Percent for Art | New York Public Library
Commissioned by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs for the New York Public Library as part of the Percent for Art initiative.
Hunts Point Library
Bronx, NY
We just wanted to have a rowboat in the room, and now there is, 2024
Inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Magical Realist short story “Light is Like Water,” from which the title is taken—flowers pour out from a Bronx building forming an ocean of flowers where three boats sail amid an abstract Bronx landscape. One boat, in memoriam of the African and Indigenous ancestors from which many of the Black and Latino Bronx community originate; another boat helmed by children— inspired by literary adventure epics—represents the journey and aspiration. Finally, a futuristic vessel inspired by science fiction represents a complex and flourishing future.
In the world through which I travel, I endlessly create myself, 2024
As an extension of We just wanted to have a rowboat in the room, and now there is, found in the Adult Reading Room, a figure looks towards the viewer from under dense foliage, lines, and color. This reinterpretation of Barron Storey's 1980 cover of Lord of the Flies, a preview of the book's impending violence and loss of innocence, stares back instead with intention and a sense of self-determination.
