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For immediate release

Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Arts Center presents…

Sticks
by Dan Witz

Lower East Side artist creates dynamic public installation

New York, NY - Dan Witz, working with the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, has used an exterior wall of their playhouse to install Sticks -- seven large illusionistic paintings that make the wall look as though it has been run through with giant sharpened sticks. This temporary installation, according to Witz, symbolically protects the neighborhood from the commercial billboard advertisements seen so often on the city's public walls, and says Witz, "was conceived to surely rip or impale any oncoming banner or billboard."

Since moving to the East Village in 1978, Dan Witz has been an independent artistic voice in Lower Manhattan. Witz became known for his eye-catching murals including over 50 life-sized hummingbirds and more recently, his hooded figures above the doorways frequented by local drug dealers. In searching for a site for his project with the Public Art Fund, Witz hoped for a space on the ever-more billboarded Houston Street to provide an aesthetic pause amidst the clutter of the mega-ads. Witz canvassed lower Manhattan, looking for an appropriate wall only to find that every desirable building had been slated for advertisements. Witz turned to his own yet-untouched neighborhood, hoping to inspire a dialogue about the encroaching commercialism on seemingly all of New York's architecture, and found an ideal partner in the Henry Street Settlement who graciously lent the exterior wall of their Abrons Arts Center for the exhibition of Sticks. Created in the tradition of trompe-l'oeil murals, Witz considers Sticks to be a type of "home-grown defense for his neighborhood."

See Sticks on view beginning on November 5th on the wall of the Harry De Jur Playhouse, located at the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street)

Directions: by subway, F train to Delancey Street. Located on Grand Street between Clinton and Pitt Street
Special thanks to everyone at the Henry Street Settlement.

Sticks is a project of the Public Art Fund, commissioned through In The Public Realm, a program of site-specific proposals and projects by New York artists. In The Public Realm is supported by the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, The Silverweed Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and friends of the Public Art Fund

About Public Art Fund
Public Art Fund is a non-profit arts organization that presents the work of contemporary artists in New York's public spaces, providing alternative venues in which to create and view art. The Public Art Fund, over the past twenty years, has acted as a facilitator and advocate for artists and their work. By bringing new artworks into the public realm, the Public Art Fund provides a unique forum and support structure for artists to realize their artistic vision, while simultaneously increasing public access to contemporary art. Public Art Fund is supported in part with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and through generous gifts from corporations, foundations, and individuals.

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Public Art Fund
tel: (212) 980-4575
e-mail: press@publicartfund.org