Huntington Station Murals Win Award

 Painted by more than 70 adults and children last summer, the murals at Gateway Park Community Garden in Huntington Station have been recognized  with a First Place Huntington Town Beautification Award for 2012. 

Artist Lucienne Pereira, the Centerport resident who designed the murals, accepted the award in the category of Community Service from Huntington Town’s Beautification Council and Town Board. Susan Gaber, a children’s book illustrator, assisted Pereira in supervising the painting of the murals by volunteers of all ages from the Gateway Garden community.  

Inspired by the beauty of vegetables growing in the Gateway Garden, the murals show gorgeous eggplant flowers and squash blossoms, plant pollination, seed germination, beneficial insects, butterfly metamorphosis, a planting calendar and more. 

Gateway Community Garden was built and is managed by The Long Island Community Agriculture Network (LICAN) under license from the Town of Huntington. LICAN is fiscally sponsored by the not-for-profit Open Space Institute. 

The mural project was sponsored by Story Arts, Inc., and made possible in part with an Individual Artist grant from the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Program administered by The Huntington Arts Council. The project also received support from LICAN, Huntington Town’s environmental Open Space and Park Fund Review Advisory and local businesses: Kleet Lumber, Sherwin Williams Paint, Value Drugs, Fox Hollow Farm, The Deck and Patio Company and United Signs and Awnings.

By Frances Whittelsey