Graffiti School

Graffiti School Legendary street artists move up to the roof at Seward Park High School
by Pat Arnow
New Design High School Dean Jesse Pais, is a graffiti artist, under the name Evone. This is his work. Brian and Matthew Lentini created a tribute to Lower East Side pickles with mock movie posters starring pickles. Work by SHAUN from Trust Your Struggle YUSHI & KITOUH painted a cartoon crazed samurai raffiti covers the brick inner walls surrounding the rooftop of the Seward Park High School building. It’s not vandalism. In fact, the principal and teachers of New Design High School, one of the five small schools in the building, initiated the display of paintings by legendary graffiti artists.
The Rooftop Legends project, started this fall and completed at the end of November, created dozens of colorful images of names, sayings, portraits and pictures from water towers to R2D2, to brighten up a space that had been unused for nearly 20 years.
Now it can become a place where students from the different schools in the building, who rarely see each other, can interact. It can also be a place for neighborhood events such as film showings.
"Our goal is to make this a community space," says Corey Willis, Director of Design Education. The school hopes to create a green space on the roof, which covers nearly a square block at Essex and Grand streets. They’re also planning a sculpture show for the spring.
Well-known graffiti artists donated their time and paint. Some used the most traditional tools of the graffiti trade – spray cans. Others painted with rollers and brushes. One artist covered a wall in Metrocards (he went to countless stations to find thousands of used cards).
A few used the more recent outside the law art technique of gluing paper images to walls using wheat paste. Brian and Matthew Lentini created a tribute to Lower East Side pickles with mock movie posters starring pickles. Mounted with wheat paste, the posters advertise "Attack of the 50-foot Pickle," "Bride of Picklestein," "Army of Pickles" and other famous titles.
After graffiti gained cachet in the 1980s, many street artists left behind their outlaw past to become respected painters, and many of them contributed their talent to the Seward Park rooftop. Lower East Side graffiti artists include (by their street names) WOLF, TEAM, VEEFER, SPAR and EVONE (who is Jesse Pais, dean at the design school).
Some students painted walls in the project, too. One girl came in on three Saturdays to paint. "We’re finding ways to engage the students," Willis says.
While most of the artists come from New York streets, a few got their start in the "legitimate" art world. Brazilian graffiti artist Eder Muniz painted one of the walls; Shelter Serra, who painted geometric shapes on his section of wall, is the grandson of minimalist sculptor Richard Serra; and Eric Ratkowski, who created the wall of Metro cards, is a licensed architect.
New Design High School, 350 Grand Street, 212.475.4148 Principal: Scott Conti, rooftoplegends2007.blogspot.com