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Last Saturday, “Feel Art Again” featured collaborative art projects from secrets on postcards to traveling sketchbooks. Today, we’re focusing on those collaborative art projects that decorate or beautify public areas.
New York City’s Urban Forest Project (2006) had 185 designers and artists, as well as 22 mentor/student pairs, create posters employing the idea or form of trees. The resulting posters were displayed throughout Times Square and were recycled into Jack Spade totebags and sold once the display was over. 186 posters are viewable, and downloadable as PDFs, on the project’s web site.
Deckchair Dreams is an ongoing project in its third year at London’s Royal Parks. This summer, 23 artists and celebrities designed deckchair canvases along the theme “The Rare and Wonderful Things of the Royal Parks.” The project aims to brighten the parks while also raising money, through the sale of the deckchairs, for the Royal Parks Foundation. The current canvases can be viewed and purchased on the project’s web site.
One of the most common collaborative public art projects entails the decoration of large, sculptured animals that are then placed throughout a city. Baltimore had crabs, Norfolk had mermaids, and CowParade and Buddy Bears were global. The animals are usually only a temporary installation, often followed by an auction to raise money for a charity or organization. In 2006, the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia had “AbZOOlutely,” the first time a city has used a whole “zoo” of animals instead of just one or two. Throughout the fall, 50 decorated animals were displayed throughout the area and served as a scavenger-hunt of sorts. AbZOOlutely culminated in an auction. The proceeds from the auction, the accompanying raffle, and sales of AbZOOlutely merchandise—nearly $80,000—benefited the community fund, preservation and beautification, and the Philadelphia Zoo. The project’s web site includes photos of the animals, results of the auction, and the map.
Of course, these lists of collaborative art projects have not been exhaustive. So let us know if there’s a cool one we missed, or what kind of animals inhabited your town.
“Feel Art Again” appears every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. You can e-mail us at feelartagain@gmail.com with suggestions of artists or details on current exhibitions.
Shhh…super secret special for blog readers.
Comments (34)
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Spirit bears and killer whales – Go BC!
When I was in New Orleans, I saw fish.
Some of these things are beautiful, some are very funny, and some are, frankly, hideous. Not sure how I feel about the whole project.
posted by Mare on 7-19-2008 at 12:06 pm
Detroit has a number of community art projects, one of the most famous of which is the Heidelberg Project.
posted by Nicole on 7-19-2008 at 1:04 pm
Cincinnati has Pigs. For a while there was a bit of an exhibit downtown, but now you can find them all over the city. Baseball pig at the stadium. “Ham”let at the shakespeare company. Etc. It’s pretty cute for tourists.
posted by maxiebob on 7-19-2008 at 1:15 pm
Tulsa, Oklahoma has penguins. They started as a publicity thing (possibly a fundraiser,too?) for the new (at the time) penguin exhibit at the zoo. But people loved them and they stayed. They really are cool.
posted by Melissa on 7-19-2008 at 1:22 pm
The mermaids in Norfolk are everywhere! Some of them are particularly beautiful (like the one outside of the Nautilus Museum), but there are a few I may have “accidentally” lost before they were installed.
posted by adrienne on 7-19-2008 at 1:37 pm
Jackson, MS had catfish. They were, for the most part, quite awesome. The Dalifish was best – his mustache suited well.
posted by Aemi on 7-19-2008 at 2:09 pm
Maxiebob didn’t mention the other two in Cincinnati I like, the ballet pigs and the Superman pig you see as you’re driving downtown
posted by Reggie on 7-19-2008 at 2:20 pm
In Fort Wayne, IN we had Mastodons.
check out IPFW Mastodons on Parade
posted by sid on 7-19-2008 at 3:10 pm
Tiffin, OH (20 minutes from my town) has squirrels, and I believe Port Clinton, OH had birds of some kind.
posted by Laura R. on 7-19-2008 at 3:57 pm
Saratoga Springs, NY, has done two rounds of “Horses, Saratoga Style” (fitting since it’s a horse-racing town).
posted by M on 7-19-2008 at 4:49 pm
Custer, SD — buffalo
posted by Kay on 7-19-2008 at 6:20 pm
DC has Pandas for a while.
posted by Dawn on 7-19-2008 at 6:31 pm
Austin has guitars. They were in Nashville a couple of years back, too.
posted by nikki on 7-19-2008 at 6:46 pm
Rockford IL had/has sock monkeys.
posted by Karin on 7-20-2008 at 1:25 am
Toronto had moose, painted by local artists and scattered around the city
posted by BB on 7-20-2008 at 8:12 am
In Billings, MT we have “The Horse, Of Course” There are horses around town decorated with paint, mosaics, etc.
posted by Melissa on 7-20-2008 at 9:48 am
the Heidelberg Project isn’t a city sanctioned project. It’s the art work of Tyree Guyton. Though he does get the sourounding community invovled, City officals hate it. When Archer was mayor he had it torn down. But Tyree rebuilt it. i haven’t seen it since it was torn down by Mayor Archer but i hope it’s as great as ever.
posted by katherine on 7-20-2008 at 1:36 pm
In Trier, Germany last year they had big ivory colored feet all around the city for months…weird. They were so big that you could sit on the toes. I always wanted to know the story behind them but I didn’t speak German all that well…
posted by Brandy on 7-20-2008 at 7:33 pm
Lexington, KY did horses.
posted by Miss Cellania on 7-20-2008 at 8:34 pm
San Luis Obispo, CA had some sort of fish. Looked like trout or something, but I’m sure I’m wrong.
I think there’s only one left….
posted by Amanda on 7-20-2008 at 8:35 pm
when I lived in Zurich in 1998, they did a cow, but i never figured out how (or if) they were connected with the cow parade, since it wasn’t started till 1999
evidently, they had done lions in previous years and then did benches (bench is ‘bank’ in german so they were swiss banks) when I left.
posted by mel on 7-20-2008 at 9:42 pm
Here in Halifax, Nova Scotia we have had two sets of projects like the mermaids or the buddybear, one was with lobsters and the other was mermaids of sorts…they were done by haligonian artists and were also auctioned to the public and to various businesses.
posted by Ghazal on 7-20-2008 at 9:42 pm
Louisville has horses, as well, to reflect the Derby, but I guess they’re a relatively common art project.
posted by Alex on 7-20-2008 at 9:49 pm
DC also had Donkeys and Elephants quite some time back.
posted by Erin on 7-20-2008 at 10:08 pm
Very nice blog. Crystal City (in Arlington Virginia) did airplanes and the University of Maryland put their mascot (Testudo) at important locations across the state.
posted by William on 7-20-2008 at 10:14 pm
Winter Park, FL (a suburb of Orlando) has “Artygators,” some of which are pretty awesome. Their official site is ArtyGator.com, but it doesn’t have many pictures. Click my name to go to a blog that does have some.
posted by Celeste M. on 7-20-2008 at 10:56 pm
Reader Charliy wrote in about Nashville’s public projects: giant catfish and big guitars.
posted by Andréa Fernandes on 7-20-2008 at 11:58 pm
Much thanks to everyone for making this post the most commented “Feel Art Again” post!
posted by Andréa Fernandes on 7-21-2008 at 12:10 am
Lincoln, NE had bicycles–many of which are still displayed even though they were auctioned off.
Omaha, NE has had two projects that I know of–currently, large “O!” sculptures are sprinkled throughout the city. They’re not as cool as they could be, but far better than Omaha’s first venture into public art, which brought about the “J. Doe” invasion–sexless, human-esque forms. I thought they were really creepy.
posted by kate on 7-21-2008 at 10:45 am
Pensacola has decorated pelicans all over downtown…they too were supposed to be temporary, but people loved them so they stayed put. I see tourists taking pics of them all the time :]
posted by laura on 7-21-2008 at 12:52 pm
disney had a whole collection of mickey mouse statues (some were really cool)
los angeles does angels yearly, and each year a new angel sculpture is used for the project.
posted by tami on 7-22-2008 at 1:57 pm
Chicago had cows for a while–I think because of the cow that “supposedly” started the Chicago fire.
They auctioned them off afterward, and you still find some of them in buildings downtown and in some suburban yards.
posted by Kaitie on 7-24-2008 at 3:55 pm
I’m proud to say I’ve seen the Toronto moose, the Norfolk mermaids, the MD terrapins, and others… But I especially liked Chestnut Hill’s “zoo,” maybe because they were pretty close together, so it was easy to photograph the full menagerie in one visit.
Great post!
posted by Therese on 7-24-2008 at 5:25 pm
Lexington, Kentucky has also done Wildcats, as that is the mascot of the local university.
posted by EightAsterisks on 8-5-2009 at 2:42 pm