A Marleymental Rooftop | Sienide & Fumero

I met Sienide on the NY gallery scene, through another colleague, Frankie Velez. Sienide, a very prolific NYC writer (aka graffiti artist) is based out of ‘the boogie-down‘ Bronx, NY and up there his neighborhood fame can be seen everywhere. During our conversations, mainly about our passion for mural art, he invited me to collaborate on a tribute to Bob Marley. The place was a Jerome Ave. wall, a block away from the Fordham Rd. stop on a rooftop along the famous 4 train line. This was the line that subway art legends such as Cope2, Mitch77 and Tracey168 made 10 train cars into a ‘whole line’. I was amped and of course accepted his gracious offer. (SIENIDE link)

Mother nature had her way the day we made it to Tuff City, the graffiti art super store. Our cans of Montanas and caps for our mission would have to wait…all we could do was buff the wall over a pre-existing Sienide piece that had given life to an otherwise lifeless wall space. The next day, ‘Operation Marleymental’ was launched. By high noon, I was working on placement and scaling and Sienide had laid down his first lines of what would become another masterpiece. Soon after, the ladder came out and I began gesturing the linear illustration for the shape of the face as my partner was deep into sketching his lettering designs. Our day came to an end around 4 as the business below us had to close.

I was at the rooftop before 8am the next day and talking with Born, one of the cool-good-energian people that work there. It was the 3rd day of our colab and the weather was perfect. Sienide wasted no time and was painting away like the beast that he is when he rocks the cans in his hands. There was a lot of concentration and very little conversation as both of us were deeply immersed in our artworks. There was a moment that the silence of serious focus gave way for some foolishness and we laughed at our antics. Thankfully Born gave us some extra time to finish, while Frankie Velez and Onda Skillet helped us with some victory photos. We had a great time bombing the entire wall…me with my figurative and Sienide with his lettering…a cool combination. And what stands out about working with Sienide, aside from his ‘down to earth’ attitude, was his effects and unbridled and motivating skills. (click HERE for Sien on YouTube)

If you would like to see this “Marleymental Mural”, you will have to take the 4 train to the Fordham Rd. stop…just look to the west before you get there.