Remembering Nunley’s in watercolor

When Michael White was 6 years old, he was surrounded by displays of patriotic fervor. It was the 1976 bicentennial in Baldwin, and it seemed as if everything was painted red, white and blue, or glittering gold. Those colors, along with popular kids’ shows like “Sesame Street” and “Schoolhouse Rock,” stayed with White.

White has been drawing ever since, and now, at 52, he continues to mine memories of Baldwin’s past and his own, only now through hyperrealist works of art.

“It was a little bit propagandistic, but what I felt really was enthusiasm for where we live,” he recalled of the bicentennial. “It was civic pride … it was kind of great, because everyone felt like this. We felt so unified.” He added that his family members gave him books on the presidents, and he tried to emulate the great men.

At the time, White was living in north Baldwin, off Grand Avenue. Over the following 10 years, his family grew, as his mother gave birth to two more of his siblings — there were five children altogether. Falling in love with Baldwin, the family stayed, moving to a larger house on Harrison Avenue.

At Baldwin High School, White created his first mural, on a wall of the cafeteria. Years later, in 2018, he was pitching the idea of a horse carousel mural to Long Island Rail Road officials and the Baldwin Civic Association in the very same cafeteria. Directing the officials’ attention to the wall painted with Greek gods in a valley, he said offhandedly, “By the way, that’s my painting behind me.”

The mural idea began when the civic association saw the traction White’s work was getting online and decided he could help beautify the area — specifically the LIRR station. It was personal for White, who used to walk under the train station on the way to high school.

In 2018, White started looking back on his upbringing in Baldwin, after seeing a photograph of the cherished black horse of Nunley’s Carousel on the internet. The feeling of nostalgia motivated him to begin a venture of rediscovery and creation. After “bopping around,” he said, in places like Florence, Italy, and Prague, Czech Republic, it was time to revisit his hometown and what it meant to him.

“I’m starting to feel what these places really were because of their absence,” White said, explaining the effect Baldwin has had on him. “Time puts a distance to these memories, and 50 years is a long time to see the entire landscape transform.”

The memories of operating Nunley’s as a junior and senior in high school came rushing back to him — The feel of a cool breeze on his ride on the way there; the smell of popcorn; the whimsical Wurlitzer from 1912 whose sound was amplified, and echoed throughout the park. He felt compelled to build on those memories by creating a series of realist watercolors based on old photos he found online.

White recreate several scenes that many Baldwinites would remember, adding dazzling Coney Island-esque colors to evoke nostalgia. He shared his rendering of the leading black horse of Nunley’s on Facebook, in a Baldwin remembrance group, and many people commented on the post, saying it harkened back to wonderful recollections of a cultural landmark that is “part of the landscape of my memories,” White said.

The outpouring of responses and enthusiasm on social media amazed him, he said. “Sometimes art is a solitary, lonely thing where you don’t really feel the connection between the people who see it,” he said. “. . . But when I saw this art . . . and then the fact that lots of people felt the same way, [it] was great. It added more dimension to the paintings.”

“People say, ‘It keeps this place alive for me,’” White said. “That’s as good as it gets for me.”

Baldwin may never stop mourning the loss of Nunley’s and the amusement park that outlived so many other similar establishments, closing in 1995, but over time, the sadness has been softened by appreciation. “All the time that has passed made me really feel what that place was worth, all the shapes, the beautiful architecture, the charm, the sweetness,” White said. “It was so sweet. Whoever made this was thinking of the kids. Things today are so streamlined and turbo-charged; it’s sad.”

White said he now finds that as he devotes himself to the preservation of Baldwin’s history, he is becoming a part of that history itself. The horse mural at the LIRR station, unveiled in 2019, will stand the test of time — and the engineers made sure of that, White said with a laugh. The mural was also, in a way, a sendoff for White, who now lives in New Jersey with his wife, Masami, and their two children, Cyrus and Vivian.

But, said, whether he is in Italy, Germany or New Jersey, he will never forget the sights and smells of Baldwin.

White’s art can be found online for purchase on his website, michaelwhitestudio.com, and he has openings available for commissioned work.