The 49th Avenue bridge at Skillman Avenue in Long Island City got a healthy dose of math and art over the weekend.
Publicolor, a nonprofit which engages high-risk teens through design, primarily works in public schools by helping students transform their classrooms from drab to inspiring with large, colorful murals. The Publicolor staff also teaches professional art skills that students can take beyond high school and into college.
“Every day I look forward to painting. It’s an amazing experience,” said Alyssa Taylor, 17, a student at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in Brooklyn. Taylor is one of the students helping with the 49th Avenue mural.
Once a year the organization goes beyond schools and community centers and picks a couple public spaces to spice up. This year the organization teamed with the Department of Transportation to bring the honor to the pedestrian bridge.
“It’s one of those rare organizations that not many people know its name, but they are really transforming our urban landscape by engaging young people with large public artworks,” Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) said.
This year’s design is the Fibonacci sequence, the mathematical equation wherein the first two numbers in the sequence are 0 and 1, and each following digit is the sum of the previous pair. The resultant spiral-like pattern can be seen naturally in pineapples, pine cones, some shells and ferns.
Last year Publicolor also painted the sequence — in yellow, green and blue — on the busy 21st Street Bridge.
“I love the idea of teaching and conveying new ideas. As people cross they will look at the relationship and it may spark their curiosity,” Publicolor founder Ruth Lande Shuman said.
On Saturday students and Publicolor volunteers primed the cement wall with cheery yellow paint. The rest of the design will incorporate orange as well. Because of the rain the group will finish up the work on Oct. 6.
In Queens the group has painted murals in nine public schools as well as the 108th Police Precinct building, the Ravenswood Community Center, the Oceans Bay Community Center and the FDA’s regulatory lab and offices in Jamaica.
“When you put a paint brush in a disaffected student’s hands, they have a sense of ownership,” Shuman said. “Students take huge pride in the works that they do.”
