Raritan Valley Community College’s Arts & Design students create tunnel mural for Bound Brook train station
BOUND BROOK BOROUGH, NJ (Somerset County) – Students from Raritan Valley Community College’s Arts & Design department, led by their professor, Ji Yong Kim, recently completed a 2,000-square-foot mural at the Bound Brook New Jersey Transit station tunnel.
The mural, titled “Vida De el Sol y La Luna” (“Life of the Sun and the Moon”), took six days to complete and was designed by RVCC student Sarah Lopez. Along with Lopez and Kim, the student artists working on the project included Lev Baab, Joshua Cascante, Rachel Floden, Gabriel Garcia, Demetrios Gianakis, Kasia Pasterkiewicz, and Peter Trinidad.
The project was generously supported by the Bound Brook Cultural Arts Committee.
“It’s been a true privilege to see this mural come together with these extraordinary young artists under the wonderful guidance of Professor Kim. On behalf of the Bound Brook Cultural Arts Committee, I would like to congratulate them for creating an exquisite art piece that will be truly meaningful for our community at large,” said Committee member Evelyn Estava.
According to Lopez, “Our goal with this project was to create a mural that would bring life to an overlooked space while also capturing the spirit of the community. Many of the mural’s plants, flowers, and animals are inspired by those that are found in Central and South America. Bound Brook has a large, bustling Latin community, and we wanted to use elements and imagery that would make the mural feel like it was part of the town.”
Noting that many commuters frequent the station and tunnel daily, Lopez added that “the larger-than-life landscape, rendered in bright, vibrant colors, brings a cheerful energy to the space that was not there before. With this project, we wanted to make the space more welcoming, more colorful, and more alive.”