Man, what are you doing here ?

Artist : Esteban del Valle Date : 2014 Sponsored by: Widow Jane

It started with a bicycle ride and a chandelier. The muralist Esteban del Valle was riding through Red Hook when he discovered Botanica — a quiet bar with an elegant chandelier that became his favorite place to sketch. This chandelier stuck with him, and soon he incorporated it into a mural he was painting at 5Pointz, an old factory building in Long Island City that had become a global graffiti mecca in the early 2000s. Quickly, the mural took off on Instagram. 5Pointz, curated by the graffiti artist Meres One, had become such a must-see art destination in New York, and Esteban’s piece got a lot of attention. In 2013, it was even named one of the top 50 street art works in the world. But then — almost overnight — it was gone. The building’s owner whitewashed all 45 murals across the 12-story façade, with no warning, no permission. Just gone. It was heartbreaking. Back at Botanica, sketching away, Esteban mentioned the story to the bartender — how it all began with that chandelier in the corner, and the unexpected journey that followed. Word got around, and soon it reached Daniel Prieto Preston, the bar’s owner. Prieston made Esteban an offer: paint whatever you want on my wall, just include Widow Jane somewhere in the composition. Very little money, but complete creative freedom. It was November when Esteban started to paint, with very few people on Red Hook’s industrial streets. Esteban used acrylics and brushes with an unconventional process — color comes first and then directs the drawing. He chose to paint a piano man — a character that had been haunting his sketchbooks for years, appearing repeatedly in his work. This figure had multiple faces, extra hands, and a tangled scarf that seemed to strangle as much as warm him. The main sentiment behind the piece is the feeling, as an artist, of being alien in this world — always having to do other physical jobs while a whole world underneath is there and you are burning to express it. The multiple faces capture different layers of personality, the masks we all wear. The extra fingers represent creative energy and movement. The tangled scarf becomes a metaphor for the constraints that bind us — financial pressures, social expectations, the need to perform roles that don’t reflect our true selves. Soon the resonance with Billy Joel’s classic song, “Man, what are you doing here ?,” became so evident that the name of the song was added at the top of the mural. Now, years have passed. The artists of 5Pointz finally won their case.
In 2018, a federal court ruled in favor of 21 artists who sued the developer — affirming that street art can achieve recognized stature, and that even temporary works deserve protection. As for the piano man?
He took a much quieter path.
He still stands on that Red Hook warehouse wall, silently performing his concert for passersby.