The Baboon Congress

Neighborhood Art

57 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Anna.

I am spoiled. I live in a neighborhood where a library, a good grocery store, a decent bottle of wine and hand-roasted coffee are all within a block or two from my house. A little bit of nature is also nearby in the form of Minnehaha Creek. Folks on the block know each other, watch out for each other, and share in each other’s joys and triumphs. Kids sell lemonade to folks walking their dogs. I love my neighborhood, but I miss one thing from my old digs: art.

Or to be more precise, neighborhood art.

Neighborhood art is a wonderful thing. It’s art created by and for the folks who live in a small geographic area. Anyone can enjoy it, but it is created usually with a purpose – more than just having something visually appealing in a public place. It creates community, it brings neighbors together to talk where they might not have otherwise. The resulting work, whether it is a mural or art park or traveling piece, is almost secondary. It’s a potluck and neighborhood night out rolled together with some paint or sculpture. It’s more than public art, which can be anything from a Paul Granlund sculpture on Nicollet Mall to a commissioned mural on the side of a building – those are examples of private art displayed in a public place. True neighborhood art can be harder to find, but when you do find it, it can be awesome.

Fifteen years ago I wrote about the topic in a very earnest masters thesis (which I uncovered recently, which is the only reason I know the timing). Some of the art I wrote about is no longer around – like the mural on a sound wall that separated a now torn-down housing project from the freeway. Some of it has continued – like the fish mural (now slightly faded) on the NSP sub-station in my old neighborhood. The first mural was painted by folks who lived in the housing project along with the guidance and help of professional artists; they worked together to find symbols and imagery that reflected that community and what they hoped it could be. The NSP aquarium fish, well, that was because a couple of folks thought it would be fun to turn the plain, unadorned building into something a little silly, something colorful, something that could be come a rallying point for the neighborhood. An annual fish fry happened in the park kitty-corner from the NSP station – a gathering of the neighborhood with food and music and often a fish parade because a community got together and created something silly and neighborly. And that’s the thing with neighborhood art – some of it “sticks” and some of it doesn’t. Neighborhoods change, so does the art.

Driving from my neighborhood to my daughter’s piano lesson, I drive past some whimsical wraps over traffic light switch boxes. They start and end at the boundaries of a neighborhood and have images that reflect neat stuff happening there (huge onions from the local farmer’s market and a kid riding a trike in the snow are two of my favorites). A bit east of me is a big bronze rabbit that seems to call out for clover necklaces, giant red bows at Christmas and at least once an Easter bonnet. The bunny begs to be climbed on – and climbed on he (she?) is. Neither are in my neighborhood, but I love them. Other neighborhoods’ art, out where I can appreciate it.

My neighborhood doesn’t have much in the way of art. A commissioned mural, some one-off yarn-bombings, but not bring-the-neighbors-together-to-create-it art. I miss that.

What art do you see near you? What might you create?

57 thoughts on “Neighborhood Art”

  1. for a while i thought i would be living in a location that was the perfect place for art exhibits to be pondered. i had the notion of putting the space up for temporary exposure for up and coming artists looking to show their stuff. the recent notion of little neighborhood libraries out in front of houses/business could be adapted to be a model for art too. a permanant installation is a total and major commitment with the total future needing to be factored in but a 30/60/90 day slot in a rotating sculpture garden could be fun. i envision 100 locations and the participation of artists not only form here but from all over the place who want to celebrate the meeting of art and open public space. in my spare time, one more project. rotating art gardens? anyone got a location in mind that would accept rotating art? i really like the idea.

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    1. I have contemplated, even though I am right around the corner from a great library, putting up one of those Little Libraries. I like the idea of a rotating art installation or sculpture garden. I have contemplated, too, doing something interactive with hanging stuff on the branches of my pine tree – after reading about someone who did something I think with hanging wishes on trees in the Rose Gardens, I thought it might be fun to do something like that with my tree. Maybe a gratitude tree.

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    1. drives me crazy. why wouldnt you do it on a canvas or piece of paper so it could be lasting. hours of work and soul to wash away in the rain is cute sort of but not my cup of tea. wonder what they do when chalkfest is scheduled for a rainy weekend?

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      1. There are some well know artists who just provide instructions on how to do works of art that are temporary. The art is put up according to the instructions and erased, painted over, or taken apart when the show is over. My daughter has done some of this kind of art. She draws on a wall, then takes a picture of what she has done and erases the drawings.

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      2. I would bet that the ephemeral nature of chalk is part of the appeal. I know that’s part of the fun for me when I draw with Miss S.

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      3. That begs the question, is art an activity or a product? Personally, I enjoy the process of art making but never quite know what to do with the results. They just pile up. Producing art with a limited lifespan seems liberating to me.

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  3. Good morning. When my daughter was in grade school she was disappointed at not being picked to work on a mural. This was a mural painted by students at her school on a large wooden panel that was displayed on the side of the school. To help her get over her disappointment I decided to provide her with a large sheet of plywood she could use to paint a mural for us. She designed her own mural, painted it, and we displayed it on the side of our garage.

    I guess the mural was not actually community art. Our family liked having it there. I don’t think any of our neighbors had anything to say about it. It had a social message showing a mixture of white, black, and asian kids doing jumping jacks. Two of her close friends were Korean and they had been mistreated by other students due to the color of their skin.

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    1. nice idea on how to let her get involved. likely more liberating than painting a piece of the school mural would have been. she ended up in the arts didnt she?

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  4. Not much community art out here. I suppose you could count gardens as art. Husband and I aim for continuous bloom in our flower beds. It has shifted from Irises and roses to lilies now, The Maltese Crosses and Zagreb Coreopsis are in their prime, and the cone flowers are starting. Eggplant flowers are also pretty, and ours and starting now.

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    2. Good point, Renee. We have many nicely landscaped homes in town too as well as an annual Secret Garden tour that showcases 8-10 truly spectacular gardens that can’t be seen from the street. My wife has attended several tours and comes home awed by what people are hiding in their backyards.

      Chris in Owatonna

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    3. In Nova Scotia, the ditches everywhere we went were full of huge patches of blooming lupines. It was breathtaking. The rhododendrons were also in bloom.

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      2. i was referring to the timing of the blooms so the over lapping of the blooms is continuous. ive always wanted a chart as to the height and timng in south facing mid light and shady plants.
        also it was a good revalation to know lupines are the same thing as texas bluebonnets.

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        1. Wel sorta! Bluebonnets are a species of lupines endemic to Texas. There are lots and lots of lupine species, all members of the legume family. I’ve loved lupines since I was little girl, along with sweat peas, columbines, lilies of the valley, hollyhocks, peonies and dianthus. Old fashioned flowers with wonderful fragrance (except for the hollyhocks). In my garden today, weed infested as it is, I still can’t bear to yank out the columbines that seem hell bent on growing wherever they please.

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  5. In Owatonna we have a couple of murals painted on the walls of buildings. One vacant lot has two murals one on each building facing the lot. They depict some of Owatonna’s past history and were done by a local artist. He was contracted to decorate the walls until such time as someone bought the land and erected another building. It’s been several years now, and the space between buildings has become a nice little “pocket park” on Main Street.

    The other mural adorns the outer wall of a bike/skate shop and depicts people engaged in sport activity, mainly biking. (As far as I can recall, anyway. I might be hallucinating as to what’s on that mural.)

    We have a few folks who have some chainsaw art in their yards, but nothing much on a scale such as a mural or large sculpture. But we do have an active Arts Center in town that encourages artistic expression from everyone.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. I’ve mentioned before the chainsaw art sculpture about a block from my home. A little girl (about ten years old) stands smiling with a cat hooked in each hand, the cats looped over her hands in Us, looking like they are tolerating that well. I have heard that this is a statue commemorating a little girl who lived in that home, and she will always be ten because cancer took her then. She is very much with us, however, standing there happily with her two cats.

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  7. When my erstwife left, I could come up with no better plan than to walk the dog and try to understand what had happened. I developed a route on sidewalks in my neighborhood (thank the lord for sidewalks!) that took about 45 minutes to hike. At the far end of my northward loop I passed by some buildings of the St. Thomas campus, including McNeely Hall. It is just a business administration teaching area, and yet it became more to me as I walked by it daily. The reason why: there was a statue of the building’s benefactor in front, facing Summit Avenue. It was public art. And the only reason I was thrilled to see it each day was that McNeely had chosen a statue to made of himself that showed him not alone, but with his wife. The two of them gaze out over Summit Avenue together. Beyond that, he has a hand lovingly draped over his wife’s shoulder. You might not notice it at first, but if your heart is broken and you pass it every day, you do notice that small, natural gesture of affection and intimacy. It helps you believe in love again.

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    1. There is a link on that website for roadside attractions. Click on the enchanted highway. It is on the lower right hand side of the screen.

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  9. Rise and Droop Baboons!

    I am home sick today with a vicious sore throat and laryngitis–I will be gargling and sleeping intermittently. No art there, but if I find some energy I may go downstairs and make some.

    Meanwhile, what a wonderful topic Anna. Phoenix, that city which I find generally dirty and unappealing, has an artistic feature that I enjoy–many of the pedestrian bridges over the endless freeways there are shaped to reflect the skyline. So a bridge near a mountain will have a cover and railings shaped like the mountains. They also have sound barrier mosaics which have Hopi and Navajo themes. These are mostly animals such as lizards or scorpions.

    Steve mentioned that gardens are a form of art. I like to think of my garden as such. Like the chalk drawings, it is ever-changing and subject to the forces of weather. In tiny towns, Walnut Grove, MN comes to mind, there are stick fences around the gardens that become double art. I find them fascinating, drawing my eye to the shapes, the cracks and the hidden gardens behind them. Peeking through the cracks becomes part of the visual draw.

    Back in my days of working with adolescents in Chemical Dependency Treatment, I worked with several graffiti artists. I wish we had public spaces (kind of like a public sidewalk) for graffiti–they are so driven to draw and they do it whether it is legal or not. Some of them are such skilled artists.

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    1. One of my favorite buildings on Lyndale Ave is Intermedia Arts – their building gets a frequent makeover with fresh graffiti art. There is another building somewhere downtown, as I recall, that has opened a wall to graffiti. It’s a vibrant art form when it is used for more than “tagging.”

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  10. Seattle is a wonderful town for public art. I visited there years ago with my erstwife and her brother’s family. They had two girls around ten years old, both of whom were in gymnastics. Whenever we encountered a new statue of some city founder looking self-important the two gymnasts were up the statue like two little monkeys. I couldn’t help feeling that those old prominent citizens have had a long time to get used to a less formal way of expressing interest in their statues, and I doubt they mind now. Public art makes a statement: “We care about you, all of you, and hope that this art brightens your day.”

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  11. Public art in my neck of the woods is mostly in the form of the sidewalk poetry one happens upon while out for a walk. Some is amusing, some obscure, all of it is local.

    Gardening is also part of the local art scene. My morning routine has changed, so I don’t get my walk in like I used to, so I don’t know if the house with the entire retired bathroom fixture set, planted thickly with marigolds is still there or not. I may have to check on that today before it gets way too hot. Made me laugh every morning.

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  12. Does the Madonna in a bathtub in my next door neighbor’s yard count? There are lots of murals in my neck of the woods, most of them painted by students with the assistance of local artists, and community gardens have been springing up all over the neighborhood in recent years; vacant lots that spontaneously have been taken over by rogue gardeners. Boulevard gardens, some of them planted with beans, are getting neighbors acquainted and networking. Recently, The Garden of Good Hearts, a community flower garden on a vacant lot, had a bench and bicycle rack made by an artist from Minneapolis installed. We had a garden party at the end of June to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the garden. George Latimer, our former mayor, and Dave Thune, member of the St. Paul City Council, both spoke at the event. I am currently trying to arrange for a Little Library to be installed in that garden. Recently, a temporary wall, shielding a renovation project in a downtown skyway became a participatory piece of art with passers-by who responded to the artist’s unfinished sentence: Before I die I…. I love public art. Great topic, Anna.

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  14. Me again. Mears Park in Lowertown is one of a number of wonderful small oases in St. Paul. People living in the buildings surrounding the park have over the years taken it upon themselves to adopt sections of the park and planted some very nice flower beds. Not only do the buy and pay for the plants, they maintain them as well. St. Paul is a great place to live.

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  16. One example I can think of is the Blue Heron Project in 2007 in Winona – originally as a fundraiser for city wide fine arts commission, I think.
    http://blueheronsculpture.com/index.html
    Various herons can be seen while driving around Winona, in yards and on porches, in parks…

    At Tapestry (Folk Dance Center) in S. Mpls., there have at times been quilts displayed on the walls, and some are for sale. At other times, folk costumes have also been dislplayed in the same manner – I think it was skirts – and you could have one if you brought another to replace it.

    These aren’t exactly art by the whole community, but art brought to the community. Will have to keep thinking about this, Anna.

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  17. Hope this isn’t a repeat. I had it ready to post when something flipped and it was gone. I don’t see it in the comments, but I guess it could still pop up; sorry if it’s redundant. Anyway, if you went to the Flint Hills Children’s Festival in downtown Saint Paul last month, you may have seen the Story Time Tree. It’s an amazing work of art carved from the trunk of a huge cottonwood tree that was pulled out of the Mississippi near the High Bridge a couple of years ago (the first link below tells its story). The evening of the last day of the festival, I went back to take pictures of the tree without the crowd. Workers were dismantling the event and I asked if the tree would be a permanent fixture in the park. They knew it was being moved but didn’t know where except that it would be somewhere at or near Como Park. I tracked down the artist and emailed him to thank him for his magical creation and to ask if he knew where the tree would be. It is now on display at 1100 Hamline Avenue North in Saint Paul, outside the Forestry Division at the Saint Paul Parks Department headquarters (not far from the Humane Society animal shelter). It’s slightly less marvelous without its crown of flowers, but still well worth seeking out. I plan to visit it often; there’s always something I missed the last time every time I look again.
    http://www.twincities.com/stpaul/ci_20746357/flint-hills-childrens-fest-tree-turned-art-is and http://www.ordway.org/festival/artgarden/

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    1. Yes, indeed. I think it gets easy to lose sight of the art that is right around you – whether it’s a garden, a mural, a sculpture you walk past every day. And now I have a reason to travel to western North Dakota, parts of St. Paul I haven’t been to in a while, Winona…And maybe I will just go ahead and figure out something for my front pine that folks can add to and interact with – worth a go, anyway.

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  19. Oh man, I can’t think of the word(s) for this, but I consider this community art: when people in the mall start singing and others come along and chime in, creating this spontaneous musical experience! Lisa has known about plans for some that, so far, I haven’t been able to participate in, but I hope to be in one some day. What’s it called, babooners?

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  20. Neighborhood House has a mural by artist Evelyn Rosenberg that I like to visit. The description from the artist’s web site says:

    “The mural was commissioned as a memorial for Paul and Sheila Wellstone, who were killed in a small plane crash twelve days before the elections in Minnesota in which Paul was running for a third term as Senator. The mural is located in the rotunda of Neighborhood House, an immigration center in St. Paul, Minnesota, is 93 feet long and consists of 11 panels. The mural reflects in quotes and images the commitment of the Wellstones to the idea of community and immigration. One of the quotes, ‘we all do better when we all do better,’ is translated into multiple languages.”

    I especially like the tree of life. You can see an image of it here if I have engineered my link successfully. Better yet, go see it in person.

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