There are an awesome variety of locations to squirrel away little treasures in post-industrial Greenpoint — particularly in the event that they’re the dimensions of a buying and selling card. During the last six years, Brooklyn artist Steve Wasterval has hidden greater than 200 tiny landscapes across the neighborhood on the weekends as a part of a daily community-wide scavenger hunt that additionally chronicles the fast-paced adjustments unfolding within the space.
A Greenpoint resident for over a decade now, Wasterval instructed Hyperallergic that he began the scavenger hunt in 2018 as a “likelihood for folks to attach with and respect their environment with artwork.”
It’s since concerned into a neighborhood phenomenon that pulls dozens of neighborhood members at a time, starting mere minutes after the artist pronounces the most recent portray drop through Instagram and e mail record.
Taking about an hour every to finish, Wasterval’s acrylic work measure solely two by one and a half inches (~5 x 6.4 cm) every, rendering quotidian spots all through the neighborhood in a method harking back to Russian Impressionism. From bushes at McGolrick Park and WNYC Transmitter Park’s shimmering waterfront to the road nook of Paulie Gee’s Slice Store and a pedestrian view of the lately constructed Greenpoint Touchdown housing improvement, the artist paperwork the historic space’s character and evolution weekly on bite-sized canvases. Avenue artwork, hearth escapes, industrial buildings, and residential blocks make frequent appearances within the mini work, which seize the altering neighborhood’s figuring out traits.
Wasterval’s work maintain clues about their hiding spots, as properly: He nestles every canvas someplace within the neighborhood of the situation it’s primarily based on. Stashing the small artworks inside visitors cones, behind phone pole flyers, and even at Citi Bike stations, the artist has been pressured to get artistic with devising new spots to slide his work into.
“The earliest hunts would final all day, generally days,” he recalled. “There was so little consciousness that I used to be doing it — just one or two folks would present up at any given time, and once they couldn’t discover it they’d simply surrender and depart. And that is how most mini-hunts went for years till the pandemic.”
After suspending the treasure hunt because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wasterval rekindled it in the summertime of 2021 to the delight of a lot of his neighbors. “The response was enormous,” he stated, explaining that members of the neighborhood expressed gratitude for the mixture of free artwork, a enjoyable outside exercise, and a secure strategy to join with others after months of quarantining. “There should have been 20 to 30 folks in search of that first mini portray after lockdown, and somebody discovered it inside seconds,” he added.
These days, it solely takes between 5 and half-hour for somebody to search out certainly one of Wasterval’s work.
“Exhausting-to-reach or off-limit hiding spots have been probably the most memorable,” he defined, noting that there’s nothing higher than “neighbors giving one another a lift or trespassing for an opportunity at free artwork.”
Although he’s gotten artful with hiding spots, Wasterval stated that not a single one of many mini work has gone unaccounted for. Oftentimes he’ll share small clues through Instagram messenger with these onsite through the hunts. Unsuspecting Easter egg hunters have even come throughout his tiny landscapes in plastic eggs at McGolrick Park earlier than.
Wasterval described the method of chronicling Greenpoint because it undergoes adjustments as “bittersweet,” including that whereas he initially painted his favourite elements of the neighborhood, he later determined to doc all the outdated buildings earlier than they disappeared.
“Prior to now few years I’ve included the brand new buildings, utilizing them for mini-hunts and to point out my work,” he continued, explaining that currently his apply has included a mixture of outdated and new, capturing the trail to vary itself. Just lately, Wasterval started pondering of increasing from Greenpoint into different areas with the intention of encouraging extra folks to understand their environment.
For now, anybody who retains their finger on the heartbeat every weekend may rating a micro-masterpiece that doubles as a snapshot of a neighborhood in a fluid state. However as Wasterval says: “You gotta be quick!”