Graffiti in the sky: NY artists make skyscraper their studio

Joseph Meloy, an artist from Manhattan’s Lower Eastside, works on a hieroglyphic-like art he calls ‘confetti motif’ on large windows on the unoccupied 69th floor window of 4

World Trade Center, overlooking the footprints of the old World Trade Center twin towers and facing their new replacement on March 30, 2017, in New York. (AP) On one of the highest floors of a Lower Manhattan office tower, New York street artists have spent the past year spray-painting and splashing their graffiti, murals and other wild creations across pristine walls, windows, floors and ceilings. But no, it isn’t vandalism. Developer Larry Silverstein allowed the 50 artists to turn 34,000 squarefeet of office space that normally would rent for about a quarter of a million dollars a month into their own sprawling canvas. Multi-colored graffiti and other works by sculptors and painters explode with images of fantasy and reality, tragedy and comedy.

At 86, Silverstein is still a force in the rebirth of the World Trade Center site devastated by the Sept 11 attacks that killed more than 2,600 people in New York. “Here I am, an old fogy, but I wanted to do something exciting and different, and to provide a sense of beauty, a sense of peace, in an otherwise difficult world,” he says.

His 72-floor tower, 4 World Trade Center, was the first to rise on the 16-acre site a dozen years after the attacks. Now, the unoccupied 69th floor is covered in colors, squiggles, lyrics, faces and sculpted forms. The floor-to-ceiling windows offer stunning views of the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center, the Hudson River and the memorial reflection pools where the twin towers once stood.

The new tower’s top 11 floors, including the art-filled space, have been leased by Spotify, the Stockholmbased music-streaming company that is moving into other floors but hasn’t yet decided how to incorporate the artworks into its corporate style.

“It is our intention to keep as much of the art as possible,” said Spotify spokesman Graham James.

The free-standing works are the property of the artists who created them, at no charge.

A 9/11 tribute called “In Bloom” by David Uda is a 20-foot circle on the floor painted with 2,606 flowers in memory of the dead.

Sean Sullivan has a personal connection to the site; his father was a detective with the city police bomb squad who lost his best friend on 9/11 and was himself hurt. His shield number is highlighted in Sullivan’s mural, “Beautiful Cleanup.”

David Hollier sprinkled lyrics from the Broadway musical “Hamilton” into his “$10 Bill,” which looks over the graveyard at Trinity Church where Alexander Hamilton is buried.

And Ron English, who is known as “The Godfather of Street Art,” brought the streets into the studio in the sky for his “No Brain No Pain,” which features reddish brain tissue fashioned into a boxing glove. (AP)