WEEK 4: BRIDGE

This week we decided to connect with a new Elsewhere project, a mural for under the bridge under the Hamburger Square Railroad Tressle.  We spent a long time in class talking about how communities connect with an image in their downtown.  George went into detail about his intimate relationship with the Public Art Endowment and what kind of languages we are using to explain our case for art — financial, political, social, spatial, and much less aesthetic.  We talked about how murals can impact a community, not only through images but through ideas, and how they can operate as place-making connectors.

After a long lecture, we rolled on down to the railroad tressle, awkwardly crossing the street (maybe we can get some street re-routing as part of this project!) and then making it to the large wall where the mural would be.  Instead of paint, we approached the wall with pieces of white chalk.  It was rather exhilarating to chalk together all over the wall—without much permanence or consequence but instead seeing how the whole picture evolved with each of our parts added and coming together.  At one moment, we switched positions and drew upon one another’s work, which added to the feeling of having an enormous collaborative impact on the space.  It’s nice too because the white chalk is not invasive, but when you get close, the wall just opens up entirely and so many stories run into one another.

The mural won’t be completed until next May, but it is the perfect time now to be building community support for a work that will fundamentally change downtown as we know it.  Meanwhile, we can continue to play and make space in those unusual places.