I delight in the visual immediacy wheat pasting adds to the vitality of exterior walls. The urgency of original application — a public display in which images change and deteriorate over time against the elements.

This form feels spontaneous, temporary and fragile. Subjective and subjected.

Coney Island survives with its own historical walls and spirit decade after decade, carrying the marks of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world. My work exists on a wall erected specifically in an effort to celebrate art and artists today. It also stands as a fraction of a larger, hopefully populist project to expand upon artistic presence and networks in the region.

I chose to wheat paste Xeroxes of my own work — drawings, photographs, collages — all created last year when I lived closer to Coney off of the D train in Borough Park.

I incorporated artist and advocate Lola Star’s stickers “I <3 Coney Island”, “Save Coney Island” etc. to present as elements within a larger tableau in tribute to sustained existence, celebration and activism for the communities who live, work and play there consistently on sunny days and after destructive storms and in between.

I hope others add their “mark” to my wall as well where public and private can meet.

samvernon.com

About Sam Vernon

Sam Vernon (b. 1987, Brooklyn, NY) earned an MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in 2015 and a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, New York in 2009. She has most recently exhibited with the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Seattle Art Museum and Mandeville Gallery at Union College. Sam lives and works in Queens, New York.