RED BANK – For decades, Shore-area native Bob Mataranglo has beautified coastal communities and used his art to brighten the lives of others. Now thanks to a $13,000 state grant award to Red Bank RiverCenter, Mataranglo’s art will be coming to Red Bank.
Mataranglo has marked the intersection of 10th Avenue and E Street in Belmar, the crossroads of New Jersey’s rock ’n’ roll roots immortalized by Bruce Springsteen, with an 8-foot-tall replica of a Fender Telecaster guitar and painted a nurses’ activity cart with safari animals for the children’s ward at Monmouth Medical Center.
Last month RiverCenter was one of 17 Main Street district organizations throughout the state to collectively receive nearly $350,000 in aid to assist communities with downtown revitalization efforts.
James Scavone, RiverCenter executive director, said Mataranglo was tapped to create two murals that will accent the borough’s ongoing streetscape project, a $1.53-million effort to create a continuous pedestrian walkway from Monmouth Street, through the White Street and English Plaza parking lots, to Riverside Garden Park on West Front Street.
The construction project is partially funded by a zero-interest $500,000 loan awarded to RiverCenter by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs.
Scavone said the murals will be located on the exterior walls of Cabana 19 and the Red Bank Chocolate Shoppe, which face each other on White Street.
Mataranglo said, much like the actual streetscape pathway, the mural concept calls for an artistic link to the Navesink River, with recreational boating scenes and depictions of wildlife native to the river system.
“The idea is to bring back Red Bank’s connection to the river,” Mataranglo said. “The concept I presented is as if you’re standing on the shoreline and looking across the river. On a picture perfect day you’re seeing blue skies with a strip of land and river homes and some boats and local birds. I want the murals to inspire those who see them to continue along the path to see the real thing.
Scavone said Mataranglo had submitted a conceptual pitch several years ago when the RiverCenter commissioned another musically themed mural near the Park Jam concession stand at Riverside Gardens Park.
Photo courtesy B. Mataranglo
“We went in a different direction at that time, but we never forgot how impressed we were with his submission. I kept him in the back of my mind for the next time we came forward with a mural project,” Scavone said.
Mataranglo, who spent five years living in Rumson after graduating from Newark College of Engineering (now the New Jersey Institute of Technology) said he’s always found inspiration in Red Bank’s wall art, including another large mural his pieces will sit near.
“I can always remember being taken by the mural painted on the back of Jack’s Music Shoppe,” Mataranglo said, noting the “impressive” depth of the piece, which uses the store’s backdoors, second story windows and large clock to create the face of a flatiron-type structure.
“All these years later and I’ll have works that are only a couple hundred feet away from that. I have always admired that piece and so many years later I have an opportunity to leave my mark next to it. It’s extraordinary,” Mataranglo said.
Scavone said the inclusion of artistic elements to larger improvement projects is something that was stressed during RiverCenter’s strategic planning, a process conducted from June through October 2018 for business owners and borough stakeholders to establish a cohesive vision for the future development of Red Bank’s downtown business district.
“Red Bank really is a center for the arts in all forms. As part of our promotion of the arts in Red Bank, we wanted to use this project as a way to add to the public arts in town. Having these two murals is going to help us further promote the arts and cement Red Bank as the artistic haven it is,” Scavone said.
According to the office of Gov. Phil Murphy, the Main Street New Jersey Program helps municipalities improve the economy, appearance and image of their central business districts through the organization of local citizens and resources. Municipalities must apply and be selected to join the MSNJ Program, which was established in 1989.
These designated communities receive technical support and training to assist in restoring their main streets as centers of economic and social activity. This year, designated communities were also eligible for the MSNJ grants, which are funding awards of $25,000 or less aimed at assisting projects such as storefront improvement, placemaking and transformation strategy development that can be completed in six months or less.
Scavone said he expects the one-story-tall-by-approximately-40-foot-long murals should be completed by the end of fall.
