Art and Vocab

Since Mr. Borba works mostly with found or discarded materials — broken tiles, pieces of wood, rusted metal, plastic bottles — supplemented by power tools, duct tape and other everyday objects, the proclivity of New Yorkers to throw things away also excites him.

This ebullient artist is also the subject of the new documentary, “Bel Borba Aqui: A Man and a City,” which is scheduled to open at the Film Forum on Oct.

Mr. Borba’s project, called “Diário,” or “Diary,” is part of the international multimedia “Crossing the Line” festival, sponsored by the New York branch of the French Institute Alliance Française; other participants include the guitarist Bill Frisell and the director Peter Sellars.

“I think I’ll call this mural ‘Global Cooling,’ ” Mr. Borba said with an animated cackle as he stepped back to survey and decide on finishing touches for the work, which he and some assistants had begun barely three hours earlier.

On the maroon-colored external wall of a furniture factory, the Brazilian artist Bel Borba was busy making a large mosaic of white tile, portraying a globe surrounded by objects that looked like a cross between sunflowers and mechanical fans.

It was an odd sight for an industrial street in the Ridgewood section of Queens, so of course the delivery-truck drivers, the workers from nearby manufacturing plants and other curious passers-by felt compelled to stop, look and ask questions.

“I went to Salvador at a time when I was feeling very cynical about art and artists, but meeting Bel, feeling his energy and seeing his work and the way he inspires and is inspired by his community, that restored my faith in art.”

A recent trip to scout sites and materials suitable for transformation left Mr. Borba enthusiastic, for example, about out-of-commission plastic traffic barriers, which he then cut into figures that resemble both totem poles and robots.