By Aaron Rutkoff and Azi Paybarah

What is art? As with many other things, society defines what expressions of personal viewpoints on the world are worthy of a place in its museums, concert halls and art galleries. As is always the case, there are plenty of such individual expressions that escape conventionality and become relegated to buildings’ walls, neighborhood studios, local fairs and the Internet. Here are some of those who call Queens home.

This mural, across the street from Aviation High School, was organized by Lady Pink.

The Brick Wall Canvas

It’s noon, hot, and Astoria’s chic Cavo nightspot is dead quiet.

The only person around is a 40-year-old woman who is preparing to paint a mural depicting an outdoor garden on one of the café’s courtyard walls.

As a teenage vandal, she would have spray-painted her name in curvaceous letters in a search for attention and gratuitous display of talent. Nowadays, Lady Pink is a respected artist known throughout the country for bringing street art to the walls of museums. She is also using her talents to convert spray-painting vandals into positive artists.

When she covers a wall with color, her name still pops up, but in her 20- year-career, it has gone from being “graffiti” to arguably the best deterrent against it.
When interviewing Lady Pink – an Astoria resident who’s been featured in museums worldwide and in the cult classic film “Wild Style”—she asked to be called by her graffiti name because “nobody knows who Sandra is,” she explained, referring to her real name.

Dancers perform on stage while audience members whisper oral histories from the two World’s Fairs held in Queens in anew work by artist Ursula Eagly.

As a high school student in the late 1970’s, Pink said she began writing graffiti in subways because people said she couldn’t.

“I could not go and play in those subway trains, because I was a girl, the same way you could not breed a baby because you’re a boy. It’s just not done,” recalled Pink. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna prove you wrong. I’ll prove you wrong. I’m gonna prove you all wrong.”

And, of course, she did. “By late 1979, by 1980, I painted my first train,” says Pink.

Pink’s status as the only female graffiti writer at that time won her instant celebrity status in the male dominated scene.

Although coy about her exploits, Pink’s well-documented work speaks for itself. In a world where new pieces go up literally overnight, graffiti writers and admirers today still revere Pink’s work, more than 20 years later.

Except now, they admire her work in museums like the Whitney, the Queens Museum of Art, P.S. 1, the Museum of the City of New York and a host of others. They buy her artwork and admire it in murals that she paints to stop illegal graffiti.

“Fear No Art” is the slogan of The Vault, a performance space in Queens Village where every artsist is welcomed.

Since surfacing from the subways and trains, Pink has devoted herself full-time to the art of graffiti. As a world renowned artist who commands $8,000 a piece, she considers her free murals a way of “giving back” and not being “a culture vulture.”

Although her name still appears on walls as part of murals, Pink does her graffiti responsibly.

“No nipples. How often do I have to say that? No nipples. Look at the neighborhood we’re sitting in,” said Pink, recounting directions she’s been given over the years.
For the artist whose canvas is left along the street, affixed to walls, the responsibility that comes with public art is a matter of survival.

“We can’t do crazy political statements, or we can’t do social statements. We can’t do anything that’s crazy controversial because the opposing view will have our wall at their mercy.” Without a trace of regret, Pink added, “I end up having to censor our artists.”

She added, “You should maintain quality that is appropriate for the neighborhood.

And here in Queens, I can’t get away with the [art] that happens on the Lower East Side by Chico [another graffiti writer turned muralist]. I can’t get away with the crazy [art] that happens in the South Bronx. In Queens, it’s a mild mannered borough and people want quality work.”

Steve Hofstetter, a Queens native, has become a comic sensation with the help of the Internet.

And giving back to the kids, and the community, is why she is still writing. In a sense, that’s why she’s always written.

“What we originally did on the subway trains was gave a bit of art and a bit of culture,” said Pink, “to the public, to our peers, our family, to our friends—the common folk.”

Dance Amid Whispers of a World’s Fair

Ursula Eagly, a dancer based in Woodside, has a curious obsession with memory.

Her newest work, “You Are Responsible For What You Tame,” uses both choreographed dance and audience whisperings to explore the memories left by two of the grandest events ever staged in Queens: the World’s Fairs of 1939 and 1964.


The dance piece draws on the oral histories of Queens residents who experienced the fairs first hand, resuscitating a lost world of spectacle—populated by animal tamers and synchronized swimmers and all manner of intriguing display from around the globe—that took root in the borough at two different times in recent history. Though the fairs may have left an evident physical mark on Queens, most notably at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, understanding the impact that these bizarre societies had on the collective memories of borough residents a much more elusive sort of enterprise.

Graffiti artists, who once vandalized brick walls, now protect them with murals.

Eagly conducted a wide search for longtime Queens residents with memories of the World’s Fair, especially the 1939 incarnation, and used the Tribune as a resource. The newspaper interviewed Eagly and publicized her search for firsthand accounts of Queens’ first fair. “I had been spending hours and hours trying to track down these people,” she said, “and suddenly they were calling me.”

The research paid off for this Queens-based dance artist, as she has now put the finishing touches on her World’s Fair inspired work, which will be presented for the first time at Topaz Arts in Woodside on Aug. 26 and 27.

During the performance, audience members will sit on “small, nostalgia-provoking” stools, according to publicity materials for the new dance. Four dancers, led by Eagly, will then whisper isolated fragments of World’s Fair memories, culled from Eagly’s research, into the ears of audience members, who will be encouraged to whisper the stories to their neighbors while the dance proceeds. In this way, Eagly will use the children’s game Telephone to create the context of memory that her World’s Fair dance seeks to explore.

Eagly, who is supported by Topaz Arts and grants from the Queens Council on the Arts, describes her work “as dances [that use] outdated technology and updated storytelling.” She has been presented by the Brooklyn Museum, Galapagos Art Space, Movement Research at the Judson Church, OfficeOps, P.S. 122, Ur and other venues. She graduated in 1999 from Princeton University.

Queens Comic, King of the Web

On the Internet, if not yet in the culture at large, Queens comic Steve Hofstetter is bigger than everybody.

According to an independent company that tracks and ranks web pages, SteveHofstetter.com pulls in more web surfers than any of big name rivals with comedy sites, such as Chris Rock, Jim Carrey or Steve Martin. As a result, the ranking company Alexa.com calls Hofstetter’s website the most high trafficked of any working comic.
“I’m thrilled about it, albeit surprised I can pull as much weight online as someone like Dane Cook or Dave Chappelle,” Hofstetter said when told about the rankings. “It just goes to show that my fans are much bigger dorks.”

“Quantum,” a sci-fi comic epic by Astoria resident Phil Clark, is pushing the bounds of reality.

Hofstetter’s success comes from his exposure to comedy-rabid fans at college and universities across the country, which he has toured exhaustively since graduating from Columbia University two years ago on his “I Don’t Want A Real Job” tour. His sterling academic credentials, including a series of college awards for both his studies and his comedy writing, combined with his propensity for provoking intelligent laughs, has earned Hofstetter the title of “The Thinking Man’s Comic.”

“I basically live out of a Toyota Camry, and I don’t spend more than three nights in the same place,” he explains. “Which is great, cause if I mess something up I can just leave.”

His devoted following is fed a steady diet of Hofstetter humor thanks to his syndicated comedy writing, Observational Humor, which runs in newspapers in eight states. He has also published a humor book, Student Body Shots, billed as a “sarcastic look at the best four to six years of your life.”

Out of Astoria, Twisted Tales of “Quantum”

Many people might take a look at the work of Philip Carter, an Astoria-based artist, and think, “Oh, it’s just another comic.”

But “Quantum: Rock of Ages,” a twelve-part series of comic books that just released its fourth volume, is not really in the same category as the exploits of Archie and Jughead. Instead, Carter weaves an intricate sci-fi epic that explores the possibility of alternate realities that exist in parallel to the world we know.

The events of “Quantum” begin with one such alternate world, in which the Nazis emerged victoriously from WWII and proceeded to dominate the globe, with Hitler’s son the monarch of the modern world. A scientist from this reality uncovers a powerful sphere—the Quantum—that enables travel between these parallel universes. After a failed experiment, the Quantum splinters and a piece turns up New York City, one that very much resembles the city we live in today.

Works by Lady Pink and other muralists are gifts to the community, they say.

Nick Vargas, a record store clerk from Manhattan’s East Village and hero of the comic book, finds a sliver of the Quantum embedded in his own forehead, a turn of events that gives him all sorts of new powers, including the ability to travel back and forth between these alternate universes. As he sets off to investigate the Nazi scientist who unleashed the Quantum, Nick encounters other people from other dimensions with their own slivers of Quantum—and the epic comic travels in ever-stranger directions.

Also a musician, creator/writer Philip Clark said he has created a story that he has always wanted to tell.  “Having lived the life I’ve lived, sometimes I feel like [I want] to see the ‘what ifs’ out there,” he explained. “With ‘Quantum,’ I get to explore the possibility of, say ‘What would have happened if I never left Wyoming?’ or ‘What if I was already a rock star? Ultimately this is a story of Nick confronting his own personal demons, through seeing the possible outcomes of his other lifetimes.”

Clark’s musical credentials are no less mind bending than his comic book creation. A native of Wyoming, Carter says he’s probably the only person from his home state to work as a session musician with James Brown and Afikka Bombatta. As if that wasn’t enough to prove his funk credentials, he also is a two-time winner of Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater.
To learn more about the many realities of “Quantum: Rock of Ages,” visit www.philipclark.com.

Noises From The Vault

There are the community arts institutions that cater to a niche—either a particular art form or a specific cultural group—and there’s The Vault in Queens Village, which features absolutely anything that anyone considers art and wants to share with the world.

Performance artist and Vault founder Tone Bellizi took the unusual step to make room for the free-for-all art space in 1996: “I gutted the first floor of my house,” he explained.
The inspiration for this one of a kind community arts haven came from time Bellizi spent working in African villages. “I was really impressed on how, when I would stop in the village, people would come out and drum and dance, sing songs and tell stories,” he said. “The way we live, pretty much that doesn’t happen. If someone came to my neighborhood, they wouldn’t know where to go to find things artistically and creatively.”

Inside The Vault, located at 90-21 Springfield Blvd., visitors first find a gallery space that features works by local artists affiliated with the avant-garde institution.
Past the gallery is a kitchen transformed into a stage; the entire place is not large—the performance space can accommodate a crowd of 25 with coffee tables, perhaps twice that number without—but it makes up for in diversity what it lacks in capacity. Like the borough itself, which prides itself on accepting immigrants of all sorts, The Vault emphasizes its total acceptance of artists of every imaginable variety—from seasoned pros to first time performers.

Humor, subtlety and emotions are all used in local murals.

Bellizi said, “I really get off on the diversity of everything. We have people who get up on stage and read a poem for the first time, and we have some of the top poets in New York come here too.”

The slogan of The Vault is “Fear No Art,” which to Bellizi “means we don’t censor. Its about artists, its about giving people the chance to express yourself whether you are a novice or an accomplished artist.”

Events at The Vault are so varied as to share only a bold eclecticism. Some shows feature a theme, such as Spirit Night (Jan. 4), Jewish Night (Feb.1) and Evening of Soul (Feb. 28). Others are styled more as open mic nights where anything goes.

And performance artists that can fill an entire evening with their own work are invited to do so. “We open the place for people who want to showcase themselves and do their own show,” Bellizi said.

For more information on The Vault, visit the website at www.thevault.org.

A Place For Serious Amateurs

Situated along the eastern edge of the borough, very nearly straddling the county border, sits a venerable community art institution with one foot in the amateur world and one foot in the realm of professional art.

The National Art League (NAL) in Douglaston perfectly encapsulates the artistic atmosphere of Queens by mixing artistic professionals in the visual arts with neophytes eager to rub shoulders with and learn from trained masters. A non-profit, all-volunteer enterprise, NAL has been training and showcasing local artists since 1930, and considers itself the premiere visual arts center in the borough.

Membership in NAL takes more than a passion for art. According to Vice President and sculptor Nat Bukar, those wishing to join the ranks of the 300 members from all over Queens and Long Island must first pass review by a panel of artists. “To become a member, you have to bring your work to a juried committee and you have to score a seven out of 10,” Bukar explained. “It’s open to everyone on earth that wants to apply, but our criteria is relatively high.”

NAL also does all it can to help new artists develop their hidden talents. “We have art classes that run six days a week almost all day,” said Bukar. “We have 10 or 11 instructors that all are all professional artists and teachers, and they run the gamut in techniques from classical to avant-garde, from watercolor to collage.”
More information on NAL can be found on the web at www.nationalartleague.org.

Neighborhood Boy

This weekly publication is written and compiled by a pair of grade school siblings and features everything from a first hand account of a car accident, a movie review of To Kill A Mockingbird, to a “How Come” column that asks why “God is Invisable [sic]?”

Based out of Long Island City, Neighborhood Boy is distributed exclusively at Ten63, a popular artist eatery on Jackson Avenue. Printed across the street, the publication is typed on both sides of two plain white pieces of paper, folded in half, providing eight pages of reading.

Phil Clark, an Astoria-based artist, excells at both comic writing and music.

Although Gabriel Decker-Lee, and sibling Willa, are in grade school, their subjects are anything but elementary. In three consecutive issues, Neighborhood described a Mother’s Day car accident, the death of a Sunnyside classmate, and the school ban on jelly bracelets because they “designate sexual activity…”

“People love it,” said one Ten63 employee, “because it’s written in a child’s voice. It’s probably the most appealing part of the newspaper.” That child’s voice is “honest and direct,” she said.

In “Car Crash,” Gabriel wrote: “The car in front of us stopped. We couldn’t stop fast enough and we crashed into it…I found out that three cars ahead of us all crashed. We just couldn’t stop in time.”

In his review of To Kill A Mockingbird, grade schooler Jake Saunders explains why the movie’s antagonist, Bob Yule, targets the story’s children main characters, Gem and Scout: “The only way to get back at someone is to hurt someone he loves. So he [Mr. Yule] wants to hurt someone Atticus loves so he wants to hurt his kids.”

Along with the lucid, unobstructed perspective of a child, come things that only a young mind can create. The “How Come” column seeks topic suggestions from readers: “Grown-ups have questions, kids have answers.” In explaining why God is invisible, Neighborhood Boy gave readers responses from local children:
“Because if he was visible, and he is everywhere, would he like be in the toilet, too?”

“Because if everybody saw him, then everybody would build him palaces and stuff and he wouldn’t have time to grant wishes. So everybody would love God and be crazy about him and want his autograph.”

In explaining why “Men Lose Their Hair and Women Don’t,” Neighborhood’s Boy ability to produce children’s innocence and adult humor are revealed. “Because they’re different species. Well, not different species…but different, well, you know – it’s hard to explain.”