BY BONNIE ROSENSTOCK | June 15 marked the first anniversary of the Loisaida CommUnity Fridge and Food Pantry on Ninth Street and the corner of Avenue B.
It was a fitting occasion to present a belated gift (by 10 days) to the neighborhood — a brightly colored spray-painted mural on the two units that reflects the spirit of the Lower East Side.
The mural was designed by Danielle Mastrion (@daniellebk@nyc), the overwhelming winner out of the three artist submissions, voted on by the fridge volunteers.
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“When I saw the call for entries on Instagram, I e-mailed and messaged them and submitted my portfolio,” Mastrion said. “I did a big mural last year at the Loisaida Center [710 E. Ninth St., between Avenues B and C)] in the courtyard and sent that work. I hoped they would be familiar with that and other projects I’ve done on the Lower East Side.
“I said I wanted it to be a continuation of that mural, to connect the community center, the CommUnity Fridge, the soup kitchen maintained by Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish [the fridge’s sponsor], which also has a small garden in its courtyard, all the community efforts.”
The mural, as Mastrion explained, depicts “herbs you can grow in the gardens, monarch butterflies and bees — really important to show the pollinators — sunflowers, blue jays, sage, which is good for energy. I wanted to show all the life you find and pay respect to the food, the earth, the herbs and the Lower East Side, which is so filled with community gardens.”
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Mastrion, 39, who was born, raised and still lives in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, also wanted to pay homage to her mother, who grew up in a tenement on Eighth Street between Avenues B and C and moved to Brooklyn as a teenager.
“There are two community gardens on that block now,” Mastrion noted. “At the time, Tompkins Square Park was very important to her.”
Her father’s Italian-American roots go back to Brooklyn for several generations.
Her mother was born in Belgium. After World War II, in the 1950s, she and her family — refugees and displaced persons originally from Eastern Europe — emigrated to America.
“One of the churches on the Lower East Side sponsored them and brought them over,” Mastrion said. “That’s another reason I like coming back here.”
In addition to the new mural, to mark its one-year anniversary, the fridge will be feted in the adjacent Trinity Lutheran Lutheran Lower East Side Parish courtyard by volunteers and local leaders on Wed., June 29, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
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