By Gus Saltonstall
Locals might have noticed a towering new mural on the Upper West Side.
The “Always in Bloom” mural continued to rise this summer on the facade of a building at West 84th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
Over the past two summers, lead artist Karen Fitzgerald worked with students from the Urban Assembly School for Green Careers, located on the same block, and interns from the nonprofit CITYarts, to transform the formerly white wall while within a community garden at the site into a 54-foot x 22-foot piece of art.
The work on the mural is part of an ongoing four-year process to revitalize the community garden at West 84th Street and Amsterdam by planting flowers, vegetations, painting picnic tables, and adding chickens and beehives.
“The large-scale mural, designed in part by local youth, will honor nature and the UWS community,” reads a description on CITYarts’ website. “(The mural) celebrates nature and raises environmental awareness by inspiring youth to voice their ideas about reducing the speed of climate change and living sustainably.”
The Urban Assembly School for Green Careers is part of the Louis D. Brandeis school complex, and has a specific mission to empower its students to “combat the injustices of climate change.”
The mural project will continue to expand on the walls within community garden space in the coming years.
Here are some photos showing the progress of the towering mural.
You can find out more about the project and see additional photos — HERE.
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Chickens on 84th St.?
What the cluck!?
I love this! I think the UWS should have much more public art like this. Let’s paint new murals and build new statues.
Beautiful…looks way better than the drab concrete walls!
Glorious! That community garden — even as a work in progress — is a breath of fresh air on the gray expanse of Amsterdam Avenue. Thank you to CITYarts and the young designers/artists for this work of imagination and joy.
This is so cool! I used to live in that side of that building a few years ago. That Urban Assembly garden has really had some wonderful improvements even before this mural was put up. Nice work y’all!
Just wondering how the intrepid student painters got to the top of the 54-foot mural.
Very fun and attractive mural!
On Fridays the garden sells eggs from those chickens as well as fresh herbs, apple cider and locally sourced produce.
It’s nice they cleaned out that yard. Before they did the rats used to run out of there and over the feet of people eating outdoors at Jacob’s. It got so bad the restaurant put plastic up over the fence.