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Behold. STAR BALL

My newest limited edition art basketball is now available for purchase! STAR BALL features imagery from Cosmic Court and features foil embossments of comets, star constellations and two inspiring femme figures from basketball history and space exploration. It comes with the Senda/ Sedna zine and a signed Cosmic Court sticker. Check it out

Community basketball court mural // Talbot Middle School // Curated by JR Uretsky with the New Bedford Art Museum

Cosmic Court is the 5th basketball court mural completed in Massachusetts by the New Craft Artists in Action + lead artist Maria Molteni.

As with their other courts, Molteni began the design process by visiting art classes at Talbot Middle School. They discussed creativity in the athletic realm, including the difference between mascots (as the spirit and energy of a team dynamic) and logos/branding, meant to sell a product to spectators. Students chose personal dream mascots as an icebreaker, then proceeded to make wild drawings of their dream courts. Molteni noticed many circular, cyclical, planetary motifs (eyeballs! flowers! planets! basketballs!) among the drawings and used them as inspiration for Talbot/Fall River’s own luscious basketball universe.

The first paint strokes happened to be applied on October’s Full Moon, thus the court was born as a harmonious, beauty-and-justice-seeking Libra with a firey, energetic, even slightly competitive, Aries MOON! (it just so happens to share a sun and moon sign with Molteni). The crew decided, on the spot, to transcribe the court’s birth/natal chart into the center of the court, plugging all of the planets into an astrological-inspired wheel diagram. These shapes were plotted right at the moment that the moon became full (5:27pm it was?) and its orientation was adjusted to align with the positions of the planets hanging above.

While the court was in progress, students brainstormed new games they’d invent for different shapes and positions they saw in the design- “how many points would we score when shooting from the flower or the Saturn or the infinity?” they would say. The new court, complete with color wheels and diagram, is also intended to be a participatory teaching tool for the art classes who were studying light and shade the weeks of install.

Huge thanks to the students and teachers of Talbot Middle School, the New Bedford Art Museum’s Ashley Occhino and Jamie Uretsky and the incredible crew of femme and queer artists who executed this magical mural under the direction of Molteni: Isabel Mattia, Laura Ganci, Eli Brown, John Knudsen, Nazli Dincel, and Holly Popielarz

Cosmic Court! Fall River, MA

Community basketball court mural // Talbot Middle School // Curated by JR Uretsky with the New Bedford Art Museum

Check out my other sites:

New Craft Artists in Action (official site)

EarthtoMaria on Vimeo

Festooning the Inflatable Beehive