Lina Montoya
Lina Montoya, A.K.A. “Ele Eme”, Staten Island-based artist since 2010. A passionate, creative and rising Graphic Artist and Designer, born and raised in Medellín, Colombia. Montoya has an extensive background in Graphic Design, Web, and Advertising and working with several clients and agencies worldwide. During the recent years, because of her community-based creative work, she has been developing her career as Muralist, Teaching Artist, and Community Organizer. She has experience working with public agencies and community-based organizations around New York City. As a vehicle to express her talents, share her migratory experience and celebrate multiculturalism, she founded the “Ele Eme Project” in Colombia, before she moved to the United States in 2010. It is an artistic initiative developed between New York City and Latin America that intends to exchange “Magical Experiences” through socially engaged art for public space beautification and landscape transformation.
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Empowering the People, Transforming Our Home
Through a new mural, youth artists engaged seniors at the Stapleton Houses in a public dialogue about the development's past and future as a site of hope, dreams, and community engagement. -
The Foundation of Stapleton
The community members view Stapleton Houses as a wonderful place to live and they want to see it grow and flourish. To support this, the youth artists depicted Stapleton in their mural as a bright and growing metropolis, built on the foundation of history, trust, love and respect for one another and their surroundings. -
Stapleton: The Community As Home
The first mural at Stapleton Houses, Stapleton: The Community As Home is an homage to the history and current atmosphere at Stapleton Houses. The mural captures how the young artists, residents of Stapleton, value their home and express their creativity.
