Billy The Artist creates a colorful mural for New York City restaurant Avena and saves it from a view of construction.
Restaurant in need
New restaurant Avena along 6th Avenue north of Houston Street in New York City’s West Village opened its doors this March (2019). Three weeks later, construction began to expand the plaza in front of the block. The construction surrounds work on a tiny new $1.49 million park called Little Red Square, which has been delayed several times since the Parks Department first announced a May 2017 completion date back in 2014. The current target date is winter of 2020. Due to this construction, diners at Avena were left with a view of a pair of chain-link fences.
Owners were worried the project, which is set to be complete in March of 2020, would negatively impact business. With help of an architect and internationally renowned live painter and muralist Billy The Artist (BTA) – they created a mobile mural that was recently put up along the sidewalk near the cafe tables.
Mural
To beautify customers’ views, the owners of restaurant Avena tapped East Village-based muralist Billy The Artist to paint a bright, graffiti-like screen. The 18-foot long work was mounted on the fence on Tuesday. The mural boasts BTA’s signature colorful abstract creations. The mural has attracted quite the attention with both customers and local community.
Read full story in the New York Post here. 
Billy The Artist
Billy The Artist (BTA) is an internationally renowned artist whose studio is based in the East Village of New York City. His projects and designs have been seen all over the world for such clients and global brands as Swatch, Nescafe, The Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Museum, Lamborghini, Gibson Guitar, Smart Car, Suzuki, Hyundai, Toyota, Mountain Dew, MTV, Puma, Microsoft, Chock Full O Nuts, Vans shoes, New Balance shoes, Cow Parade, race car driver Danica Patrick, Fashion Week Athens, Vienna, Madrid, Design Week Milan as well as his own product line with Goebel worldwide.
Mural projects include Woodstock 99, Art Basel Miami, Casa Décor Miami, Delaguarda, The Rio Casino Las Vegas, numerous buildings in New York and Switzerland and the Broadway, National, and London productions of the musical RENT. His paintings have hung at the prestigious Forbes Gallery, The Armory as well as galleries in New York, Hamburg, Tokyo, South Korea, Mexico City, Chicago, Miami, Orlando, New Orleans, Austin, Cleveland, Carib Fine Art in Curacao, Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai, Surge Art Fair Shanghai, Foxx Galerie Zurich, and The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Billy has been published in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Elle, US Weekly, Juxtapoz, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, and numerous other magazines and newspapers around the globe.
Billy The Artist has appeared on MTV, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, TLC, DISCOVERY, 60 MINUTES and other feature programs all over the world. For the world launch of Billy’s watches for Swatch, he painted a 40×30 foot mural live in front of 30,000 people while 300 foot animated projections of his work adorned the walls of Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy during the Venice Biennale. BTA was also one of the first American artists to be allowed by the Chinese government to paint live on the famous Bund in Shanghai.
Philanthropic projects include work with The American Red Cross, The Fresh Air Fund, Covenant House, St. Mary’s Foundation for Children, The JCC of Manhattan, The Breathe Foundation Brazil, and various schools both in the U.S and abroad.