Month: October 2025

ASBURY PARK — Our city increasingly has a national, and even international, reputation for arts and culture.

And that reputation is getting even bigger with events like the installation last week of a large work of public art on the boardwalk by internationally-acclaimed Portuguese artist Bordalo II.
The artist is famous for creating large scale 3-D animal sculptures from plastic waste to bring attention to a host of issues including overconsumption, climate change, and protection of endangered and threatened species. Bordalo II has over 200 works displayed throughout the world.

His process is uniquely community-driven. The artist selects an animal linked to the region and provides a specific list of discarded materials for the host loca-tion to collect in advance. For his Asbury Park installation, the artist created a three-dimensional mural of a mother and baby fox — an animal that has become a beloved symbol of resilience to many along the shoreline.
After the 2019 Ocean Grove pavilion fire, a family of foxes made their home in the ruins, capturing the hearts of boardwalk dwellers and photographers during the quiet days of the Covid lockdowns. Today, foxes continue to roam the beaches of Asbury Park, reminding us of the endurance of wildlife in the face of habitat loss. This mural will honor their story while calling attention to the need to protect and coexist with the natural world around us.

Bordalo II’s work on the boardwalk was jointly sponsored by the Wooden Walls Project of public art and the non-profit Asbury Park Arts Council (APAC), who to-gether funded it with grants and private donations. The installation is on the south side of the Third Avenue Pavillion, facing the children’s splash park.
Since its inception in 2015, Wooden Walls, founded by Jenn Hampton, has cu-rated an evolving collection of murals along the Asbury Park Boardwalk in part-nership with boardwalk redeveloper Madison Marquette. The Asbury Park Arts Council, co-founded by Hampton, extends beyond boardwalk murals, advocating for and supporting the broader arts landscape throughout Asbury Park.
Bringing Bordalo II to Asbury Park has been years in the making.

“We have worked for several years to bring Bordalo II to Asbury. We are huge fans of his aesthetic and how this public art piece creates community involve-ment, sparks inspiration, and hopefully will give viewers a chance to reflect on the mural’s environmental message,” said Hampton. “This landmark installation promises to leave a lasting impact on Asbury Park as a revitalizing city, reinforcing the city’s reputation as a hub for innovative public art.”

Since 2012, Bordalo II has created over two hundred animal sculptures using more than 100 tons of reused materials. His works are chiefly found throughout Europe, but they also can be seen in Singapore, French Polynesia, Quebec and Mexico City. He has fewer than 20 pieces in the United States, and none in the tri-state area. His closest work is over 200 miles away in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Bordalo II’s “work is very accessible. You don’t even know it’s plas-tic until you get close,” said Carrie Turner, Asbury Park Arts Council Executive Director.
The Wooden Walls Project of public arts has been an important force to keep Asbury Park in the forefront of arts and cultural, both locally and even nationally. The many murals it commissioned the past decade from all types of artists on the boardwalk are easily the most shared artistic images in Asbury Park on social media. That’s important for our city’s arts reputation.
And all that, hopefully, will set up something even larger for the future of the waterfront.

“The end game is an arts district on the boardwalk,” Hampton said.

So now it’s about getting all types of artists, especially interna-tionally-acclaimed artists like Bordalo II, to come to Asbury Park, create their art installations and go back to where they’re from to tell everyone about our city. The bigger the artistic buzz for Asbury Park, the more possible it will be for boardwalk redeveloper Mad-ison Marquette to create a successful and vibrant boardwalk arts district, as it hopes to do. That could be big.

And Wooden Walls is setting the stage, along with other key groups in the city like the Asbury Park Arts Council, for such a boardwalk arts district. The installation of Bordalo II’s work on the boardwalk is a powerful example of how it could be.