Three new murals adorn buildings in Patchogue

Two months ago, the rear exterior wall of the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts was little more than a four-story-high tableau of bricks.

Today it features an Art Deco mural evoking the 102-year-old theater's origins as an early-20th-century vaudeville house.

"People stop by the box office just to say they love the mural," Matt McKone, the theater's director of operations, said Monday in an interview.

The mural, by New York City-based artist Andrey Kravtsov, is one of three public art projects created last month in the South Shore village. The others include a mural at the rear entrance of the Patchogue-Medford Library and paintings outside Artspace Lofts, an apartment and office complex in Patchogue's Terry Street art district.

The project, spearheaded by the Patchogue Arts Council and local officials, was funded by a $49,500 grant from New York State's Cultivating Havens for the Arts through Regional Murals program, also known as CHARM.

Mayor Paul V. Pontieri Jr. said the works attract visitors and discourage vandalism.

“Nobody graffiti's murals,” he said. “It gives you a sense of who we are as a community — that we value art.”

Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts

The mural by Kravtsov, who works under the name Key Detail, features a pianist, a guitar and a singer at a microphone, in red, yellow, gold and brown swirls. 

Patchogue Arts Council executive director Beth Giacummo said the mural serves as a reminder that the theater's 1998 reopening led to Patchogue's 21st-century renaissance. 

“The theater is literally what started the revitalization of downtown Patchogue," she said.

Artspace Lofts

Painter Michael Krasowitz, of Huntington Station, created a series of abstract images on his computer, then transferred them to vinyl sheets that were wrapped around four columns at Artspace, the home of the Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center and the art council's Museum of Contemporary Art exhibit space.

"I start with shapes and build it from there," Krasowitz said, describing his technique. "I wanted something colorful and fun."

Patchogue-Medford Library

Babylon artist Rafael Algarin's mural, "Knowledge is Power," stretches across more than 100 feet on a wall behind the library. The painting features deer, blue jays, children reading a book, and 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who funded Patchogue's original public library in 1908.

"I love that it really embraces the community," library director Danielle Paisley said Monday. 

Like the theater mural, Giacummo said, the library painting fills a previously blank space with color and creativity.

“In both cases," she said, "they were walls that were begging for murals.”