Get your free portrait on a smiley face bag!

8/6 Flushing Library
8/7 Jackson Heights Diversity Plaza
8/13 Queens Museum
8/14 Corona Plaza

Smiley Bag Portrait is a participatory art project created by Nobutaka Aozaki who is currently a resident artist in the Queens Museum Studio Program. Nobu utilizes one of the most commonly used plastic bags with yellow smiley faces to draw the portraits of the public. The participants will get their free portrait bag with their names, date, location and artist’s signature as exchange. The project will travel to various locations in Queens, including: Corona Plaza, Jackson Heights Diversity Plaza, Flushing Library and Queens Museum.

Nobutaka Aozaki is a New York-based artist born in Kagoshima, Japan. He brings a wry and playful approach to his multifaceted practice, often focusing on the transactional nature of both art and life in the city. He completed his MFA at Hunter College in 2012. He has been awarded the Artist Files Grant from A Blade of Grass Foundation, and the Artists’ Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts. Recent exhibitions include Transportation, ISCP, New York, Crossing Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, New York and Where Do We Migrate To?, Varmlands Museum, Karlstad, Sweden. He has participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture program, the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and LMCC Swing Space residency program. His work has been recently published in Spike Art Quarterly, The New York Times, The Atlantic Cities, The Huffington Post, ArtAsiaPacific, and Cabinet Magazine.

The Studio Program at the Queens Museum is made possible, in part, with support from The Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund. Additional support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.