Garden City artist Anthony J. Masi will exhibit “New York’s Golden Age of Bridges” on view during the Garden City Public Library’s April gallery show. Giclee prints of the original paintings depicting nine major bridges in NYC are sure to fascinate visitors. A coordinated visual lecture by Mr. Masi will be presented on Thursday, April 12 at 2:00 pm at the Library. Exhibits are FREE and open to the public during regular library hours. For hours and directions phone: 516/742-8405. The library is located at 60 Seventh St., Garden City, NY. Funding for the gallery exhibits is provided by The Friends of the Garden City Public Library. Installation and removal dates are subject to change.
Mr. Masi traces his impression of New York’s bridges on him as a seven-year-old boy entering New York Harbor late at night on a freighter from Sicily. As he went through Ellis Island, he was thrilled by the great, shining unknown that was New York. “In the distance, thousands of glowing lights dotted the skyline. The metropolis beckoned, and I intuitively grasped the promise, excitement, and staggering immensity of the place,” he wrote decades later in his Artist’s Statement. “I found that I wanted, somehow, to replicate on canvas those first sensations.”
Since retiring from the graphic design business in 2000, Mr. Masi has been painting watercolors of the city’s bridges that try to capture the strength of emotion he has continued to feel for the city, and the way the structures form links between the familiar and the future. To get to know the bridges, he walks across and around them whenever possible, and does oil sketches of them.###
