Category: Public Art
Earlier this summer when our team met with the Chicago Public Art Group, the muralist John Pitman Weber shared that at its core “art created collectively in public space allows for the re-birth of the identities of all involved.” After 40 years of leading the creation of murals in Chicago, Weber is acutely aware of the power of art to heighten our awareness of who we are and where we belong.
We met with Weber and his collective because Broder–a LEED Platinum real estate developer working on a new construction site in the upscale neighborhood of Lincoln Park, Chicago–had come to us wanting to bring art to that particular site. The 200,000 sq.ft. development is enclosed by a 75 ft. plywood fence. As a mindful developer, Broder was looking for an interactive, playful and family-friendly art piece to brighten the site and add beauty to the neighborhood.
Our aim was to understand Lincoln Park through the lens of community engagement. We proposed a three week process to understand different stakeholders, create artistic concepts inspired by the community and make the art. The final product would be a community-inspired art piece on the construction wall engaging the community and enhancing everyday experiences for people who live and work in that neighborhood.
limeSHIFT put out a call to artists from the midwest that create playful and bright public art pieces. Among them, we considered project proposals by Ruben Aguirre, Don’t Fret, POSE, and Mosher Show. Through comprehensive deliberation, the client selected a collaborative concept by artists Ellen Rutt and Patrick Ethen. Their dimensional patchwork concept felt inclusive and bright.
One of the art pieces created during our workshop at the Lincoln Park Community Shelter.
Working with a broad range of community organizations, from the Lincoln Park Community Shelter to the DePaul Museum and the local branch of the Public Library, limeSHIFT held pattern-making workshops where participants got the opportunity to express themselves through art-making. We think of these processes as alternate avenues to awaken the imagination. We also put out a call for people to submit artwork online via social media using the hashtag #LPPMus. All of this content would be used by the artists in the crafting of the final patterns that would make up the mural.
The Lincoln Park Patchwork Mural will exist for 18 months during the construction of the project and will be installed on the property of the completed building for the tenants to enjoy.
Colour in Faith is a global project conceived by limeSHIFT artist Yazmany Arboleda. It begins in Kenya with the intention to speckle the planet with yellow houses of worship. The colour yellow symbolizes light and dispels darkness.
In recent years, Kenya has been in the limelight on the global experience of increasing fundamentalist voices and acts of terror justified on religious grounds. This state of despair has hit every corner of the world, from Nice, to Paris, to Istanbul, to America. Colour in Faith begins a movement that reclaims these cities from those who wish them ill and reinstalls them into the hands of those who create art, culture and beauty.
The concept was developed in response to a call for an intervention that would facilitate a form of inclusive communication, and that would allow those who believe in acceptance, love and harmony to express these values, and reinforce them within themselves and with others. The call was also for collective action and strengthening of community. The result was a combination of civic engagement and peacebuilding with art, where a movement reinforcing religious pluralism would be created, culminating in a visual expression of love and harmony, through painting participating houses of worship yellow.
At the six-month mark, twenty houses of worship had committed to painting and the hosting organization, inCOMMONS (limeSHIFT partner) raised enough funds to paint three buildings. Colour in Faith received paint as a donation from Sadolin Paints. The East African Institute and Fatuma’s Voice (a forum that uses art, poetry and music as a tool for youth to express themselves) hosted five tweet chats on the relationship of faith with leadership, radicalization and patriotism one of which trended third in Kenya and reached 1.5 million people (#YellowKE).
The first three buildings were painted in June. Muslims and Christians came together and painted while entertained by poets. Painting the buildings represented a symbolic gesture that expressed growing community unity, belief in love and an expression of inclusivity as a result of the project. Local TV stations featured the project and its importance in creating cohesion and mitigating conflict in advance of the upcoming 2017 presidential election.
As resources are mobilized for more buildings, a new partnership has been developed with Nairobi City Hall. The project’s first phase also unearthed the limitations and challenges of altering religious structures. Hierarchy, bureaucracy, and corruption encumber many religious institutions from responding quickly to social challenges. These challenges include prejudice, estrangement, fear, political fragility and a myriad of reasons that tear people apart instead of bringing them together. In response to this, we have decided to use the next phase of the project to design a space in the center of the city built by and for all faiths reflecting a new collective narrative outside of the walls of religion.
In addition to lifting the city’s consciousness of Nairobi’s historic cultural and religious pluralism, the space will use place-making to address safety and improve the pedestrian experience. The space will build community and cohesion and allow for conversation.