A Summer's Work Gets Its Reveal On Toms River Cafe

If you have driven down Main Street in Toms River any time in the last few weeks, you may have noticed the scaffolding and the bright orange and red hues covering the side of Nancy’s Midtown Cafe.

The colorful canvas -- the result of months of work filling in paint-by-numbers tiles devised from the artist’s initial conceptual drawing -- was revealed Friday night for special guests of the Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation, the organization behind the project.

On Saturday, a ceremony that included the singing of the national anthem and the addition of a flag to the mural, hung by Toms River Fire Company 1, completed the project, which started early this year with 42 artists submitting entries that were whittled down to the winning proposal by Elizabeth Paseler.

The tiles -- 118 of them in all -- were painted by thousands of residents from all over Toms River and nearby towns over the summer at the Ocean County Library’s main branch in Toms River. See a time-lapse video of the work below.

It is the second community mural project run by the foundation. The first decorates the side of the Simply Skin building on Water Street.

“Engage Toms River has become such a successful program because we have true community collaboration in the collective leadership, time and commitment of the Community Art Project (CAP), Toms River Artists Community (TRAC), Business Improvement District (BID), Toms River Branch of the Ocean County Library, Congressman MacArthur, Mayor Kelaher, and the Toms River Town Council,” the foundation’s website notes.

(Photo of the canvas tiles partially in place on Nancy’s Midtown Cafe. Credit: Tom DeAngelis, used courtesy of the Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation)