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If you're ever in Greenpoint, you're going to want keep your eyes peeled for mini paintings depicting recognizable neighborhood scenes hidden all over the area. What you'll actually be looking for is the work of local artist Steve Wasterval, who has been painting the 2"x1.5" artworks and hiding them in his own neighborhood for close to three years now.
"When I moved to New York [ten years ago], I loved the landscape so I just kept painting it. I also got into graffiti and street art and wanted to create my own version of it," he recalls. "I didn't think I should just start tagging or doing graffiti with spray cans because it wasn't my style so I thought I could make small paintings and hide them. I see stuff on the street that I wish I could have as [my own] all the time, so I thought giving people a chance to take it home would be fun."
The one-of-a-kind, huntable works are smaller versions of Wasterval's bigger cityscapes, his bread and butter, and they're collages of a slew of photos that he takes while walking around town. Each mini takes the 40-year-old artist about an hour to paint.
After creating a small cityscape, Wasterval usually hides it in the vicinity of the area that he depicted in the first place. He then kicks off the hunt on Instagram by posting a photo of the treasure near its hiding spot and by blasting off a message to the nearly one thousand people on his mailing list. The email usually includes three clues meant to guide the hunters.
"Years ago, it would take people forever to find them because there were only a few [folks] looking," he says. "Now more people started looking and it takes about 30 minutes for someone to find the [mini]. The longest it's been out there is one hour."
Initially focusing on Manhattan as well, Wasterval eventually decided to devote his attention to Greenpoint entirely. But that's about to change as the artist has recently opted to expand his horizons to include Williamsburg as well. He also plans to up the number of hunts from one every other week to a more consistent weekly schedule.
Clearly, the hunger for this sort of community-adjacent game is there—especially given the year we've all just had. "People are really looking for things to do now," he says, explaining that, although he kicked off his hunts in a pre-COVID world, the idea nicely lends itself to the current world order. "They are looking for fun and sweet things to do and for connections. It's not a competitive hunt but there's a sort of camaraderie among the people who join."
Take the "very short woman" who recently found one of his pieces perched up high ("I'm tall!," he says). "She couldn't reach it so folks around her gave her a boost and they were all so happy to help her," he says giggling.
When asked whether he ever lost track of his work after hiding it, Wasterval remembers the time exactly two years ago when he thought one of his minis disappeared. "It was Easter and, the next day, someone reached out to me saying she had found it and she just didn't tell me because she didn't know she had to," he recalls. Which is to say: don't hesitate to reach out to the Greenpoint artist when spotting one of his tiny but meaningful portraits of life in Brooklyn while walking around the city.
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