Public Art
At the 7G Group, we view art as a catalyst for social change. Through public art installations and programming, we are able to bring the integrity, talent, and popular appeal of great artists into the everyday, ultimately leading to a heightened environment for positive change within doing business, civic design and development.
“Art can change the way we feel and think, and by creating a common visual culture in polarized communities, it can create a shared experience that doesn’t necessarily happen otherwise.”
Art Sundae with Art Production Fund in the Rockaways
Art Production Fund & Fort Gansevoort partnered on community art program Art Sundae in collaboration with contemporary artist CES and the students of the Waterside Children's Studio School. In June 2019, 3rd – 5th-grade students from Waterside Children's Studio School in Rockaway Park joined contemporary artist CES to create colorful stylized writings of their names using spray paint in CES's iconic "Wildstyle," alphabetic reconfiguration writing. Following the workshop, CES integrated his work with the children's artwork to create a large scale mural, which was publicly installed around the perimeter of The Rockaway Hotel located on Beach 108th Street.
Ivan Forde: Seascape With The Fabulous Plant of Rejuvenation in the Abzu
Completed in the summer of 2021, Ivan Forde’s first large-scale public work poeticizes Rockaway’s history and depicts an underwater seascape of literary characters alongside local fish and birds. Centered around the magical plant from the ancient Mesopotamian epic poem Gilgamesh/He Who Saw The Deep, Forde’s mural presents a boat with sailors, the hydrodynamics of water, and a mysterious diver among an amalgamation of healing plants, including those used in Forde’s birthplace of Guyana, native to the Rockaways, and cultivated across cultures. It will acknowledge Forde’s extensive research of history and ancestry, ranging from the artist’s conversations with his father to the legacy of the Rockaways’ indigenous Lenape people.
Jesse Krimes x St. Johns Residence for Boys
In Spring 2023, Jesse Krimes hosted a series of in-person workshops to collect source imagery from participating students at the St Johns Residence for Boys in Rockaway exploring how they envision their future lives. The resulting images will be translated into a communally created mural in the Rockaways in Summer 2023. The concept of the mural grows out of Krimes “Elegy Quilt Series” which explores memories or feelings of home described by people currently in prison. For this project, Krimes shifted the focus from one of remembrance to one of forethought. These aspirational workshops inspired a positive and empowering perspective, encouraging the young men to envision themselves in the future. The imagery generated drew on three primary exercises: envisioning their future homes, selecting objects that represent their interests, and creating animal representations of their core identities.
“Make Your Mark” Community Initiative with Artist Julia Chiang
The Rockaway Hotel and artist Julia Chiang teamed up in July 2022 for a public art project in the Rockaways. “Make Your Mark” was a multigenerational community engagement initiative that hosted workshops for local students, families, and seniors to create art inspired by Chiang’s work.
The result was a collective fingerprint of the community and the basis of two public art murals in dialogue with one another. The project marked the artists’ public art debut, inspiring agency, and pride in expressing and giving voice to the multitude of experiences as a community fighting to be seen in its entirety
Nancy Baker Cahill: Liberty Bell
On July 4, 2020, artist Nancy Baker Cahill unveiled “Liberty Bell”, a public art project that utilized augmented reality, presented simultaneously in six cities in the United States: Boston, MA, Charleston, SC, Philadelphia, PA, Rockaway, NY, Selma, AL, and Washington, DC. Commissioned by Art Production Fund, in partnership with 7G Foundation and the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, a project of the Fund for the City of New York, Liberty Bell is an animated, monumental and richly sonorous augmented reality (AR) drawing in 360 degrees. The public artwork will be geolocated at a series of sites and experienced on smartphones through Baker Cahill’s free 4th Wall app. This project, which was two years in the making, lives at the vibrant intersection of public art, social consciousness and tech.
Nina Chanel Abney x RxART
The Rockaway Hotel partnered with RxART and Nina Chanel Abney on an installation that honored her work at the Elmhurst Hospital Pediatric Emergency Room. Abney created vibrant imagery that transformed the entire clinic, providing a positive distraction for the pediatric patients.
The same artwork was installed on the exterior of the Rockaway Hotel, visible for everyone in the community to enjoy. The collaboration with Nina Chanel Abney and RxART further echoed the hotel’s key pillar of community engagement and arts-focused initiatives supporting local and international artists.
Shantell Martin: The Big Yard Mural
Friends of Seaside Playground (FOSP), in collaboration with 7G Group, were pleased to support Shantell Martin’s Big Yard Mural. Martin’s artwork transformed the “The Big Yard,” located at Seaside Playground on the corner of Rockaway Beach Boulevard and B109 Street in Rockaway Park, Queens, into an oasis for the 700 students from Waterside Children’s Studio School, Waterside School for Leadership, and the community members who use the school’s yard daily. The hand-painted mural will debut October 11, 2020, and is sponsored by the Rockaway Hotel.
