Eve and I created this mural, on a handball court in the schoolyard of IS 145 in Jackson Heights, Queens.

A few years later, this mural was altered without our permission by Sony Pictures as a publicity stunt for a Spider-Man movie. It was CRAZY. This article in The New Yorker tells the story.

In 2021, the original design was printed on t-shirts for the Jackson Heights Mile—a one mile run organized by the Queens Distance Runners to benefit families displaced by the 8-alarm 89th Street fire which blazed that spring. The community showed so much love, it took my breath away.

In 2022, building on that momentum, we restored the mural with support from Angelo Baque, Awake NY, Project Queens, NY State Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, NY State Senator Jessica Ramos, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Jackson Heights Beautification Group, Principal Ivan Rodriguez, Assistant Principal Titus Sloane, the IS 145 PTA, Perri Robinson, and a grassroots campaign lead by the Queensboro restaurant. This story was told in Hyperallergic and Cool Hunting.

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Above: Principal Ivan Rodriguez of IS 145 cutting the ribbon with the artists, Eve Biddle and Joshua Frankel, as well as Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, State Senator Jessica Ramos, City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan and other members of the community. July 19, 2022.

In 2019, a short documentary about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's historic congressional campaign featured the desecrated mural in the background. The one part of our original design that remains as we intended it is the lettering for the phrase "Queens Is The Future".

More recently, the mural provided some inspiration for the introduction to a beautiful book—"All The Queens Houses" by Rafael Herrin-Ferri, published by Jovis—which collects photographs of residential architecture in the borough. The introduction was penned by Joseph Heathcott, Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies at the New School. Find out more and get yourself a copy here.

Below are Images from the restoration, in process and upon completion, in 2022:

Eve and Gaby on Channel 11 WPIX.

Credits

"Queens Is The Future" by Eve Biddle and Joshua Frankel

2022 (Restoration)
Painting Leads: Valerie Light, Shana Kesner
Painters: Eve Biddle, Joshua Frankel, Becky Berman, Petra Biddle-Gottesman, Jackson Elliott, Laura Nesson, Gabi Rosen, Sidney Sanchez

2007
Painters: Eve Biddle, Joshua Frankel, Laura Nesson
Project Manager: Howard Wu