Crown Fountain, Jaume Plensa, Millennium Park. via Chicago Now

“[P]ublic art that truly engages and creates a real relationship with the public and creates a social common ground is rarer. Plensa’s fountain does that and effectively blurs completely the line between art and public. This is urban planning in the service of both art and the city’s populace.” – Dawoud Bey

via Chicago Now

Photographer Dawoud Bey writes a perceptive and thoughtful article about Chicago’s Millennium Park and implicitly – and respectfully – challenges the Burnham Pavilion projects by architects Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel’s UNStudio to live up to the success of James Plesna’s Crown Fountain. This is not just a question of numbers but how public art might create a public for itself, so to speak, without simply replicating its commonest preferences – or deigning to engage them. As Bey writes about the Crown Fountain:

“From bathing suit and Pamper clad small children splashing and laying in the shallow reflecting pool, to groups of teenagers lounging nonchalantly and parents sitting on the side or splashing with their children, Jaume Plensa’s fountain is a fantastical high tech urban concoction. It appears to be an urban black granite clad beach plopped right smack in the middle of downtown.”

One thing I particularly like about Bey’s writing is the way he approaches the public art experience. It isn’t just his pleasurable familiarity with a favorite venue – “As I so often do when the weather gets warm I took a stroll over to the Crown Fountain while I was downtown on other business.” It is also his sense of the art as an activation, not merely a destination.

“The periodic spouting of water from the mouths of the subjects brings everyone rushing to the spout in a mass of soaking wet multifarious humanity, reminding us that there are indeed moments, even in “the most segregated large city in America,” when we are more alike than different in our common citizenship.”

Not surprisingly, the notion of art that  “creates a real relationship with the public and creates a social common ground”; that “literally reflects the very public [it is] meant to engage, thereby allowing everyone to see themselves in it”; that reflects “that there are indeed moments . . . when we are more alike than different in our common citizenship” is equally applicable to Bey’s own remarkable photographic work over the past 35 years.

Dawoud Bey, "Brian and Paul," 1993, Polaroid. via Walker Art Center. Copyright the artist.

via Walker Art Center

Fulton Favorites was funded by a grant from the Fulton Neighborhood Art Committee. (Fulton is my neighborhood in Minneapolis.) The purpose of the project was to build community by bringing neighbors of all ages together to make unique lawn signs that express their favorite aspects of our neighborhood. I held about 10 workshops this summer to teach residents how to make the signs. During the workshops, I guided the artists through the process of sketching, making a final design and translating their designs into a colorful image, simplified enough to make a good lawn sign. The settings ranged from childcare programs to block parties and park festivals. Some adults made theirs at home after picking up a packet of materials from me.

Residents made140 unique lawn signs. The materials were very user-friendly and weatherproof: 10 colors of self-adhesive vinyl on a vinyl board. The signs were installed at the park to be enjoyed as a group at the annual Fulton Fall Festival.

The best part of the event was watching people come browse through all the signs or look for their own and proudly take it home! Lastly, participants took home their signs to display on their own lawns, store over the winter and reuse year after year. (Some people are STILL exhibiting their lawn signs in the snow!)

Finally, pedestrians, bicyclists and observant drivers who see these signs on certain blocks may realize that they are passing through Fulton Neighborhood, or near it. (In the spirit of inclusivity, we did allow other neighborhood residents to participate, since many Linden Hills folks and other neighborhood residents come to our schools, parks and festivals).

Gail Katz James

2009 Forecast grantees Grace Davitt + Anna Metcalfe  collaborated with Redeemer Lutheran Church + Redeemer Center for Life to host weekly outdoor dinners with one of a kind handmade ceramic tableware. At the last dinner participants were invited to take the dinnerware home with them to keep memories of the warm summer nights alive through the winter. Karis Thompson shares impressions of the event.

“A perfect summer evening for a meal outdoors.  Tables draped with linen and set with handmade ceramic dishware, each uniquely designed and glazed.  A menu showcasing locally raised meats and the harvest of urban gardens prepared collaboratively by seasoned and emerging chefs.  Music inspiring conversation and movement.  Neighbors and friends from near and far eating together, talking together – the meal and conversation extending well past the typical 20-30 minutes usually allocated for dining and ending only when all the food has been eaten or the sun begins to set.

How does this happen? And how did this happen in the Harrison neighborhood of North Minneapolis, a community whose median income and lack of whole foods offerings too often force a diet of affordable, accessible processed and fast foods?

It happened through the power of people and their connections and collaboration.  Through Grace and Anna who wanted to explore the synergies of community and art and slow food and invested much in the conceiving and realization of this Thursday Nights Out venture.  Through the commitment of neighborhood community gardeners – organized by Harriet – who lent their particular gardening wisdom and hours of cultivation to produce a striking harvest from the garden in Redeemer’s backyard.  Through neighborhood and visiting chefs passionate about recipes and taste and nurturing family and friends.  Through local farmers who raised meat and produce for our table.  Through volunteers gathering to cook and set tables and host a meal and wash dishes and greet neighbors from early in the morning to late in the evening each Thursday.  And through a community’s openness to new recipes, new ways of cooking and eating, new conversations and relationships, and collaborating through different ways of perceiving, communicating, interacting.

Thursday Nights Out gave us a taste of being and becoming a community nurtured by inspired food and the power of relationships.”

-Reflection by Karis Thompson