Roger Ferney Cortés | Johny Paleta

Roger Ferney Cortés invokes the iconic “paletero” ice cream street vendor cart in his interactive mobile sculpture, Johny Paleta. A fictional figure who wanders the city to bring joy through a popsicle cart, the titular Johny Paleta stands in contrast to the popular image of the American nurseryman Johnny Appleseed, who, as myth would have it, indiscriminately spread apple seeds wherever he went.

Fabricated to scale on a set of functional wheels, the sculpture embraces the paleta cart as the basis for a playful and interactive experience. Nestled within, a mirror-lined cube of reflective surfaces with cut-out shapes invites viewers to peer into a microcosm of refracting faces, fragments of the environment, and sunlight. On scheduled afternoons, Johny Paleta will traverse the grounds of Wave Hill and its immediate neighborhoods, offering an artwork that reflects the beauty of visitors and their communities and serves as an homage to the street vendor culture of immigrant communities in the Bronx and beyond.

Organized by Curator of Visual Arts Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, the Sunroom Project Space is an open call opportunity for New York-area artists to develop and exhibit a site-specific project as a solo show. The 2024 applications were reviewed by a panel of arts professionals including Kiara Cristina Ventura, writer, curator and founder of the roving curatorial platform Processa; Jacq Groves, 2023 Sunroom Project Space interdisciplinary artist and educator; and Gugelberger.