Poeticizing + Democratizing + (Spatializing Paintings into)
Architectural Public Art
Recipient of the Allen N. Goldfischer Memorial Award, established in 2004 and given to a graduating student whose thesis project best explores relationships between humanistic and aesthetic principals in an urban context.
Advisor: Assistant Dean Mersiha Veledar
Professors: Ted Baab, Clara Symes, Hailey Eber, Brad Samuel
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Paintings | Acrylic on Canvas
Being educated and immersed with art is becoming a privilege.
Art classes are not funded as they were before COVID 19. They are disappearing from many NYC public schools due to the expiration of federal COVID-19 relief funds, which previously supported these programs. There is also discrepancy in the amount and type of public and private artwork that is showcased and exhibited across the five boroughs. Wealthy individuals and institutions have historically driven public art through philanthropy, using it to build cultural prestige, solidify social status, and legitimize wealth. This relationship allows elites to shape public cultural narratives, often leading to “art flexing” where private tastes are displayed in public spaces, influencing art values and urban environments. But these public spaces are selective and meant for viewing pleasure of mainly the rich.
Through translating my 2-dimensional paintings, meant to be showcased in private galleries, into 3-dimensional public art, meant to be experienced by the public, this thesis develops the potential of color and form to transcend the boundaries of the canvas, to become tangible and experienced, especially by the less privileged. This thesis focuses on the translation of painting into architectural public art.
This thesis seeks to break out of the canvas and go beyond the limits imposed by the 2-dimensional rectangle within a frame. This thesis further explores the influence of painting in architectural design, whether it be through the creation of spaces in relation to the body or public art.
This project asks: How do we create new methods of representation for and the making of architecture? How do we take paintings that are products of intuition or/and paintings with logic, and develop parameters and rules for producing other tangible spaces of architecture, art, or sculpture? How do the paintings translate into architecture and become experienced? What tectonics and techniques can be developed from art?
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Acrylic on Plexi
For the initial experiment, I designed a tool to create several new types of paintings. I created a wood base with carved diagonal and orthogonal slots, which would allow for the movement of painted Plexi panels. Through playing with the position and orientation of the painted Plexi panels, several types of paintings from different perspectives, depths, and spatiality are captured. The way one constructs the painting is unique, as one can rearrange and change the orientation of the layers with flexibility and play. Based on intersections, overlaps, layers, connections, and adjacencies.
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In translation of 2-d to 3-d, I experimented with how the form of the paintings can be subtractive, carved, taking on the form of a physical wood relief, a tool for printmaking.
With these reliefs I generated different compositions through relief printmaking. With these 3-dimensional stamps. I went back and forth between 2-d and 3-d. Played and experimented with form, color, lighting, and transparency. With this tool, I seek to translate paintings into public art, spatializing paintings intervening on different infrastructure/sites across the boroughs through this methodology and taking into consideration their conditions.
Physical Wood Reliefs + Painted Acrylic
Ink Prints
Basswood Physical Models
Public art is an invitation to engage with the streets of New York. Public art has the potential to revitalize neglected neighborhoods and enhance them. This thesis seeks to democratize the experience of viewing and making art, as well as challenge the conventional definition of public art.
The infrastructure of intervention includes and is not limited to medians, plaza, step streets, and sidewalks. The public art that is allowed to be built and maintained must abide by regulations provided by the DOT ART. There are certain parameters that allow for the construction, permanence, and maintenance of public art, like the construction of architecture. Art cannot interfere with pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk or walkway. Murals may only be painted on the concrete walls or front of steps. While these barriers and regulations consider safety and the public in relation to the built work, they can restrict the creative potential of public art.
Two sites of intervention are a step street in the Bronx and a Plaza in Manhattan. A step street is a large concrete pedestrian staircase that rests on a hill connecting two streets. Plazas are vibrant, social public spaces created by reclaiming and redesigning underutilized street segments as places for pedestrian use.
The Manhattan Plaza, which has existing art, by Noguchi has more floor area than step street and can be experienced and entered in different ways. Taking advantage of this, I imagine a carved undulating landscape versus the step street, which is a vertical, which goes back to translation of the paintings into relief. The plaza, in contrast to the step street, allows for one to experience public art from different points of entry, which I would like to take advantage of.
Through these two different site conditions, I explore how the tool to make paintings can be flexible and designed according to the site, as a prototype for intervening on different sites of infrastructure.
My thesis seeks to take advantage of the site's condition, the steps that are ascending, being between two buildings, a linear experience, from point A to point B.
Through this thesis, I explore how public art can challenge certain regulations, conventions, and be architectural.
Current regulations, requirements, technicalities can be daunting, poetry is a call to action and invitation to all.
Poems serve as artistic prompts for how public art can be experienced. The vision is for the cityscape to become a playscape of art for all and not just privileged. Poetry allows for reinvention, challenging and enhancing the guidelines.
Poetic Prompts
End of Year Show (EOYS)
Thesis Exhibition 2026
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