GIVE THEM FLOWERS GALLERY BQE
It feels like geo-catching, but better. Not because you’re hunting for treasure, but because the reward is learning to look differently.
The artwork stands out like Alaskan starlets in the blackest of night. Constellations that appear against rusted steel pillars, peeling paint, pigeon Feathers, broken glass, abandoned vans covered in cobwebs of layered spray paint. What most people speed pass by on their daily commute subtly becomes an open-air gallery for anyone willing to slow down.
Gallery BQE is an outdoor contemporary art initiative beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that celebrates street art, murals, photography, and creative collaboration. Constantly evolving, it serves as a platform for emerging and established artists while preserving the fleeting spirit of New York City’s public art scene.
It’s as raw as art can get. An organic composition of lived in urban life. Earnest creative forces leaving their prints exactly where they belong- not interrupting the city, but becoming part of it’s biology.
Every mural, sticker, and tag placed with intention.. a story. Ninety percent of it will eventually disappear. . Power washed. Painted over. Weathered. Lost.
To me now, that’s part of the beauty.
Street art feels like the perfect metaphor for the artist’s everlasting dance with the world and its social standards around them. You pour your heart into something knowing it may never be understood, preserved, or even noticed. Yet somehow, artists keep making more. Again.
And again.
Not because they’re guaranteed recognition—but because creating is simply part of who they are. It nourishes a hunger in them that can’t be replaced with wheat or dairy. It’s survival.
Creating is maternal- instinctual. intuitive. No one can take that away.
The first piece that truly stole my heart was a large and striking portrait rendered in shades of purple. One I affectionately named La Fille Violette. I never knew her real title, or even the artist behind her. She simply became La Fille Violette to me. There was something about her quiet gaze tucked beneath the BQE that gently took my breath away.
The soft lavender female form
resting against weathered cream-colored steel created a kind of quiet that seemed out of place among the concrete, traffic, and rust. She didn’t compete with the city around her. She softened it.
While New York rushed past, she seemed perfectly content to stand still. It almost felt as though she had always belonged there; a guardian angel keeping watch of the neighborhood…
Long after I left Brooklyn that day, she stayed with me. I loved that piece so much that it became the wallpaper on my computer-a small and beloved token.
I featured La Fille Violette in the very first edition of City Canvas because I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
By the time I returned to Gallery BQE a few weeks later, she was gone. It felt strangely personal, as if I’d gone back to visit an old friend only to discover she’d already moved on.
Street art teaches you not to postpone wonder. Sometimes all you get is one encounter.
I’m grateful I stopped long enough to photograph it.
Long enough to notice her.
Artist: @dronesone, Stencil Work
So, who would have thought the person behind one of Brooklyn’s most unexpected creative spaces would casually walk over while I stood photographing it… ( perhaps I did, through manifestation and prayers for serendipity.)
Kelsey Strauch (Kalcium Fortified)
is a Brooklyn based visual and performing artist, originally from Helena, Montana. BFA in painting. Professional juggler, circus artist, Butoh dancer, and
the mothering heart beat behind Gallery BQE.
Within minutes we were deep in conversation—not just about murals, but about Gallery BQE and the living history beneath our feet.
She spoke about street art the way someone speaks about an old friend—not as decoration, but as culture. As memory. As something living. Casually and Natural.
With the kind of pride reserved for something you’ve built from the ground up.
She taught me about TAKI 183, Basquiat. The origins of New York graffiti. The way names evolved into identities, and walls became newspapers for artists whose voices weren’t being invited anywhere else. How Wheat paste is just a simple mix of flour and water- “ a cheap homemade glue”- and that it’s used by artists and advertisers alike as modge-podge to quickly secures paper and posters onto outdoor urban surfaces.
After spending more than fifteen years in Brooklyn, she knows the neighborhood’s creative community intimately, introducing artists, sharing stories, and connecting people who might have otherwise remained strangers.
Now her work has grow into a living, evolving space shaped by the creatives she’s met and the relationships she’s cultivated over the years. She isn’t simply documenting Brooklyn’s art scene; she’s become part of its fabric.He
Kelsey and partner Ryan
Kelsey also teaches movement.
Watching her describe creativity, it became difficult to separate the artist from the mover. Everything she spoke about carried the same underlying belief:
stay curious, stay open, stay in motion.
Nothing underneath the expressway feels frozen. Kelsey is why Gallery BQE feels so alive.
The artwork changes, Artists come and go, Installations disappear, walls are power-washed over only to become canvases again and still, the heartbeat remains…
Gallery BQE isn’t preserving permanence, it’s protecting participation.
I asked about the bold pink shapes winding across one of the installations, assuming they were part of the original photograph. She hared the story behind the pink line sweeping across the photograph. While @jessewarnerlives was wheatpasting the piece, the paper accidentally tore. Rather than starting over, @dronesone embraced the mishap, turning it into an impromptu collaboration. The photograph features @sarahseacircle—Drawn to movement and freedom of form, she regularly collaborates with other artists this way
The pink line winding across the photographs isn’t just a flourish. It’s evidence of trust. Proof that art doesn’t always have to belong to one person to feel complete, that you can add your own visual language while still honoring theirs.
It’s perfect preview of the upcoming Gallery BQE exhibit inspired by co-creation….
@bk_arthaus X @gallerybqe
Photographer: @warnerjesselives model @sarahseacircle. added pink line @dronesone
STRUCTURAL COLLABS
@BK_arthaus, August 12
scroll down for press release & more information
As someone who instinctively retreats inward with my own artwork, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Art has always felt deeply personal to me. Something I make quietly. Something I protect.
Her philosophy gently challenged that instinct..
What happens when creativity becomes a conversation instead of a monologue?
What happens when we stop protecting every idea and start trusting someone else enough to build something together?
It’s starting to seem like maybe the masterpiece isn’t just the finished artwork. Maybe it’s the collaboration itself.
That philosophy can extends beyond the gallery walls.
Creativity was never meant to be hoarded. Nor has art has never belonged solely inside white walls or behind museum glass
. Art belongs in conversations. In neighborhoods in sparks of connection. In the courage to make something before you’re certain anyone will understand it, or despite of if they ever will.
GIVE THEM FLOWERS
is BEAN STEW’s editorial series celebrating the artists, makers, and cultural stewards shaping our communities—not only through what they create, but through the spaces they cultivate for others to bloom.
