Art 2♥SoHo | Call to Artists Saturday 6/20

By Maxi Cohen and Miriam Novalle

Jun 20 - Jun 20  |  Culture

Artists Reclaim SoHo After Looting – SoHo Events

This Saturday, June 20, 2020, artists will once again come together to paint boarded up storefronts in SoHo.  It is a phenomenon to witness as the boards will come down soon, as some already have. This is an historic moment as artists paint for social change and healing in the neighborhood that birthed contemporary art and that was heavily looted in a riot on May 31.

Central SoHo, Grand, Broome, Spring, up Greene and down Wooster, is where most of the art is concentrated, like an open-air museum of more than 200 art works.

Art 2♥SoHo is a call to artists to bring optimism, healing, and love to our world by painting messages of compassion and unity on boarded-up buildings, welcoming the change that’s coming.  We will be meeting at Spring and Greene at 8am – 3pm on Saturday.

“With most all of SoHo looted and almost every store boarded up with plywood, if there ever was a moment for artists to express themselves it is now. It reminded me of SoHo in the 1970s, the neighborhood dark, no commerce. It was artists who lived in SoHo, who transformed the neighborhood, that then gave rise to what now has been destroyed,” said artist and filmmaker Maxi Cohen. 

She, along with artist Bobbi Van, living in San Miguel Allende, conveyed this sentiment to Miriam Novalle, who founded the T Salon at Mercer and Prince under the Guggenheim in 1992. Miriam sparked the rally cry to artists to paint the streets. A core group included UNLOK artist Gordon Kindlon and Gene Seidman.

Since #Art 2♥’s first outing on June 8, 2020, around 200 artists have been painting in Soho.  Artists include those living and working in Soho since the 70s, their children and grandchildren, 6-years-olds to septuagenarians, New York based artists from Egypt, Greece, China, Harlem, Brooklyn, and those that came from Boston, Long Island, and New Jersey, people of every color and religion.  Misha Hyman, founder of The Health Warrior Project, served a vegan lunch to everyone.

Instagram.  #Art 2♥ @art2heart.art 

Thank you to sponsors:
T-Salon, Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundation (ESKFF), ESKFF Nest, Blick, House of Yes

Thank you: James Cavello, Chairman of Outreach and Communications, SoHo Broadway Initiative