joy!
Norte Maar intern, Prince White, who has been a valuable member the team every step of the way, with Estefania.
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The Norte Maar Mural Project is supported, in part, by public funds from
the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Proyecto Mural Norte Maar cuenta con el apoyo, en parte, de fondos públicos
del Departamento de Asuntos Culturales de la Ciudad de Nueva York en asociación con el Concejo Municipal.
