Checking in with Chico

[Photo from 2011 by Single Linds Reflex]

Over the weekend, rumors started circulating that Antonio "Chico" Garcia, the prolific graffiti artist and muralist whose work adorns dozens of walls around the East Village and Lower East Side, had died.

This is absolutely not true.

EVG contributor Stacie Joy spoke with him by phone last night from Florida, his home these past 10-plus years.

The rumors seemed to originate at a group art show on 11th Street Saturday afternoon, where this tribute was on the wall...


[Photo by Lola Sáenz]

"I am still alive and kicking. And I am still creating artwork and new paintings," he told Stacie last night. I took a little break [due to COVID-19] but I'm still here [in Florida] and doing well!"

You can see some of his more recent work on his Instagram and YouTube accounts.

Chico, who still has family in the neighborhood where he grew up, returns from time to time for new work and commissions. He hopes to be back in NYC as soon as travel is safer. He also has some ideas about new wall work to give back to the community.

Meanwhile, here's a look at a few of his murals...
















[Lucy, Chico and Ray via Single Linds Reflex]

CANCELED Free tonight in Tompkins Square Park: Chico + Rita (rain optional?)

Per the Films at Tompkins website:

Ugh! Another Thursday and another day of rain. We can't believe it but yet another film has to be canceled due to the weather. We won't be showing Chico & Rita tonight

Tonight's selection is "Chico + Rita," a Spanish animated feature-length film (with Spanish and English languages) directed by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at this past year's Academy Awards.

The plot:

A gifted songwriter and beautiful singer chase their dreams – and each other – from Havana to New York and Las Vegas. Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and romantic desire unite them, but their journey – in the tradition of the Latin ballad, the bolero – brings heartache and torment.

Find the trailer here.

There's pre-movie music courtesy of the Rebeca Vallejo Trio.

As always, this is weather permitting... If it's a Thursday, then it will rain. And there's a 50 30 percent chance of showers tonight, according to our sources at The Weather Channel this morning. Check the Films in Tompkins Facebook page for updates on tonight's screening. The weather has KO'd five of nine films here this summer.

And upcoming...

Aug. 15 — Romeo + Juliet
Aug. 22 — O Brother, Where Art Thou

Searching for the truth about the cats and dogs mural on Avenue A

Back in the fall, we devoted several posts to Chico's "spay/neuter" mural on Avenue A near 12th Street that was painted over for a Kobe Bryant video game ad.

Interestingly enough, Media magazine reported on the story. (Thanks to the reporter, Christine Champagne, who reached out to me for the article.) Here are portions of the piece (you can find the whole thing right here):

For nine years, cats and dogs loomed large over a parking lot on Avenue A as part of an iconic Advocates for Animals mural on the side of a tenement building in Manhattan's East Village. Created by well-known local muralist Chico, the mural tugged at the heartstrings with an assortment of animals — including a sweet kitty with pleading eyes and a trusty German Shepherd — urging local residents to spay and neuter their pets, and providing a number to call for assistance.

But the mural, which can be seen in the opening moments of the 2005 film "Winter Passing," was whitewashed this fall and replaced with an ad for 2K Sports' NBA 2K10 basketball video game, and now NBA superstar Kobe Bryant looms large on the wall.

For her part, Irene Muschel, a social worker and animal activist who runs Advocates for Animals, and hired Chico to paint the mural back in April 2000, didn't even know it had been covered up until MEDIA contacted her.

Muschel claimed that the landlord of 189 Avenue A, Desides Weinberg, was contractually obligated — "We had a legal contract drawn up by an attorney and signed by me, Chico and the landlord" — to keep the Animals for Advocates mural up for 10 years. If that's the case, the mural should have stayed in place until April 2010. "About a year ago, the landlord that signed the contract called me about how he needed income, and he said there was an advertiser who wanted to put something up there, and would I go along with it," Muschel recalls. "I said no, actually, and I had contacted a lawyer. But then it just faded away."

For his part, Weinberg repeatedly insisted that the contract Muschel speaks of was a "phony contract." He also faulted Muschel for not properly maintaining the mural, pointing out that chunks of it had fallen off the side of the building over the years.

One has to wonder: Did New York-based KD&E Advertising, which did the media buy for the NBA 2K10 campaign, realize the ad would replace a mural that had special meaning to East Village residents? KD&E did not return calls or respond to efforts made to reach someone at the agency on MEDIA's behalf by a representative for 72andsunny, the creative agency on the campaign.

Muschel says she is not going to pursue the matter legally or otherwise, instead choosing to focus on the good the mural did. "The mural helped a great many animals get spayed and neutered and provided answers on a wide variety of animal issues to people who called," she muses. "It did its work."

Previously on EV Grieve:
NBA ad takes over

Swatching Chico on Houston and Avenue B

Back in mid-April, we mentioned the space on Houston and Avenue B that was earmarked for Chico...



Well, Chico and company (Tats Cru?) are currently putting up a new mural.... which looks like a Swatch ad...





We'll walk by later for a progress report...when it's a little less congested.

Chico's new anti-violence mural on Houston and Avenue B

As we mentioned on Monday, the Lower Eastside Girls Club was bringing Chico back from Florida to paint a few murals. Yesterday, Chico and the POP (Power of Peace) Youth Anti-Violence Coalition finished work on a new mural on Houston at Avenue B.




The Lo-Down stopped by to catch the work in progress yesterday.

Chico freshens up Doc Holliday's

To be honest, Chico's Doc Holliday's mural on Ninth Street at Avenue A was a little nicked up...



And so, as NYCETC captured on Saturday, Chico was back on hand to update his work...




And here's what it looked like yesterday...




PS
I really like the photos at NYCETC....

Chico paints a Gil Scott-Heron tribute

Spotted by Dave on 7th at 12th Street and Avenue C.

Meanwhile, Bobby Williams caught up with Chico working on the front of the building...

And Crazy Eddie checks in with what it looked like right before Chico started...

A hidden Chico mural features an owl and backpacking beaver

Thanks to EV Grieve reader evilsugar25~ for sharing this photo on Facebook... A little hidden piece of the East Village...



This Chico mural, dated 2000, is enclosed inside the backyards shared by the tenement buildings on Sixth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C...

"The creeping vine on the left has actually covered up my favorite part of the mural in recent years — a blue/purple owl in the upper left. My second favorite guy is the backpacking beaver," evilsugar25~ writes writes. "I get to see it every day, but I realized there are other Chico fans who would have no idea this was back here... and I wonder how many other 'private' murals decorate enclosed spaces around here."

Chico has a new work in progress on Houston and Avenue B

A tipster riding the M9 yesterday afternoon noted that Chico and company were at work on the corner of Houston and Avenue B... and here's the mural so far...




Not sure just yet what this is going to be a mural for...

This replaces the anti-violence mural that Chico and and the POP (Power of Peace) Youth Anti-Violence Coalition created last October.

Chico's 9/11 tribute mural reappears on Avenue A

[Image via Google Street View]

We can't really recall the last time that we saw Chico's 9/11 mural on Avenue A at East 14th Street … it has been covered with ads for years now. (The above screen grab via Google Street View is from the summer of 2011.)

However, the billboard was recently removed, bringing what's left of the tribute back into view, as these photos from an East Village resident and EVG reader show…




The proprietor of Dion Cleaners on the corner was unaware of what the building's landlord has in store for the wall.

Here's a video via Michael Paul showing a new billboard going up on Feb. 17, 2012...



Chico created this mural on the night of Sept. 11, 2001. As one Times reader said of the work: "It filled me with hope and sadness and some kind of love for all of the other New Yorkers living through the hours and days yet to come."

And this was the second 9/11 mural to disappear in place of revenue-generating ads in the East Village. Back in 2003, Cooper Union had the "Forever Tall" mural painted over at 35 Cooper Square to make way for ads. (The whole building was eventually demolished anyway.)

Tag, you're it, RCN Building

Back in November, Jeremiah reported that workers painted over the Chico murals on Avenue C's RCN building... And we wondered how long the building would remain tag free...

Turned out to be longer than I thought... EV Grieve contributor Bobby Williams noted the recent addition of two small tags...

Meanwhile, remember how the RCN spokesperson got huffy about Chico's mural, which was up there for two years? The spokesperson told DNAinfo: "The bottom line is the building had illegal graffiti on it and we cleaned it up — period."

Fine, fine... Funny, though, how they left the RCN logo with Chico's signature intact...



Previously.

Chico's latest ad mural on East 10th Street

On Friday, Bobby Williams spotted Chico creating a new ad on East 10th Street at Avenue C...



...and the finished product for El Camion, the restaurant on Avenue A at East 12th Street...



P.S.

Earlier this month, Chico touched up the murals outside the Nuyorican Poets Café on East Third Street...

The return of Chico?

Back on March 5, we did a post on a new mural by Chico/Tats Cru at Houston and Avenue B. It was our impression that this was Chico's last work before moving to Florida.



Well, maybe not. Spotted this on Houston and Avenue B...at the exact spot of their last mural....

A Royal corner of the East Village

During the weekend, Chico worked on a new Kate-William mural on Houston at Avenue B. (See our pictures from Saturday here.)

Chico was finishing up the mural yesterday afternoon...

[Top photo by Bobby Williams]

As BoweryBoogie noted in his coverage yesterday, Harlem-based liquor depot Branson B. Champagne is sponsoring the mural, which will only be up for three weeks.

The new murals replaces the Loisaidas album art...

...which at least one person took issue with...

Fourteen years earlier, Chico memorialized William's mother here on the same corner...



...art that was eventually vandalized...

Chico in a time-lapse video creating the Gil Scott-Heron tribute

Last Friday, we posted some photos of Chico working on a memorial for Gil Scott-Heron on East 12th Street at Avenue C... Now, here's a time-lapse video of Chico creating on the mural...



Produced by Robert Galinsky and directed by Joey John.

Checking in on Chico

Earlier we noted that Chico was putting up another mural on Houston and Avenue B... Bobby Williams caught up with him later for an update...