Queens Pride

Queens Boulevard isn’t traditionally thought to be a very scenic route when you drive down it, but Sonny ‘Sundancer’ Behan has created a piece that’s worth a look – though, at seven stories tall, it’s not exactly hard to miss. It’s a mural of two lions, mother and cub, standing on a shimmery surface and looking to the northeast.

The mural is thematically appropriate, having been painted on the side of the Lionheart Complex, an eight-story transitional apartment building built in 2024. The building has 88 units, plus a daycare and a community center. Some of the units are reserved for people with mobility, hearing, or visual impairments. The artwork itself was commissioned by WXLLSPACE, a firm that specializes in murals for large-scale real estate projects.

Due to the mural’s height and close proximity to other buildings, a cherry picker was used for installation, requiring a month to finish the piece. The artwork’s appearance in the neighborhood caught the attention of local residents, with other organizations now considering their own murals to add to the Queens streetscape.