Lady Pink facts for kids

Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara (born 1964), is an Ecuadorian-born American graffiti and mural artist, active in New York City.

Early life

Fabara was born in Ambato, Ecuador in 1964 and moved to the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York when she was seven years old. She grew up wanting to be an architect like her father. She started her graffiti writing career in 1979 following the loss of a boyfriend. She exorcised her grief by tagging her boyfriend's name across New York City. Lady Pink studied at the Manhattan High School of Art and Design, where she was introduced to graffiti. During her senior year of school, she began to start exhibiting her work while balancing her personal life.

Career

Early career

Her career as an artist started to take off after the 1980s, following the Graffiti Art Success for America show which invited graffiti artists to paint on the walls of the gallery. In 1983, she played the leading role in the film Wild Style, and was involved with a book entitled Subway Art by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant. During this time, she collaborated with Jenny Holzer several times for an exhibition at Fashion MODA. Her first solo show, "Femmes-Fatales," was in 1984, when she was 21, at the Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia.

Later career

Lady Pink's studio paintings often use themes of New York City Subway trains and POP-surrealist cityscapes. Some of her pieces are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, as well as the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands.

Lady Pink now visits schools to teach students about the power of art and how it can serve as a medium for self-expression and community engagement. Each year she does a mural project with the students of Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens.

Her mural, Pink (2007) work was one of the many murals destroyed at 5Pointz in Queens, however in February 2018 the Brooklyn Supreme Court awarded each of the 45 artists for their destroyed work. She was connected to her art and although the former owner of the building painted over the walls, she said she could still see the ghost of her mural.

Artwork

Paintings

• The Death of Graffiti (1982) - acrylic on canvas, Museum of the City of New York collection.
• The Black Dude (1983) - spray enamel on canvas, in private collection.
• China, One Child Only (1992) - spray enamel on canvas, in a private collection.
• Brick Lady in Spray (1993) - spray enamel on canvas, in a private collection.
• Queen Matilda (2007) - acrylic on canvas, in private collection.
• Urban Decay (2008) - acrylic on canvas, in private collection.

Murals

• Brick Woman - located in Braddock, Pennsylvania.
• 9/11 Tribute (2001) - Painted one month after September 11 as a tribute to the heroes involved, located in Queens, New York.
• Pink (2007) - was located at 5Pointz, no longer exists.
• Lady Liberty (2016) - located in Queens, New York.

Trains

• John Lennon (1981) - The first half of the Subway train painted by Lady Pink and Iz the Wiz as a tribute for John Lennon.
• The Beatles (1981) - The second half of the Subway train painted by Lady Pink and Iz the Wiz as a tribute for The Beatles.
• Welcome to Heaven (1982) - A tribute for Caine 1, a graffiti artist who was killed by a neighbor that mistook him for a burglar.

Personal life

She is married to another graffiti artist, SMITH (Roger Smith, formerly of the graffiti duo Sane Smith), with whom she often collaborates on murals and commercial work. She is bisexual.

See also

In Spanish: Lady Pink para niños