Photo by Daniel Andor

“Dr. Hudspeth wanted a mural for the outer wall of his lab at Bronk. He wanted color,” explained Coco, “He has been extremely supportive and very brave to take on a challenge like this. He gave me some articles, drawings, but he kept on insisting that it didn’t have to be science specific. But I did want to incorporate something that had to do with his research, so I did my own interpretation of what I’ve been seeing, what he studies, and everything else that I can improvise on.”

Coco never had any formal training in art, but he has a born talent. He belonged to the first generation of painters who started painting in the New York subway system in 1970. In 1972 he co-founded a group called United Graffiti Artists, the first to take the energy from the subways and streets to painting on canvas. After their first show in The City College of New York in 1972—when they were just 13 to 15 years old—they collectively took part in many events around the city, including collaborations with dance groups, projects in museums, and shows at art galleries in Soho. Although the group disbanded in 1976, the graffiti culture in New York didn’t. It took off again in 1977, when the hip-hop movement came up strong. Since then, new generations of artists have kept raising the quality of the graffiti, which received increasing respect around the world. “I don’t like to put it into a terminology, or try to break it down,” says Coco, “It is what it is. It’s a mural, yeah, because it’s large scale. It’s also a painting.”

Coco has been at the Rockefeller University for 20 years in Plant Operations. His artistic projects have been shown in the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, and Europe. In the last ten years he has been incorporating scientific subjects into his murals. “It’s always my name, but I paint it in a form that you don’t know it’s really my name.”

He collaborated with a pediatrics group (Pediatrics 2000) in the past, exploring the crossover between medicine and art. This new mural at RU is another bridge he is crossing from art to science. Although they might be seen as completely different fields, science and art share similarities: “This is like my experiment,” explains Coco, “You have to do a certain amount of research, studies, you go through experiments until you get it right.” Coco is delighted to paint science. “To me, there is nothing but pros. The only thing that has really given me a challenge on these pieces is the space, because I had it contained two feet away from the wall. I have not had the opportunity to step back and look at it.”

During the last two months, Coco has managed to execute some of the graffiti techniques in a tiny sheltered space while plenty of people passed by without noticing him. For instance, in order to paint an enlarged version of a hair cell bundle that he got from a sketch, he photocopied it on transparent paper, put it over a projector before a 10-by-14-foot wall, and drew it on paper following the projected image on the wall. After that, he brought it to the Bronk building, glued it onto the wall, traced his reference lines, took the paper off the wall, and then started to paint. He has done that with two or three pieces. The rest has been freehand.

The mural, which has been modeled after eight weeks of work at night and during the weekends, will color the wall of the Bronk building. Make sure to stop by and take a look at it!