A glimmering mural rises against a gray brick wall.
At first glance, it feels playful: a diner counter laden with an overflowing sundae, a towering swirl of soft serve, a slice of cake.
Look closer and you’ll notice spoon handles catching the sunlight, bottle caps tucked into the background, broken toys glinting among the tiles. Called preSERVE, the work is as much about memory as it is about material.
It’s the latest public artwork by Metuchen-based artist and teacher Julia Virginia Win, and it is rooted deeply in the borough’s history. Metuchen Downtown Alliance (MDA) and Pearl Street Business Center owner Peter Klein invited Win to create a “picture-worthy moment” outside 16 Pearl St. in 2023. The building once housed Costa’s Ice Cream Co., a plant that began production in 1923 and satisfied the community’s sweet tooth for decades.
Costa’s – with its parlor on Main Street and slogan “the ice cream that’s different” – loomed large in the collective memory of the town. For Win, the chance to honor that history while continuing her experimentation with creative re-use was irresistible.
Her initial sketches were ambitious: three separate panels depicting strawberries, a counter-and-dessert scene and a “brown cow.” Eventually, the designs collapsed into one, three-dimensional tableau, merging the factory with the diner counter.
Instead of Costa’s slogan, the mural now proudly reads “Metuchen, 08840,” grounding it in present-day identity while preserving its past.
Win scoured photos from the Metuchen-Edison Historical Society: strawberries featured prominently in Costa’s branding, as the company prided itself on using fresh fruit. One archival image showed Dixie cups being filled “untouched by human hands,” a cutting-edge innovation at the time.
Even the parlor’s stools and tiled walls found new life in Win’s design. Since photos of them were black and white, she had to imagine a color palette herself, weaving together memory, research and intuition.
Yet what truly sets preSERVE apart is its texture. Before affixing objects, Win painted the mural onto flat boards. Then came the layers: spoons, CDs, marker caps, broken tchotchkes, aluminum tabs, bread tags, tiles and countless bottle caps collected from more than 70 households and businesses.
These objects – embedded in the mural – reflect both light and the environmental costs of everyday life.
“Spoons felt essential because of their direct connection to the subject,” Win explains. “But I also wanted people to think about how single-use plastics – utensils, straws – contribute to environmental harm.”
This ethic of re-use runs through all of Win’s practice. A self-taught artist, she has created three previous public re-use artworks and is co-founder and chair of the emerging Children’s Museum of Central Jersey, where she envisions a recycled art lab.
With preSERVE, Win aimed not only to preserve history, but also to spark awareness of the plastic crisis. By inviting the community to contribute materials, she turned neighbors into collaborators.
The back of the mural bears the names of every known donor.
Win’s ties to Metuchen run deeper than her current home. Born in neighboring Edison, she spent her childhood at Metuchen Dance Centre, performed in Forum Theatre productions, marched in parades and even painted faces at local fairs alongside her mother.
After stints working aboard cruise ships and studying across the country, Win returned to Metuchen with her husband and two children. Today, she teaches Artcycling workshops at the library and continues to nurture a passion for transforming discarded items into imaginative forms.
The mural’s name, preSERVE, reflects both her playful approach to language and her layered intentions. She often titles her work with compound words that capitalize their second halves – disCOVER, reMEMBER, skyCAP.
With the mural, the emphasis on “serve” recalls Costa’s service to the community, while “preserve” speaks to both history and environmental responsibility.
“I like my titles to function on two levels,” she notes. “The image itself, and the
materials hidden within it.”
Creating the mural wasn’t without challenges. For three months, the heavy boards occupied her basement playroom, where her young sons clambered over them to reach their toys. She broke a light fixture carrying one panel down the stairs.
Maintenance continues; a few pieces have rusted and needed reattachment. But the effort was worth it. Installed in the spring, the mural has become a point of pride and reflection, a place where nostalgia meets sustainability.
Ultimately, Win hopes that preSERVE stirs memories as much as it sparks dialogue.
“I hope everyone recalls a happy ice cream moment,” she emphasizes. “Ice cream is my favorite dessert, but really, it’s about the toppings.”
In a town that treasures its history and embraces the arts, Win’s mural ensures that
both sweetness and stewardship are served in equal measure.
