“Coffee Reimagined” blends art and everyday life in Riverdale cafe exhibit

Longtime Riverdale resident and artist Nina Seigenfeld Velazquez’s exhibit at Early Bird Cafe on Mosholu Avenue is made to be shared. Along with other New York-centric designs, Seigenfeld Velazquez creates unique renditions of the city’s famous Anthora cup on coffee sleeves, which baristas give to customers at random.

“Coffee Reimagined” is a “way to get art into people’s hands,” Seigenfeld Velazquez said. From opening her own gallery at 21 in the East Village to sketching chalk outlines of women’s faces on Riverdale streets, the Upper East Side native has always been of the belief that everyone can be an art collector, and has kept it at the center of her work.

“People are coming into Early Bird, they’re grabbing their coffee, they’re looking at my artwork — It would be nice if they walked out with something,” Seigenfeld Velazquez said.

The idea for the show came to be when 64-year-old Seigenfeld Velazquez was considering what a “real iconic image” was, she said. For her, it was undoubtedly the blue and white patterned paper Anthora cup, with its “We are happy to serve you” message. Since it was a coffee-themed exhibit, Early Bird Cafe owners Katie Mayer and Heather Kim were on board, and Seigenfeld Velazquez was soon delivering 10 unique sleeves to the shop a day, she said.

The Anthora cup was designed in 1963 by Holocaust survivor Leslie Buck and marketed to Greek-owned diners. The cups even appeared frequently in New York City-based TV shows and movies such as “Law & Order,” “Mad Men” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

A few of Seigenfeld Velazquez’s drawings featuring city motifs hang on the cafe’s walls, sketched on reused paper brown bags. One shows three bodega cats dressed in Anthora cups, another shows the cup with a friendly face and a tophat, raising its arms in the air.

Seigenfeld Velazquez, who is a parent coordinator and afterschool art teacher at P.S. 81, wanted the project to be humorous and fun, but also “teach people to see,” she said, and notice the little things they may not think about.

“Not everybody is an academic, not everybody is a business person,” she said. “Sometimes we just have to celebrate art because it’s beautiful, and it makes people happy, and it makes you think.”

These threads of accessibility and ownership run through her previous work as well. Her signature face drawings have appeared on sidewalks, rocks, scaffolding, utility boxes and inside wet patches on the road after rain. One show from 2012 at the Riverdale Public Library, called “What’s Mine is Yours,” was made up of 400 Post-it notes with faces drawn on them. Those who visited were allowed to take one, with the hope of it becoming the first piece of art they could call their own, The Press previously reported.

This approach to creativity can be traced back to Seigenfeld Velazquez’s experiences with her own gallery. In 1983, when she was in her third year at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts, Seigenfeld Velazquez partnered with her friend Mario Fernandez to open New Math Gallery. The name was inspired by Seigenfeld Velazquez’s dad, who would attempt to help her with her homework and say in frustration “I just don’t understand this new math.”

Seigenfeld Velazquez said with only $250, she and Fernandez built something from nothing in the 12th Street storefront. They started with showing their school friends’ pieces, and worked their way up to other New York City artists, garnering media attention and becoming embedded in the East Village’s 1980s art scene.

“We were very open to our community, and we really prided ourselves on that,” Seigenfeld Velazquez said, explaining that New Yorkers who had never been to a museum, or were experiencing homelessness, would visit often and take interest in the pieces on display.

Though operation costs eventually caught up to New Math Gallery, which closed in 1986, Seigenfeld Velazquez said the sense of community built there — between neighbors, storeowners on her block, and other artist friends who would be constantly in and out of each other’s apartments — was something she gravitated toward. When she and her husband at the time moved to North Riverdale 37 years ago, Seigenfeld Velazquez said she did it “kicking and screaming,” but soon found her new neighborhood reminiscent of the East Village.

The bonds she has built over time with other Riverdale creatives has led her to feel like the neighborhood still does not have a hub just for artists. There is Kingsbridge Riverdale Van Cortlandt Development Corporation’s Gallery 505 on West 238th Street, where Seigenfeld Velazquez helps with exhibits, but KRVC is active in the community outside of just artwork, she said. Blue Door Art Center in Yonkers has also drawn in local artists, but it’s still outside of city lines, she said.

“There’s a strong presence of visual artists, more now than ever,” Seigenfeld Velazquez said. “I’ve always dreamt of … having a designated art space where artists could show their work, but also where there could be a lot of art workshopping done for kids.”

But for now, Seigenfeld Velazquez remains focused on pursuing more projects that bring art within reach. “Coffee Reimagined” will run through early June.