Students’ Mural Dreams Are Coming True

By Carl Glassman

The wall that runs along Chambers Street, just outside the Washington Market Park tennis court, is a favorite after-school perch for Stuyvesant students. But two of them, Christina Ward and Elizabeth Lohr, wanted to make it more than a place to hang with friends. They hoped to turn it into a 57-foot-long art project.

The fresco, they decided, would tell the story of Alice in Wonderland. ("I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like Alice," says Ward. "It is my favorite Disney movie.")

Of course, you need permission to paint on city property, so Ward and Lohr, who had just completed their sophomore year, took the first step last July. They came before the Washington Market Park board of directors (the property is part of the park) and held up a long, colorful rendering of the exploits of Alice, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, et al.

Like bemused parents, the Park Board said okay, after the teens swore that the mural would be well maintained and free of graffiti.

But the Department of Parks and Recreation, which has the final say about park property, needs more than good intentions to ensure that future generations of Stuyvesant students would take care of the work, or even care about it. The girls had no formal sponsorship, so the notion of winning the department’s approval seemed as fanciful as an Alice adventure.

"I didn’t think about the probability," Ward recalled. "I knew there was a lot of adversity, but I was going to keep trying. It would be pointless to give up."

Through the fall, Ward hounded the Parks Department’s district director, Bill Tai, the man she needed to convince.

Finally, Tai sent the girls to Tsipi Ben-Haim, director of CITYarts, an organization that sponsors public art projects around the city. She was charmed.

"It’s wonderful to see kids like this," she said. "Christina shines when she talks about it. She’s pushing the process, always asking, when is the next step, what do I do now?"

The process is now well underway. The mural, number 243 for CITYarts, will have a professional artist to oversee the planning and painting, and the organization is now reviewing applications for the job. (The deadline is Feb. 15. Interested artists should call 966-0377 for information.)

Planning workshops for the mural, open to the community as well as Stuyvesant students, are scheduled to begin in early March. Painting is to start in April and be completed by the end of school.

Ben-Haim is hoping to turn the wall behind the nearby basketball court, property of Borough of Manhattan Community College, into a mural as well. The project will cost $62,000, which includes a video documentary, but Ben-Haim is confident she can raise it.

The events of Sept. 11 have caused Ben-Haim to suggest a modification of the theme.

"I looked at Christina and I said, ‘The wonder has been shattered,’ and she said, ‘We can still dream.’" Ben-Haim then suggested "Alice in Wall Street Land."

"It has the bittersweet reality," she said. "Bitter because of what happened, but sweet because we’re going on."
In the meantime, Ward is busier than she was last year and hardly has time to hang out at the wall any more. Nevertheless, she still has a proprietary feeling about that gray concrete canvas.

"My friends aren’t there that much," she said. "But it’s still our wall."