New York artist submits colourful entry for giant artwork mural

A New York artist and art teacher has submitted an entry for a giant art mural on Baillie Street – depicting her Rochdale husband abseiling down the town hall clock tower.

Janae Sunshine Ramirez, 43, has painted a colourful mural for Rochdale Development Agency's request for 88 budding artists to have their work featured on the side of 21 Baillie Street for the next year.

All the images have to depict what Rochdale means to the sender and can be a drawing, painting, photograph, craft item - or even a piece of knitting - and is open to everybody from novices to more experienced artists. 

Born and raised in Smithtown, New York, Janae attended Pratt Institute in New York City and has lived there ever since. She met her husband, Marcus Benjamin, in NYC, where they married in 2005, exactly a year after they met.

Marcus, 48, a musician and video engineer, was born and raised in Rochdale, and has been captured in Janae’s entry abseiling down Rochdale Town Hall, a feat he accomplished in 2017 during the Feel Good Festival. The time on the clock shows 5pm, representing the five-hour time difference between Rochdale and New York.

Janae first visited England in 2006, spending three weeks in Rochdale, which she says was “a lovely change from the busy, crowded streets of NYC.”

“The first time we took our son along to England was 2017, the year my husband went abseiling down the town hall for charity. It was a rainy, windy day and people still came out to support the town and the Feel Good Festival,” she added.

 

 

Janae said: “I’m so happy to see all of the investments that are going into Rochdale and I would like this entry to be the beginning of my contributions. I paint murals and hope to paint one in Rochdale. We enjoy visiting in the summers to see my mother-in-law, and I would like to dedicate this artwork to my late father-in-law, David Benjamin.

“Having my artwork displayed in the town centre for my mother-in-law to see will help our family feel a little more connected in these strange times.”

As well as being a celebration of the best bits of Rochdale, it’s hoped the transformation of 21 Baillie Street will become a magnet to entice people back into the town centre in the same way that the Dippy the Dinosaur exhibition attracted more than 100,000 visitors when it was displayed at Number One Riverside.

The ‘Find Your Space’ art project is a multi-agency initiative led by Rochdale Development Agency and also involves Rochdale Borough Council; Action Together, Link4Life, Rochdale Business Improvement District (Rochdale BID); and Marketing Manchester.