STAPLETON — A vacant Front Street lot that used to house busted cars has been cleaned up and transformed into an outdoor art gallery.
The Staten Island MakerSpace, at 450 Front St., took control of the lot across the street more than a year ago and will reopen it as the MakerPark with murals and sculptures over the weekend.
"We want it to be a welcoming space where people can come, feel comfortable, hang out, check out some art and maybe learn something," said Scott Van Campen, co-founder of the MakerSpace. "People seem honestly surprised that we would go to these efforts to do something for the community."
The park will have rotating art and sculpture shows as well as movie screenings. Van Campen said they plan to switch up the pieces every three to six months.
The MakerSpace will also use the spot for some of their classes, to give room for some members who want to work on larger pieces and as a place to keep shipping containers for storage, which they offered to artists to paint murals on.
"Storage containers are really pretty ugly," said Van Campen. "It makes the spaces look much better."
The space will host a public opening of their first art show Saturday to show off the murals along with several sculptures made from artists using found object as part of a months-long program at the MakerSpace.
"I was doing lots of sculpture with garbage but I haven't sculpted in a couple of years because of space," said Robert Paternostro Jr., who created a piece using an old wooden ladder as part of the "UpCycle Journey" class.
The 450 Front St. building that now houses the MakerSpace was previously used by Van Campen as his workshop for nearly 15 years, but he's always had the empty, dirty lot next door.
The trash got worse after Hurricane Sandy surged storm waters onto the block, leaving 19 cars heavily damaged. They eventually had their windows and headlights broken by vandals.
"They weren't being worked on, they weren't being fixed, they were just abandoned there," said Van Campen.
After the MakerSpace started, Van Campen and co-founder DB Lampman had an idea to take control of the lot and turn it into an outdoor gallery similar to Long Island City's Socrates Sculpture Park. They eventually found out the city's Economic Development Corporation owned it, reached out to them and waited.
Finally, the EDC gave them a lease to use the property month-to-month more than a year ago and the team got to work on clearing out the cars and debris. The group eventually got a grant from Staten Island Arts for the UpCycle program and help to get off the ground from Councilwoman Debi Rose.
