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Is Queens ready for public art? Depends on who you ask. When artists Hector Canonge and Chin Chih Yang installed a tree with a 10-foot plastic globe inflated around it, they were hoping to get the community to focus on the perilous state of the environment. Instead, the globe was slashed June 12, some six days after it was installed, and remains in this sorry state under the track on Queens Boulevard and 33rd Street.

“We’re keeping it up,” said Canonge who, along with Yang, will don an environmental biohazard suit and hand out fliers about the environment next to the damaged display.

“This might be the act of a crazy person who doesn’t value anything,” said Canonge “It might represent what most people think of the environment, that they don’t care.” He said the exhibit, which included a series of projections when it opened on June 6, was six months in the making – including the unenviable task of getting permits from the Dept. of Transportation and the MTA.

The exhibit was a big success to Joshua Cano, a little boy who had taken an interest in the exhibit before it was marred.

“How do we make sure the tree grows?” his mother asked him, reminding him of the conversation they had when he saw the tree. “Not have everyone throw things on the ground,” said Cano.

Not everyone was so sympathetic. “Where are you going with this?” said Ziggi Rillo, a composer from the area. “You gotta start with something that fits the place,” he said, pointing up to the massive concrete columns that hold up the elevated 7 train subway line.

“Is this for the couple that moved in the from the Midwest? This is Queens; whoever did this, they’re only here because they grew up here. You wanna put up public art, you gotta turn city kids onto city stuff first,” said Rillo. “You wanna teach kids about music, you don’t start with classical, you start with jazz.”

“Come on, so of course some kid cut the plastic globe, why put that here in the first place? Look at 5 Pointz,” he continued, referring to the legal graffiti space in Long Island City. “Everyone loves that. This would never happen there and that’s public art. I love it, my kid loves it, we’re both glued to the subway window when we pass it.”

“If this was here 20 years ago we’d have blown it up,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s a tree with plastic around it; come on.”

On Wednesday the artists, after consulting with the Dept. of transportation and the Queens Council on the Arts, decided to remove the piece.