NEW YORK—This summer, three huge pieces of public art will make their appearance in the city, turning billboards into ready canvases, reports the New York Times.

Sponsored by United Technologies Corporation, a Hartford-based company that makes aircraft engines and elevators, writes Randy Kennedy for the Times, "the project is unusual because public painting as opposed to sculpture or installation-type art is rare, generally seen only in commissioned (or more often noncommissioned, illegal) graffiti murals on building walls."

The three artists are Alex Katz, who at 78, is one of "America's most celebrated realist painters," Young British Artist Gary Hume, and 32-year-old Lisa Sanditz, "the fledgling of the group in both age and reputation." Their paintings will be huge, ranging from 28 to 54 feet tall, and will be transferred to the spaces by professional sign painters to offset union issues.

The works are very different. For Katz, instead of beautiful women, as in a 1977 New York mural, the moment before a kiss between two men seemed a good subject.

"This really seemed like a much more interesting subject," he told the Times. "A pretty girl would be nice, but kind of decorative, you know?"

Hume turned to a quintessentially American icon cheerleaders combining that idea with paintings of crucifixions.

"You as a nation are the cheerleaders," he told the Times, and his painting shows a blonde woman, bent back at the torso, a pole where the head should be, the arms splayed.

Sanditz's painting will be on Canal Street, and features a tie-dyed sky. She compares the painting "to Frederic Edwin Church's Twilight in the Wilderness, in which the sky, streaked with blue, red and orange, is similarly almost psychedelic." Her painting is called Tie-Dye in the Wilderness.

"It's beautiful," Sanditz told the paper, "but also possibly toxic."

United Technology seems to enjoy a hands-off patronage: unlike other public art projects, they did not review the works until they were completed, said the Times.

According to Krista J. Pilot, director of community affairs for United Techonology, when company officials saw Katz's work, "there was definitely a moment of silence," the Times said. One senior official, she said, said, 'Well, we're not going to be squeamish about this, are we?'" "And there hasn't been anything said about it since then," she added.

FOR FULL STORY CLICK: New York Times: "Painting for a Gallery of Busy City Streets Below"