Each year on March 25, the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Ruth Sergel and a team of volunteers have installed "Chalk," a public art project commemorating the lives lost that day in 1911. Sergel, who also founded the
Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition has made a publicly available data map that records "
the name, home address, likely age, country of origin, and final resting place of all known Triangle Fire victims." Says Sergel, "The chalk will wash away but the following year we return, insisting on the memory of these lost young workers."
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posted by liketitanic
on Mar 26, 2013 -
7 comments
Richard Blanco,
a poet, teacher, and
engineer, was
chosen to be the nation's
fifth inaugural poet.
He is the author of the collections of
poetry "
City of a Hundred Fires," "
Directions to the Beach of the Dead," "
Place of Mind," and "
Looking for the Gulf Motel."
He is the first immigrant, first Latino, the first openly gay person and the youngest to be the U.S. inaugural poet. The poem
he read was "One Today" (
full text/
analysis)
posted by Potomac Avenue
on Jan 22, 2013 -
28 comments
The Caretaker of Dreams Wins The first time the rainbow mysteriously appeared on a tunnel visible from the Don Valley Parkway, the North York parks department painted over it.
But the guerrilla mural artist — known as “the Caretaker of Dreams” — persevered, eventually winning them over.
Now, 40 years later, the city has officially restored the psychedelic mural that has brought smiles to countless grim commutes — just as the artist intended.
posted by modernnomad
on Nov 3, 2012 -
25 comments
The
Comedy Carpet is an enormous public typographic artwork in Blackpool, England, for decades a waystation for every stand-up comedian and comedy troupe in the country. This giant expanse of typography – like a football field of flat concrete you can read and walk on – displays every punchline and catchphrase of 20th-century British comedy, up to and including the entire Monty Python “Parrot Sketch.” Designer Andy Altmann gives a
talk (
direct Vimeo version) describing the immense design, computation, and construction work that went into fitting all those letters together.
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posted by joeclark
on Jun 18, 2012 -
11 comments
Where can you find the Sun, the Moon, nine giraffes, a lion and lamb lying together, the Archangel Michael holding a sword in one hand and the severed head of Satan in the other, all atop a giant crab which is itself standing on a double helix? Well, there is
this one statue.
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posted by davidjmcgee
on Jul 21, 2010 -
50 comments
A Six Mile Inquiry Light rail is coming to Saint Paul and will change a significant stretch of a major urban street. An artist is using six miles of the street to showcase photography of local subjects.
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posted by ShadePlant
on May 17, 2010 -
13 comments
"
Event Horizon1 is meant to encourage viewers to 'reassess their environment and their position in it,' as [Antony] Gormley puts it, due to the sculptures' interruption of their usual surroundings—
London,
2 in its first installation in 2007, and
now New York.
3 'There's very little art in these things,' said Gormley of his figures, which he also refers to as 'three-dimensional shadows' and 'indexes.' The sculptures are but
copies of his body at a particular time,
4 in various poses. Where the 'art' is, then, is in what happens when viewers engage with the figures. 'When you then insert these still industrial fossils
into the stream of daily life and real context5 they can begin to be active in the same way that a chemical catalyst ... causes a transformation,' Gormley said. 'I would like to think that's what happening here.'
6 [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Apr 13, 2010 -
20 comments
I left this here for you to read: You can't buy this magazine in bookstores, and you can't subscribe to it. If you do find an issue, it's purely by chance: each month, 50 issues are printed and left in public places across the US and Canada. Each free, collaboratively produced, handmade issue contains short articles, small greyscale images, and sometimes tiny flat objects attached to the pages.
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posted by hurdy gurdy girl
on Apr 27, 2009 -
36 comments
LED Throwies (QT) A simple combination of lithium battery, diffused LED, strong magnet and a little tape. Developed by the Graffiti Research Lab division of the
Eyebeam R&D OpenLab, full instructions are
posted and take only a few minutes to follow.
posted by cali
on Feb 16, 2006 -
53 comments
From the website: "Since its inception in 1984, the
Mural Arts Program has completed more murals than any other public art program in the nation - more than 2,300 indoor and outdoor
murals throughout Philadelphia." To find a specific Philly mural by artist or location, try
this.
posted by moonbird
on Aug 20, 2003 -
8 comments
High Tec Shadow Play 'In Rotterdam, Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer used two 7000 watt lamps to create 1200 square metres of projected images which were overlayed by the shadows of passer-by's. A computer based tracking system monitored the shadows. Once the shadows matched the projected image, a new image (or "scene") was triggered. ' An impressive (if extravagant) bit of public art (QuickTime)
posted by rolo
on Jan 31, 2003 -
15 comments
