DUCHAMP OF EAST HARLEM – By Tony Zaza

Thomas Paine would have liked James De La Vega.

DUCHAMP OF EAST HARLEM

By Tony Zaza

 

 

 

 

Thomas Paine would have liked James De La Vega. He’s a pamphleteer of the pavements, billboard sloganizer, muralist, outsider. He is helping to create an arts community off Lexington Avenue across 103rd Street, a hood that is definitely not the hood it thinks it is, to paraphrase one of his aphorisms.

For a decade James DLV has been leaving his mark, like the mark of Zorro, on construction site walls, pavements, places that would “interrupt” the routine gaze of passersby. His proverbs speak to a very pragmatic ideology: Become Your Dream.

He is a studio artist, but his palette is also the street. If it is just to beautify, educate and strengthen (the community), then Bronx Judge Seth Marvin has done a great disservice to the public by punishing De La Vega for his “unauthorized use of a Bronx building as his canvas”. The case appeared to be more than a “quality of life” case since De La Vega was denied the opportunity to present his defense to a jury. By lowering the charge to a misdemeanor (like a parking ticket) the case was remanded to a bench trial. His hand painted jumping fish on the side of a Bruckner Blvd building may land this poet of East Harlem 30 days in jail. “You are definitely not who you imagine yourself to be,” De La Vega wrote on a vacant lot wall- with the aid of phone calls and letter-writing to your District Congressmen in his support, perhaps his proverb will have its desired effect.