This oil painting, courtesy of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation, depicts an auto parts yard on the corner of Hunts Point Ave and Randall Ave from the late 1980s..

Emilio Sanchez made his first trek down Hunts Point’s Food Center Drive in 1988, when he was 67, to an art gallery in the caverns of the Krasdale Foods complex where his art was being shown.

His friend Sig Balka, general attorney for Krasdale and art connoisseur, was showing Sanchez’s work in the gallery he runs, a hidden art enclave across from the Hunts Point Meat Market.

Passing through the urban landscape of the commercial and industrial district, Sanchez was struck by what he saw.

Over the next few years, he returned often, camera in hand, to snap photos that would become the basis for nearly a hundred works, a Caribbean-flavored catalogue of South Bronx commerce. He captured the industrial drab of the neighborhood in a bright and idyllic way, revealing life behind the dingy walls.

Now, some of his works are being shown in an exhibition called Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Eight pieces will be on display until September, when the full show opens.

In all, 27 oils, watercolors, and drawings, as well as photographs from the museum’s permanent collection, will be shown. The architectural portraits portray commercial and industrial buildings with clean lines, harsh shadows, and stark perspective.

“He was inspired by the area,” said Balka, who had become friends with Sanchez through mutual artistic interests. “And he felt related to the people of a similar Hispanic origin.”

Hunts Point was not the artist’s only South Bronx stomping ground. Some of his paintings also reflect his interest in Mott Haven. One painting depicts a deli at the corner of Lincoln Ave and 136^th St. The green awning shown in the piece is long gone, as are the former owners, where a bodega now stands.

Sanchez was born in Cuba in 1921, and received his primary education in boarding schools around the United States. In 1944 he came to the city to study at the Art Students League, and stayed until his death in 1999.

“This period in the late eighties he seems to have devoted to the Bronx,” said Ann Koll, executive director of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation in Manhattan. The foundation donated a selection of works to the museum earlier this year.

“I love the educational value of his work,” said Sergio Bessa, program director at the Bronx Museum. “It’s simple, clean, and dramatic.”

Bessa plans to bring students from South Bronx schools to the exhibition later this year.

A video by artist Laura Napier showing some of the buildings Sanchez portrayed in his paintings, along with an interpretation of his works, will also be shown.

“You can see that Sanchez reconstructs the buildings,” said Napier. “He didn’t just paint the photos.”

To supplement the artwork, teens from the museum’s summer youth program are producing audio podcasts of interviews they conducted with people from Hunts Point.

“It’s nice to see his interpretation of the Bronx,” said Elliott Harris, 15, a participant in the youth program. “It’s not the way the media portrays it.”

Alfred Rivera, who moved to Hunts Point with his family when he was three in 1945, remembers when the triangular building on the corner of Hunts Point Avenue and Faile Street was a pickle factory. “I remember stealing one or two when we’d pass by as kids,” he said.

Rivera, who bought the building in 1971 for $25,000, opened the liquor store seen on the corner in Sanchez’s painting. “I’d recognize it in a heartbeat,” he said. “That’s my color, I picked the red because I thought it’d attract attention.”

Tony Serrano works across the street from the yellow-walled Auto Parts yard depicted by one of Sanchez’s paintings. The yard is still there, on Hunts Point and Randall Avenues, but the wall is no longer yellow.

“I was here when it was the worst,” said Serrano, looking at a print of the painting and thinking back on his 40 years in Hunts Point. “I need to see this, it makes me proud to still be here,” he said.

“It really jumps at you,” said Trudy Sanchez, a Hunts Point resident who came to the neighborhood in 1957. “I love the vibrant colors, the brightness,” she said, leaning over the counter of MOgridder’s BBQ truck, where she works.

“His work encompassed his spirit,” said Balka. “It was flamboyant but restrained.”

“It’s an industrial setting viewed through an optimistic lens,” said Bessa. “Not the color pallet you expect.

SummerStage Dance 2010, will be in St. Mary’ Park this weekend. Rennie Harris RHAW and Le Soul Afrique with Special Guest Akim Funk Buddha will perform on Friday, June 25, at 7 p.m. Abakua Afro-Latin Dance Company and Areytos Performance Works will be on stage on Saturday at 7.

One of the culprits in a scandal that has cast a shadow on Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo and City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo is headed to a federal pen for the next 10 months. Margarita Villegas pleaded guilty to embezzling $50,000 from a non-profit housing corporation that manages low income apartments. Next up, Richard Izqierdo Arroyo, who admitted stealing $115,000, some of which prosecutors say went to the assemblywoman and councilwoman, his grandmother and aunt, respectively.

Friends of Brook Park has a plan to create oyster and mussel beds in the Bronx Kill, which separates Mott Haven from Randall’s Island. The organization is awaiting word from the feds about a $50,000 grant for its proposal to clean up the polluted water nature’s way.

Assemblyman Michael Benjamin won’t challenge Congressman Jose Serrano this year, but won’t rule out a run in 2012, when new district lines are drawn. Benjamin is giving up his seat in the State Legislature.

A refugee from Sierra Leone, who attended International Community High School in Mott Haven was stabbed to death in Washington Heights Sunday. Police said 18-year-old Mohamed Jalloh, who lived in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, was seen arguing with a group of men in a McDonald’s.

Mott Haven has a new landmark, the seven-story Haffen building in the Hub. The Landmarks Preservation Commission also began considering creating a Grand Concourse Historic District stretching from 153rd to 167th Street.

Thirty-three-year-old Tamar Brown was killed on Courtlandt Avenue near the Melrose Jackson Houses Sunday. Police said he had been shot several times.

A soldier who grew up in Mott Haven was murdered on an Army base in Georgia. Master Sgt. Pedro Mercado, 47, a father of three was shot several times. Police have not identified the shooter, who turned himself in and is in custody.

Thieves broke in to St. Rita’s Shrine Church in Mott Haven and stole chalices and communion plates, some jewel-encrusted.

One hundred trees along the Grand Concourse are part of the Tree Museum, a summer-long public art project to celebrate the street's 100th anniversary. Bronx student James Kane of All Hallows High School narrates for this amur corktree in Joyce Kilmer Park.

The Grand Concourse, the iconic boulevard that stretches along four miles of the Bronx, has 100 years of stories to tell. This summer and fall, Bronx residents are lending their voices to share those stories—through the trees that line the street’s parks and sidewalks.

The Tree Museum is the creation of Irish artist Katie Holten, who was commissioned to create a work of public art to celebrate this year’s 100^th anniversary of the Grand Concourse.

From 138th street to Mosholu Parkway, 100 trees tell their stories. Green discs on the sidewalk bearing the Tree Museum logo identify the trees and offer a phone number that visitors can call, either from home or from their mobile phones, to hear a short audio clip about the Bronx narrated by people who live and work in the community.

“It’s kind of like an Easter egg hunt,” Holten said of the markers scattered along the Concourse.

Call tree number 6, a honey locust in front of the post office at 588 Grand Concourse, and you’ll hear community activist Majora Carter talk about growing up in the Bronx. Harry Bubbins, director of the local environmental group Friends of Brook Park, narrates for tree number 13, an American elm at the entrance to Franz Siegel Park.

Call this tree outside the post office at 588 Grand Concourse to hear Majora Carter, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx, talk about growing up in the South Bronx.

Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan, who participated in the project, said he thinks using trees is an appropriate way to celebrate the street’s centennial.

“The Grand Concourse is noted for the fact that it’s tree-lined,” he said. “That’s one of the things that makes the Grand Concourse outstanding, so it made a great deal of sense.”

Ultan made recordings for seven different trees along the Concourse, offering historical facts and anecdotes about the street.

Opened to traffic in November of 1909, the Concourse was modeled after the Champs Elysees in Paris, and soon came to mark achievement in the borough, Ultan said.

“The Grand Concourse in the Bronx was the equivalent of 5th Avenue and Park Avenue in Manhattan,” he explained. “It was a symbol that you had made it.”

Holten said she knew very little about the area when she launched the project in 2007.

“I spent about two months researching and spending as much time as possible on the Concourse,” she said.  “I kind of fell in love with it.”

Organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wave Hill and the Department of Parks and Recreation, The Tree Museum debuted on June 21st and will run until Oct. 12th.

The audio guide is available by calling (718) 408-2501 and entering the extension for any tree, numbered 1 to 100. More information, including a map of the project, can be found at www.treemuseum.org.