Brief thoughts about my installation “Public Walls and In-Between Spaces” – on view at Creative Pinellas Gallery and awaiting your participation (5/9 – 7/21/24).
Beauty is not an elitist luxury.
– John O’Donohue (Beauty – The Invisible Embrace)
I want to draw your attention to urban outdoor aesthetics – public, accessible, overlooked, dismissed, shunned, weathered, distressed, illegal, provocative, informative, creative, nurtured, ignored, changing, surviving, thriving, loved, undeniable, beautiful.
There are several aspects to this artwork:
Physical: my photographs hand-transferred into the wood of a privacy fence constructed into a shelter with Florida native plants growing outside and someone’s belongings on the inside.
Performance: taking care of the plants I’ve grown from seeds and rescues.
Interactions: discoveries, conversations, and actions sparked by the exhibit and its elements. Actions include what people do inside the installation, e.g. adding to the walls.
Social actions: change in behavior after leaving the exhibit, sparked by the installation and interactions.
Do you see beauty here?
Street artists’ work created or hung at night for free (illegally) turning our streets into public art galleries, message boards, and socio-political prompts.
Decaying buildings and signs of human industriousness reverberating with past hope and history.
Animals and wildflowers (weeds?) surviving, even thriving in the margins.
Maybe the most invisible, yet present, element of the urban outdoors so many of our gazes filter out: the unhoused people living in-between, in our shared public spaces.
Past and future:
The photos I took in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Poland, France, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, New York, Colorado, California, Texas, Indiana, and St. Pete.
Hand-transferring photos to wood and integrating live plants helped me make peace with unpredictability and imperfection. Thus, I’m open to what happens next with the installation. It may sell at this exhibit, or it may turn into temporary public art outdoors where someone might…
Thank you to everyone a Creative Pinellas, my mentor Victoria Jorgensen, and my partner Scott Solary for all the wood-working. And thank you to all the (street) artists who make our world more beautiful and interesting.
Purchase prices: $15,000 (entirety), $4,500 (per wall), $1,200 (per 4-plank panel), $1,800 (per 6-plank panel), $400 (per planter box). I will donate 25% of profits.
If you’d like to donate directly: https://www.pinellashomeless.org/donate
The above is the abbreviated version [due to word count restrictions] of my original artist statement that I had to submit to Creative Pinellas weeks ago. Today, I would have included other aspects – because the installation has grown and changed a bit – and so have I. But today, I don’t have time to revise and rewrite because the exhibit is around the corner!
2024 Emerging Artist Exhibition
May 9 – July 21, 2024
Opening Reception: May 9, 6pm – 9pm
12211 Walsingham Rd,
Largo, FL 33778
The Gallery at Creative Pinellas
Wednesday – Sunday
10am – 5pm
12211 Walsingham Rd,
Largo, FL 33778
