Virtual Street Art

Lost Mural Runs Free

On Cooper Square near 6th Street, I have placed a label with a QR code. It is right outside that shiny new silver Cooper Union building, on the lampost.

If you scan the QR code with your smart phone, you can see the image.

Nothing could console me after September 11^th, not the national day of prayer, or the Buddhist monks drumming in Union Square Park, the last spot before the streets were closed. We stood there in small groups talking in low voices, strangers at a funeral. The faces of the departed stared out at us from missing posters.

Weeks later, a mural appeared on the wall of a small old building on Bowery. It summed up everything I was feeling. It was a comfort to walk past it for a while.

The city recovered, the mural was painted over. The old 19th century building it was painted on was deemed unworthy of conserving and was torn down. Now a new building is rising up. It will be dormatories for the Cooper Union students who must now pay tuition for the first time since the university was founded over 150 years ago.

I wanted to let the mural loose on Cooper Square once again.