Staten Island
Public Access
Corson Avenue & Victory Boulevard
Brooklyn-based artist Mollie Hosmer-Dillard designed this asphalt art mural with On Your Mark, a Staten Island nonprofit serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Its infinity-symbol design and colors are drawn from the Disability Pride flag. The piece was shaped with input from the people On Your Mark serves, rather than added on top of a service after the fact.
CURRENT STATUS: Temporary. Installed September 2024 as part of NYC DOT's Community Commissions program, "Public Access" was displayed through August 2025, which is the maximum 11-month run these installations receive. While it is no longer in place at Corson Avenue and Victory Boulevard, we believe it is worth incorporating into “The People’s Canvas”.
THE RIGHT AT STAKE
To be designed for all from the start, not accommodated for after the fact. Disability pride means that disabled persons aren’t an afterthought.
WHY HERE?
This mural wasn't generic public beautification, but rather it was purpose-built for this exact intersection. Corson Avenue and Victory Boulevard had recently been converted into a new pedestrianized public space and NYC DOT partnered with On Your Mark, a Staten Island nonprofit organization serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, to make that new space theirs from day one. Artist Mollie Hosmer-Dillard incorporated actual drawings created by On Your Mark's participants into the final design, alongside the infinity symbol, which is a symbol for autism. She rendered this street mural in the colors of the Disability Pride flag.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
What changes when a public space is designed with disabled people from the start, instead of retrofitted for them afterwards?
THEN & NOW
The mural's own framing offers a useful reversal of the usual "then and now". Artist Mollie Hosmer-Dillard described the project as "a collaboration between people with disabilities and people who are temporarily non-disabled." That phrase flips the default assumption which is that able-bodied is the permanent, normal state, and disability is the exception. Instead, she suggests that disability is a condition that most people will eventually experience if they live long enough. This mural existing only "temporarily" on the street is, reflects that powerful idea.
TAKE ACTION
Learn more about On Your Mark's ongoing programs at onyourmark.org, or look into whether your own community's public art commissions include lasting, not just temporary, partnerships with disability-led organizations.
Artist: Mollie Hosmer-Dillard · Partner: On Your Mark
