The Unofficial Blog of Long Beach, NY
Another mural is currently being painted over at West End Automotive & Auto Body on W. Beech Street and Vermont Street. As a Star Wars nerd since the very beginning, words cannot describe how happy I am to see this.
Photos courtesy of Peter Scherer, who tells me more murals will be coming to Long Beach in the near future.
So I am reading about the Long Beach Council for the Arts:
“Leaders of local arts groups gathered together [recently] for a special meeting to discuss the formation of a Long Beach Council for the Arts. Members of the City Council and the City Manager joined the discussion which was run by Sustainable Long Island — [LINK]
One thing I would LOVE is a sculpture garden. I’ve been to a bunch: Socrates in Astoria, Seattle near Pike Place, Jersey has a cool one as well. There is really not much to it, but an interesting walk of sculptures – perhaps on the bay near the Rec Center and new skate park? But cool scupltures. No crap.
Oh, I would like to see more murals. The more recently ones around the city are AWESOME! But enough about me, what about you? Got any great ideas? Please share with links, if possible!
Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTnews and director of the Gallery Club for Cre8tive YouTH*ink loves art (obviously) and lion statues. She has a tumbr where she occasionally shares various hidden treasures of Long Beach, such as the Magnolia Park Mural and Long Beach Lions. Her latest is local-artist Lisa Be’s bottlecap mural ‘When the Beach Met The Bay’ (See tumbr post here: http://tmblr.co/ZycdextK4ZWW).
‘When the Beach Met The Bay’ can be found at the corner of Maryland Avenue and Beech Street in the West End of Long Beach, NY. When I look at this mural, I see a sunset over the ocean. The name suggests it might be a reference to what the West End experienced during Hurricane Sandy, when the beach did indeed meet the bay. It’s art, so you can interpret it anyway you want. Either way, I love this mural and the exposure Long Beach is getting, as we continue to rebuild, evolve and grow.
Check out Robin’s tumblr on this mural here: http://tmblr.co/ZycdextK4ZWW.
I posted an article a few weeks ago asking you all to submit photos of all the great ticket booth artwork that was done by Ms. Swan’s Long Beach Middle School Art Club students. We almost have all of them, but a few are still missing. So far we have:
pacific, roosevelt (just added!), neptune (just added!), franklin, lincoln, LB Blvd, Riverside, National, Magnolia, Laurelton, Layfayette, Washington, Lindell, Grand, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Delaware, Wyoming, Virginia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Georgia, Connecticut & Ohio (just added!)
If you see any that’s missing (Neptune..cough cough), please take a photo and submit! Email me or use a site like imgur to upload and comment with the link! Continue reading “Ticket Booth Art [Almost have all of them!]”
I am loving the artwork on the new make-shift ticket booths at all the beach entrances. Long Beach Middle School Art Club students painted them with the direction of Ms. Swan, the Art Teacher. All the children received a proclamation from the city on the last day of school (Thanks Toni!)
I’d love to see and share all this art work with you all, but I’m going to need your help. Please take a photo of the booth art at your beach entrance and send it to me. If emailing a photo is too complicated, you can always upload it to imgur.com and just sent me the link.
I’ll keep updating this post with all the new photos in block order, from east to west. Oh, don’t forget to tell me what block it’s from!!
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN AND THE FEEDBACK HAS BEEN OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE!! Everbody seems to LOVE the freshly painted and colorful booth over at Magnolia Blvd (Read – We came. We saw. We Painted. [One Booth is Done]). Besides the 100% positive feedback commented on this site, we had many LIKES on Facebook, plus I received dozens of emails from supporters, residents, community leaders and business owners looking to donate their time, money and supplies with the sole the intention of getting the rest of these booths painted asap.
The only negative I saw so far were a couple of folks on a hidden LB Patch-thread trying to turn this volunteered community beautification/art project into a union-issue. It’s not. Just like Cleaning-Up-The-Beach day, painting a mural on a wall or planting flowers on city property – a bunch of us Long Beach residents volunteered our time to paint that booth. None of us got paid. This particular booth wasn’t slated to be painted anytime soon. We did not mean to offend any beach maintenance /union workers at all. We didn’t just repaint it the same beige color and call it a day. Please look at this as a volunteered community beautification/art project, because that’s all what it was and I will stand by that (since I am the one who started it).
Moving Forward: An overwhelming amount of you loved our color palette and want to see more colors and variations of our design. Perhaps we can have a design contest for each booth? Our original plan was to paint one booth this fall, see how it goes, then work on a Paint-A-Booth day for next spring. We have all winter to talk about this, so let’s have fun! Since it’s a grand community volunteer beautification/art project, we’re going to need your support. So please email me or follow this blog for updates.
I want to personally thank you all for your emails and kind comments. I am so proud of what we accomplished last Friday; I am so proud of the kind folks who helped out and volunteered their time and energy; I am also so proud of those who allowed us to do this community beautification/art project.
Today, as a community art project, we painted one of the ticket booths on the boardwalk. For the history of how this came about, please read the following seabythecity posts:
The goal of this project was to just see what we can do, get some feedback and hope it kick starts something bigger. If feedback is positive, then perhaps next spring we can organize a volunteer Paint-A-Booth day. If you don’t like what we did, please give us constructive criticism instead of just saying “I don’t like what you did”. We worked hard and volunteered several hours of our time (and some money) to do this. So please be nice and tell us what you think 🙂
WHO ARE WE? I would like to thank Allison, Bob, Tricia, Arnie, Sherie / Ree, Jamie and a few others whose names I didn’t get. I think we all did a wonderful job! Also, a big thank you to those who came by and said hi! I want to write more, but I can’t seem to get the paint off my fingers and it’s getting all over my computer keyboard!
