The Art Teacher’s Guide to Exploring Art and Design in the Community 9781350096301, 9781350096295, 9781350096332, 9781350096325

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The Art Teacher’s Guide to Exploring Art and Design in the Community

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY Computer Science Education: Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in School, edited by Sue Sentance, Erik Barendsen and Carsten Schulte Education and Technology, Neil Selwyn Mastering Primary Art and Design, Peter Gregory, Claire March, Suzy Tutchell Mastering Primary Design and Technology, Gill Hope Picture Pedagogy: Visual Culture Concepts to Enhance the Curriculum, Paul Duncum Reflective Teaching in Further, Adult and Vocational Education, Margaret Gregson and Sam Duncan with Kevin Brosnan, Jay Derrick, Gary Husband, Lawrence Nixon, Trish Spedding, Rachel Stubley and Robin Webber-Jones Reflective Teaching in Schools, Andrew Pollard with Pete Dudley, Steve Higgins, Kristine Black-Hawkins, Gabrielle Cliff Hodges, Mary James, Sue Swaffield, Mandy Swann, Mark Winterbottom, Mary Anne Wolpert and Holly Linklater

The Art Teacher’s Guide to Exploring Art and Design in the Community Ilona Szekely

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Ilona Szekely, 2022 Ilona Szekely has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. viii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover designer: Charlotte James Cover image © David Parsell All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Szekely, Ilona, author. Title: The art teacher's guide to exploring art and design in the community / Ilona Szekely. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021010168 (print) | LCCN 2021010169 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350096295 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350096301 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350096318 (epub) | ISBN 9781350096325 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Art--Study and teaching. | Artists and community. | Community arts projects. Classification: LCC N350. S94 2021 (print) | LCC N350 (ebook) | DDC 707.1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010168 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010169 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-9630-1 PB: 978-1-3500-9629-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-9632-5 eBook: 978-1-3500-9631-8 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents

List of Figures  vii Acknowledgments  viii

Introduction  1

Part I  Art in Public Places and Alternative Museum Sites  1 Service Places  19 2 Transportation  39 3 Food and Art  59

Part II  Community as Art Treasures  4 Exploring Alternative Museum Sites in your Backyard  73 5 Parks and Playgrounds as Extensions to Art Classrooms and Home Studios  89 6 Personal Connections  101

vi

Contents

Part III  Community Art Projects  7 Community Art  143 Conclusion  169 Notes  174 References  184 Index  193

Figures

2.1 Art Car outside 21C Art Hotel in Louisville, KY. Arillated: The 21C Pip Mobile  40 2.2 Underground art (Chicago, IL)  46 4.1 Seeing beauty in puddles  77 4.2 Creating Art on the School Fence (Steve Miller, Grassy Waters Elementary School)  84 5.1 Student-created outdoor art  90 6.1 Trees: Seeing the beauty and artistic possibilities in the outdoors (Kentucky Governor’s Mansion)  108 6.2 A doorway of art possibilities (The Commons Community Center, Columbus, Indiana)  113 6.3 The architecture of the bus stop (Bus shelter, 9 Aro Street Xoa Hall, Wellington, New Zealand)  117 6.4 Art that interacts and comments on the community (Abraham Clet, Florence, Italy)  133 7.1 Art vending machine (Madrid, Spain)  144

Acknowledgments

This book about community would not have been possible without a community supportive of me. Emilie Tackett, my amazing daughter, enthusiastically accompanies me in my world travels. Emilie became so immersed in the subject that she was able to provide essential insights from a student’s point of view. With ample camera equipment at his sides, my husband, David, was always prepared at each research site to take and retake a trove of photos that account for the exciting visual presence of the book. Professor George Szekely gladly shared his design, architecture, and art teacher background. Dad read and commented on everything I have written since I was a little girl, and continues to do so now as a proud colleague. My mother, Dr. Laura, a creative designer and teacher, provides for us all and has given me everything needed to succeed in life. In my academic career, I thank you, great teachers, especially my mentor Dr. Jane Jenson, and thank you, my nurturing colleague Dr. Julie Bucknam, for all I learned from you as a teacher and human being. The ideas for this book came from a lifetime of travel safaris with young students who walked with me to explore and add their designs to neighborhoods. Future art teachers traveled the world with me in our university summer programs abroad. Thank you, travel partners—your creative voices about each theme enlarged in the book. Deirdre Mikolajcik, my project editor, was helpful with suggestions always on the mark. Deirdre’s kindness and support never stopped streaming. Thanks, Ana and Jacob, my siblings, for your encouragement throughout this journey.

Introduction

Chapter Outline Introduction: The Search for Art and Design Begins in the Backyard Community-Based Art

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In this book, I draw on professional literature and research, including personal stories of leading students of all ages on city safaris and studies of the built environment. References in the book encompass several original writings and notes, photos, on-site sketches, and collections by students and art teachers. The material in the text closely follows a twentyfive-year career of exploring cities with children and high schoolers in the United States and leading yearly teaching-abroad programs. References in my teaching notes are about personal and original environmental observations, noting the reactions of my many students and their discoveries. Each section of the text offers a brief historical background and features examples of outstanding contemporary designers. There are practical and specific creative advice, and resources for students and art teachers, including helpful questions and discussion topics for everyone investigating the phenomenon of the city. Examples are often expansive in hopes of providing a broad brush of inspiring ideas. It is not possible to go into every small town and large city to provide examples. The hope is to afford just enough of an example so that each person can use these examples as guidance in creating their own experiences based on local knowledge and location. Intended for art teachers, this book offers something special for all school levels: for students of any age who will be excited to gather art ideas, canvases, and materials in the community for creative projects. The reading is to inspire teachers who wish to provide real-world encounters in their communities and who want to find interest and inspiration beyond the school building and art class. It is a book to support future and current art teachers who want to think beyond the traditional way of approaching art by involving students in experiences and narratives of exploring the treasures of the environment.

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I expect this book will be of particular interest to: ●●

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Preservice teachers who are thinking about and planning their future classrooms; Current teachers who are looking for ways to open up their art class doors to the community; Graduate students continuing or returning to school who are looking to add innovation to their classroom. Professors of art education who are seeking to engage students in a greater sense of community awareness and idea gathering from primary sources; and Community arts professionals who wish to use art in engaging students with the community.

The ultimate goal in creating this book is for everyone to discover aesthetic pleasure and inspiration in the art and design that exists outside of designated art spaces such as galleries and museums. The book can open valuable discourse about what art is, where it can be found, what has artistic value, and how the many gems in a city can be preserved. For art teachers, this book hopes to serve as a valuable guide for urban field trips. The book hopes to encourage students to actively explore community spaces and built environments and to learn different methods of collecting, examining, and utilizing urban finds in a variety of memorable school art activities. I believe this book is timely because twenty-first-century art has deep roots and presence in the community, yet school art is still mostly relegated to isolated art rooms. The book hopes to contribute to opening school doors and breaking boundaries between studying art in classes and experiencing art, of making art in—and for—the community. Independent Artists This book challenges students to become independent artists; to walk around their backyard and their city looking at the beauty and destruction as possibilities to reference, learn from, and be inspired by; and to challenge notions of what art is and where it can be produced. An artist who works independently collects and organizes ideas when navigating the world, whether through writing, diagramming, collecting, or taking pictures or videos on one’s phone. As art teachers, one of the challenges is how to nurture an artistic sense in students that ultimately does not require an art lesson or teacher. To do this, ideas need to be taken seriously in the classroom, and independence needs to be at the forefront by teaching students to pay attention through removing their electronic devices and interacting with the space. Yet technology can also be embraced, as it is now easier and more exciting than ever to organize thoughts and ideas. Easy to handle for students, phone apps can help sketch, jot down, recall, and organize notes, save ideas, and plan for the future. The ideas are then effortless to retrieve and keep safe. Helping students to organize their thoughts is a way to prepare students for the road for acting on them, clarifying them, and understanding supplies and tools needed. Learning Outside the Classroom This book also asks that art teachers take a stance on the value of learning outside the classroom. This is a concept that the British government already developed in 2006, when they published a manifesto called “Learning Outside the Classroom.” According to the document, “There is strong evidence that good quality learning outside the classroom adds much value to classroom learning. It can lead to a deeper understanding of the concepts that span traditional subject boundaries and which are frequently difficult to teach effectively using classroom methods alone.”

Introduction

The manifesto goes on to speak about the importance of the local environment around the school building providing a wealth of opportunities to enhance curriculum, and, as students get older, they can appreciate more distant and challenging environments, as they begin to understand the contrast to their own environment and places that reflect the world of commerce and technology.1 There is also discussion of the importance of staying away for a few days, observing nature, and involvement in cultural arts festivals. This document that held many stakeholders’ signatures is powerful in enacting change to how students learn and facilitating a push for learning beyond the four walls of school. The challenge then becomes: how does this permeate into the education of all children throughout the world, and, in the meantime, how does the art teacher give students the opportunity to have these experiences? This is an idea that educator Peter London placed a similar call to action on when in 1994 he stated in his book Step Outside, “It is ironic that in today’s schools, which depend increasingly on expensive audiovisual equipment to bring second hand news about the outside world to the classroom there exists a fine devise that is rarely used to its full advantage—the door.”2 It is these documents that are the framework this book is based upon.

Introduction: The Search for Art and Design Begins in the Backyard The rural town of Richmond, Kentucky, where I teach has a university art gallery. Forty-five minutes away in Lexington, there is a larger university museum, and there are distinguished museums in Cincinnati and Louisville that are a two-hour drive away. However, my students are future art teachers who grew up in small rural settings and have rarely, if ever, visited a gallery or a museum. From their houses, the drive to the nearest museum could take up to three or four hours. So where do art ideas come from? It is important to discuss and understand the role of any environment in forming aesthetic judgments and how a location can also provide the raw materials and inspiration for one’s artistic pursuits. Therefore, one of the initial outings as a class is not to a museum, but the local Walmart,3 an American multinational showcase of retail operations. Why Walmart? Because Walmart is the allAmerican store with a presence in towns that usually do not have a museum or home for traditional art collections. The people’s museum, Walmart houses and displays item that most Americans come across every day. Where people shop shapes aesthetic taste, so what better way to discuss art and design than to stand before items that are familiar and comfortable, with containers and forms, labels and packaging, all designed by artists. During the maiden trip, we discuss design and aesthetics, pondering over candy wrappers and detergent boxes. We look at the visual grandeur of the cereal aisle, the latest in children’s socks, pillows, and umbrellas. Students show interest in the new forms and colors, from materials used for water bottles and the uniqueness of paddings placed under fruits to preserve and present them, to the illustrations on lunch bags. We also enjoy and assess logos, product branding art, and clever box designs. During our outing, students recount the series of aesthetic decisions they make in preparing for

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school each morning—choices about clothes, colors used to paint their nails, the bags they carry to school, and so on. The Walmart trip introduces students to the first of many journeys we will take to examine the environment of the world’s largest art supply store; the display of, and source for, contemporary forms and materials for the art class; and a place where we make art judgments as well as art-making plans for our school art class. While it is important to attend museums and talk about the art regally hanging on the walls, for our Walmartists, many of the formal art places are far removed from accessible opportunities and experiences. In the stores and on the streets of our town, students need to walk with a vision, curiosity, and awareness of the many art possibilities percolating. Students need to begin to understand what catches their senses and interests, which means paying attention to, and learning from, the shapes and forms that comprise our streets, our stores, and homes. Every man-made environment elicits important discussions because these are places that were designed and created to be visually appealing, to enjoy and learn from, and, occasionally, to even take home with us. Unlike museums, the local environment also provides opportunities as a giant canvas for artists and school art students to reformulate and contribute to. Part of every excursion recorded in this book depicts my preservice and graduate students’ love for exploration, visual adventures, and finding hidden gems that they can bring back to class to use in their art. From boxes, plastic and paper containers, to twist ties, apple crates, and cardboard trays, students learn that they can often load up on the best art finds for free. We flock to the items that are not thought of as art or not always considered as having aesthetic value, and we make a home for them in the art room. Whether from the store, or the sidewalk, everything is discussed as a special find. It may be difficult to arrange for a long-distance museum trip for a class, but there are many opportunities to be found circling the school, excavating the school yard, and exploring adjacent neighborhoods on rural and urban safari. It is not difficult for a class to visit stores and the observations and discussions are easily transferrable to the art room. On many occasions, I simply unload items in class from weekend “shopping” trips and invite students to the grand opening. Who does not like packages and shopping bags being opened in class? Students are regularly invited to share their findings as the art class becomes a welcoming place for students’ environmental treasure hunting. Having aesthetic experiences in nature, on the street, in stores, and in public buildings also lends courage to students when they then enter museums because they have built up an aesthetic vocabulary to judge, compare, and discuss other forms of art.

How Everyday Places Form Visual Impressions This book does not focus on traditional galleries and museums, but everyday places where art and design linger while viewers often pass by, paying little attention to the aesthetics in our backyards. This book asks the viewer to look with new eyes at places that are seen every day because all the spaces we enter and all the places we pass through leave visual impressions. When we walk into a Starbucks or the supermarket, we pick up not only drinks and food, but scores of comfortably recognizable symbols based on visual prompts.

Introduction

Having the discussions in our small town prepares my students and me for a study-abroad trip and new visual experiences far from home. Within a few days of touring with students in Spain, they were in a McDonalds. When I asked why McDonalds when there are so many fantastic and inexpensive local eateries in Spain, the response was, “It feels like being home.” The feelings of comfort and home are well understood by advertisers and marketers who often aim to purvey a sense of the familiar with all the comforts of safety and security. Yet what happens when the visual is not comfortable? The answer to this question is perhaps best illustrated in the papers students wrote about their trip to a museum in Spain. For many, it was their first visit to any museum. Overwhelmingly, the response was, “I felt so uncomfortable when I first walked in. It seemed like a place that I didn’t belong.” While it’s important for students to have these first experiences and push their comfort levels, it is also valuable for them to start a search for art with what makes them feel comfortable. Art teachers need to appreciate where students feel comfortable and meet them where they are. There is always room for growth in visual appreciation and understanding, but this growth is not something that will occur, or only occur, just by being in a formal gallery or museum.

Art and Its Audience in the Community Art lives in all places, and the community is the largest museum. In the many small and large facets of our environment, there are so many things that are not discussed as art or not yet considered art. But walking down a street we pass the works of architects, sculptors, and landscaping artists, among others, which makes each outing an interesting opportunity for study. When we walk by a store there are window displays to consider, and inside there are packaging designs and visions for branding items. As art teachers, one of our biggest jobs is helping students learn how to visually navigate the world around them, to learn from and be inspired by the possibilities in everything. Our goals should be for students to consider each chair or street sign as having a visual story, possessing color, shape, symmetry, and made by a designer. No matter how big or small, every city or town where our students reside has playful colors, forms, and visual elements worth exploring. Fortunately, the art experience can be had in any community setting. As art teachers and future art teachers, we acknowledge the importance of taking students on visual adventures to explore art in the community. These may include sidewalk explorations to examine hidden alcoves or what may be stickered or colorfully plastered on the canvases of buildings. Each find of interest needs to be talked about, claimed, and acknowledged as art. The city safaris or adventures described in this text also need to be shared and sometimes collected in photos or sketches. Each step, walk, or skip through urban settings—looking up and bending down—broadens students’ appreciation and interest in seeking what art can be. Dissecting and peeling away elements of the man-made art world that envelops everyone is the project of street-art detectives. Nothing stays the same over time, and these walks can change based on the season or over the years. It is fruitful to note and discuss these changes with students in creating and developing their understanding of the environment.

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Community-Based Art Art Safaris in Neighborhoods This volume will illustrate what can be referred to as art safaris in the school and around the school’s neighborhood. These are not expensive field trips that require buses, yet they can yield valuable results. Chapters will offer examples and suggestions of what to look for and include interesting visual finds uncovered by students. For example, elementary students elevated sidewalk cracks and sewer grates to the level of outdoor arts. High school students documented street writing, such as signs, and collected samples of graffiti. Sculpture was studied in the form of neighborhood playgrounds and furthered in students’ own playground designs. Design art was referenced in the context of local bus shelters, outdoor furnishings like benches, bike racks, and handmade signs in a neighborhood that say, “Slow Down Children at Play.” Every community has its distinct flavors and interesting art examples to be brought into the conversation. This book provides many lessons inspired by neighborhood art safaris that led to student-built community art.

Teaching Art to Diverse Communities of Secondary School Students As a visual detective, a walk around town offers wonderful clues to the diversity in a community. This book was written in large part to encourage us to learn more about where we live and what our town communicates. For example, in many American towns there are clues such as signage and changes in architecture (ramps, curbs) to help people with physical disabilities navigate the space. Students are capable consultants who continue thinking of new and better ways to use art to help navigate a town’s culture and community. There is open and hidden signage that illustrates the need to address human rights and social justice concerns. Students can be moved to engage in art that deals with values and the quest for human respect. By using primary and secondary school student observations and finds in the community as the basis for art classes, learning is not just teacher led but is centered around the idea that art is a personal quest for, and representation of, values and responsibility and that this relationship to art is key to how artists interact with their environment. Our students in an art class are as diverse as the communities they come from. Art is an important link between people and voices that can be exercised through community-based art learning.

Incorporating Community Studies into an Art Curriculum One of the first classroom lessons in kindergarten is traditionally a community study. Where do you live? An apartment or a house? What type of neighborhood, town, and city are you part of? Diagram your neighborhood and your trip home from school. What are some of the things you see?

Introduction

But the idea of closely examining the community tends to fall away in later years of schooling. Yet we are always part of a larger group, and bigger questions need to be observed and be asked: how can we begin to participate in our community and have a voice and impact? What can we say about where we live and the daily impact it has on us? The art room, the school center for innovation, and the home for visual communicators, planners, builders, futurists, concerned citizens, and so on, can be the center piece of the continuation of our earliest learning.

Starting Here and Now: Launching Community-Based Art According to Richard Florida, economist and social scientist who wrote the book The Creative Class, the new workforce is comprised of jobs that are constantly being redefined, and so creativity is becoming more valuable in today’s global society.4 Florida included creative jobs that go well beyond that of fine artists, writing that engineers and doctors also need to exercise creative thinking to go beyond the prescribed tool or job in order to move the field forward. Problemsolving has been debated as a critical factor in twenty-first-century job growth. Employers are beginning to see creativity as a channel to both self-expression and job satisfaction. In this new world of needing to think creatively, it is vital for art teachers to open the art room to the outside world. We need to move beyond developing projects that are only for art sake and that use the influence of students’ background and community, so that they can see the impact they can have on their space. In eighth grade, my daughter did a community study at her school. It completely shifted the way she thought about where we lived. Her eyes were opened to where she lived. She went to the local water and sewage treatment plants, took a tour of the bus station, went to the local courthouses, and eventually picked a project where she impacted the community by looking at immigration. She began by conducting interviews with various community members. Then, as part of her project, she designed shirts that were sold to raise money for the Kentucky Refugee Ministries. Realizing that even at her age she can make a difference, I believe the project was not only empowering, but it also brought her closer to a completely different aspect of her community that she had not been part of. Creating projects such as these where students are empowered to be part of their community can be pivotal. It allows for participation and voice. Adding a mural to a local building, creating sidewalk art, installing work at a local store, or creating a rain barrel for a community garden, all of these activities bring students closer to their neighborhood and use art to make a positive impact.

The Goals and Intentions of This Book This book is intended to be a supportive guide for those preparing to be and who are current art instructors dedicated to art teaching through community involvement and building environmental

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awareness. It is a lively road map for teachers of all age-groups from elementary to adolescents heading to cities and towns as a means to learn about art, with the overall goal to inspire new ways of seeing, appreciating, thinking about, and making art. While on occasion the text refers to elementary and secondary age students, it is because almost a decade was spent by the author teaching various age-groups, and this is the target audience for those preparing to be or who are already in the classroom setting. The book suggests art classes based on out-of-class experiences. Each section maps some of the starting roots or places to study and explore in the man-made community. Rewards for those willing to go beyond the art room, to teach art and enlarge their art class with community experiences, are highlighted throughout. The book aligns school art with contemporary art thinking about community, society, and the larger world as the subject and theme of artists, and how students can interact and be a part of the new and exciting art world of installations, street art, and environmental art. Art teachers can use this book to lead singular projects of looking at street space, community landmarks, or historic neighborhoods, to endow the entire class with a community perspective, starting where most contemporary art starts—in the real world. This book is for those who are preparing to teach art and those that are already in the classroom. The only thing this volume will ask of the art teacher is to guide their students’ attention and thinking about art beyond school desks and walls and instead to bask in the community as a rich art source. If you are not yet teaching the hope is that you are able to use this book as “food for thought” as you navigate how the artists in your class can utilize and be part of the larger community of artists. This book provides various size and types of examples for one to try on, add to, and even move past. It might feel as though the examples are broad at times but this is meant for you as the educator to find a way for ideas to fit in where you are located and come up with more examples of your own. Not all ideas are given the same treatment so that new ways of thinking about a subject can be interjected. For example, the hotel section might look at more cosmetic ideas, while other sections might bring in a stronger tie to the community. The text itself is not United States specific but is based more in the United States. That said, all of these examples need to be shifted to the place where you, the reader, are, so use these moments of inspiration and make the story your own. In reality it is you who will create the sitespecific narrative. This book is there to spark ideas and fuel your passion for the subject which can be done anywhere around the world. This book is divided into three sections. Section 1 Art in Public Places and Alternative Museum Sites Section 2 Community as Art Treasures (Taking a look at the visual treasures the community has to offer but that are not considered traditional art destinations.) Section 3 Community Art Projects ●●

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This book hopes to encourage and equip students with twenty-first-century skills needed to be consumers of visual experiences This book hopes to support and promote independent artists to not entirely rely on their classroom interaction for creative ideas and insight. When in the grocery store or walking

Introduction

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down the street, from a small town to a large city, artists should have an understanding that even the simplest sightings and finds have artistic value; a place might be seen or experienced numerous times, yet something different can always be found. This book asks art teachers and students to take a more in-depth look at the environment and search for visual meaning and inspiration for classroom art. This book invites the reader to think about the artistic innovation that can exist in everything from small everyday objects to park benches, playgrounds, and airports. Students’ community finds contribute to visual resources and experiences and become teachable moments in the art room. This book asks art teachers to consider alternatives to the same general “desk-top art” lessons taught for the past seventy-five years. The art world is changing, and students have to become the next generation of designers and builders, innovators, and futurists. While traditional art and the places where art is seen and conceived are still important, we need to prepare artists of the twenty-first century to look for answers frequently beyond art museums and art classes. This book asks art teachers and students to observe and teach about the strong relationship between people, art, and the environment. When community art lessons are neglected and young artists find it difficult to see art beyond art classroom projects, people in the future will suffer. This book asks students to regularly take walks out of the art room, using the finds and resources of where students live.

What Life-Changing Experiences Derive from the Study of Environments for Students? What Visual Breakthroughs Can Occur? A visual earthquake might happen over time, subtly, or not at all. For a student walking into the grocery store and seeing the possibilities of finding treasure or bringing into class a well-designed packaging to share is an accomplishment. While seemingly minor, we are empowering students to see the world as the largest art supply store and resource for art ideas. The effects are on students’ art making, their perception of more open art boundaries, and seeing art everywhere, influencing how art students learn to see the impact of art in the world.

What Is so Interesting about Community Spaces? Community space allows for communication between groups of people who would not always interact with one another. From intimate spaces in courtyards to larger town squares, no matter the size, a shared sense of community can be created. Even something as simple as the type and availability of outdoor seating allows for different interactions and experiences. For example, bean bag chairs on the grass are going to create a laid-back atmosphere, while chairs and tables are more formal and create the possibility for exciting groupings. Community spaces are attractive because people create purposeful ways to interact with each other, these include

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areas that foster visual meaning from murals, and street art, to public sculptures and interest in landscaping.

What Ideas and Inspiration Can Students Derive from Environmental Studies? From understanding the environment, students can learn about space and interactions between themselves and the world. Students can begin to understand building and design elements, styles, use of different materials, and how art adds to a community. Inspirations are endless: finding patterns, qualities of lines, color combinations, variations in open and closed spaces, outdoor changes in light, and visual elements. Taking note of their finds, students bring a wealth of interests, knowledge, and surprises back to classroom art practice.

What Does It Mean to Be Connected to a Neighborhood, a Community, Visually? A neighborhood is connected visually to a broader community through passages, pathways, and other types of visual changes and elements. A community putting in a playground, mural, large outdoor sculpture, and painted electrical boxes has the potential to involve and affect the larger community. Groups of people cross and congregate in spaces differently and identify a part of town by structural symbols, plazas, and other landmarks. In Lexington, KY, we have a park with sculptures of racehorses. That area in the city has become defined by the corner park and its cast horses. People take pictures with the horses for every occasion, and they congregate around them.

How Does the Environment Change over Time? Every time I take a walk downtown, there are alterations, renovations, and significant changes. My husband, a photographer, often documents the same areas as it changes through the seasons, through wear, weathering, or as new things are added or demolished. Some of these are subtle and others severe in their effect on the street and neighborhood. By knowing the intricate details of our community, we recognize, document, and discuss changes. It is easy not to be aware of changes, but recognition and awareness are a part of being an artist. A valuable lesson in the art room is to teach students to be informed, critical, and aware in their seeing, to look for details, which others may pass over. A neighborhood exists as a portrait of its population, sense of design, and value. Changing the way a room is painted or remodeled, or a house renovated, creates aesthetic shifts in a street or in the community. On a larger scale, a city is a collective form of art and design based on the different people who live in it. The space shifts as people and neighborhoods change during a different time of day, traffic changes, or population shifts. Influx of new people, or more people, for example, creates unique needs for places to sit, lights in dark alleys, or community spaces to play and learn. A city evolves and grows based on its population’s use of space. When you look at your city or town, you can learn about its history and collect evidence of different changes.

Introduction

Communities exist at the physical level, as well as on a social scale. Art students can study their neighborhood and community’s different aspects to understand and plan for change. It is suitable for a student to understand their town and be able to reference other places they have been to, or wish to go, both physically and in their imagination. Art classes can continuously envision making changes, playing with models for future cities in nearby neighborhoods, or distant planets.

How Does One Prepare Individuals and Secondary School Art Classes to Study and Engage with Community Art? Preparing to engage with the community can be as simple as getting out of the art room and beyond the school doors. One can go fact-finding, mapping, or photographing without a single purpose. Often the experience itself is what triggers ideas, so don’t be overprepared. Another starting point can be listing or sketching some goals to look for. It is valuable to take object collection bags and idea collection surfaces like sketchbooks and cameras to document the outdoor safari and to make plans on how the experience, the finds, and elevated thoughts could be followed up in the classroom.

How Does the Model for Community-Based Art Education Change? The way people have interacted with the community has changed over time, as has communitybased art education. Today, postmodern views on the arts explore connections between individual expression and looking at social and political issues. Today, many programs are about engaging young people in activities ranging from urban planning to poetry about people and places in their neighborhoods. Today’s concerned art teachers often explore with students how we use our environment to become a deep space to share with others. In my teaching, I have worked with art students to solve the current problems of the environment, and social issues, including transportation, the need for trees, and outdoor spaces for social needs by considering art and design as part of the solution. Art teaching needs to seriously stress and focus on involving young students in changing their community through art and contribute to significant world issues through creative design solutions. As the world’s needs change and acute answers for survival are needed, art classes are in the best position to engage freethinkers and imaginative builders of a new world that our students can help to shape.

First Steps: Getting to Know Your School Building Some schools house thought-provoking and historic works of art. In the history of art education, the Picture Study Movement (1890–1920) emphasized the importance of surrounding students with historic masterpieces and paintings with moral messages, which most often presented as reproductions in the form of large prints. The care and concern for distinguished architecture and interiors in school buildings was seen as uplifting. Historic artworks in school hallways were intended to convey an important message of taste-shaping moral life lessons in early art education. In the Cincinnati Public Schools, from 1903 to 1974, the City’s Art League and a program that collected pennies from school children entitled “Pennies from School Children” helped

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The Art Teacher’s Guide to Exploring Art and Design

to reinforce the belief that fine art should be part of the schools. As part of this belief, “schools underwrote paintings, decorative fountains, stained glass windows, mosaic walls, and extraordinary architectural ornaments to express support and respect for public education.”5 In 1995, the Art League reformed to preserve, restore, and enhance historic works in the public schools.6 At the turn of the century, from the 1890s to 1910, the New York City public schools responded to the arrival of immigrants by becoming “a grand social work agency, charged with a secondary task of Americanizing children and parents.”7 The architecture of the New York City public schools was designed to be exemplary structures, of the Romanesque Revival, Collegiate Gothic, Art Deco, Modern, and Post-Modern styles. The city of New York also has a large collection of more than 1,500 works of art from the early twentieth century, including such works as Tiffany stained glass and grand murals stemming from the New Deal, which were commissioned because of the Percent for Art program that ensured that 1 percent of all building budgets went toward the purchase of art.8 There is a history of architecture, art, and design in most school buildings. Therefore, schools serve as a good place to start studies of different stylistic and historic periods in art and learn about the artists. Art walks around school buildings can also be a comfortable place to commence studies about the environment. As students learn to take pride in learning about and guiding others through their school building, they can also visit other notable schools in the district as they become school guides and experts with knowledge that can be applied to architecture walks in their neighborhoods. As the art teacher leads students through school buildings, students can practice observation, self-discovery, and use the language of design arts. Students can learn about space and light, indoor streets, notable building details such as gargoyles, and other distinctive architectural features that come to the fore from a student’s personal curiosity and sighting.

Experiences Inside an Art Museum and Community Settings Art museums themselves are also beginning to acknowledge the importance of art outside the space and trying to bring in a broader section of society. While once only for adults, art museums are working hard to become community spaces for children and adolescents. Trying to bridge the gap, by providing events like museum slumber parties, teen nights at the museum with bands, and yoga with art, museums are establishing themselves as community centers. Collections are also on the move, going beyond museum walls into courtyards, down the street, and throughout the city. The Speed Museum in Louisville, KY, created a series of art billboards that connect advertising and the community back to the museum. According to Julien Robson, the curator of the Billboard project, Museums can be seen as just mausoleums and we need to keep looking at how does the museum change and alter itself in relation to the way that society needs us to, he says. You know, how do we make ourselves continually relevant and new for our community?9

Museums have also become more active in connecting with local schools to bring their collections, through Trunk Shows, for example, into classrooms.

Introduction

Furthermore, art museums across the world from Finland to the United States have created separate and unique spaces in the galleries for young children. Many have active programs with audiences as young as ages three to six on the main floors and use the gallery to learn while having fun. When looking at what museums now provide, according to Weier, “Visitor behaviors in the traditional museum context include viewing, discussing, and sketching art objects. In many museums children’s programming expand the old repertoire of behaviors to include role playing, singing, dancing, body movement and poses, facial gestures, and noise making.”10 Staff at the Speed Art Museum have created picture cards, called Art Cards, to use with young children as a starting point for treasure hunts in the galleries. The Speed Art Museum also offers backpacks with art tools that can be checked out, which encourages children to respond with art to the art they see in the museum. The Brooklyn Museum hires teens to share their knowledge and passion for art by giving summer tours and developing hands-on activities for younger students in the gallery setting. Teens encourage youngsters to take toys and familiar objects from home with them as they inspect the collection, which helps form connections between activities in the museum’s children’s studios and the art upstairs. While this book is not specifically about museums, it is important to offer the museum as one of the essential choices for experiencing art in a community. By learning the basics of “art talk,” students feel comfortable both texting and speaking about art. Art is a language and, by learning the vocabulary and ideas that incorporate and describe art, students gain a new level of comfort and confidence in discussing all the art in their community. The many field trips depicted in this volume illustrate the conversations and language learning that can take place on these journeys to promote the practice of “art talk” in daily conversation. For example, in a study of the mall or visits to fashion boutique shops, clothes are talked about the same way we would reference pieces of art. Talking about the texture and line pattern of a garment leaps across to the study of outdoor streets and interiors of stores and museums. After becoming an aware community viewer and experienced consumer of visual culture, art students are able to transfer their knowledge and observations to the so-called high art in museums. The many Alternative Gallery Spaces identified, and their study exemplified, in this volume, begins art appreciation and art history studies with all aspects of the built environment. This wideranging study of seeking aesthetic interest everywhere is an important gateway to the appreciation of contemporary art. Our art students, the makers of future art, will need to speak of art in all places and make art that lives in all spaces.

In order to start a program, it will depend on the need of your community and the powers that be. One thing to think about is letting students do the legwork. Understanding what they are invested in and what kind of difference they want to make is critical. What one person thinks is important might not appeal to the rest of the group. However, these discussions can also foster important and fruitful conversations about the purpose and potential of art, the students’ goals in contributing to their communities, and the challenges students may encounter in achieving those goals. As you read through the examples in this book, the following questions need to be considered from the outset of any program.

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The Art Teacher’s Guide to Exploring Art and Design

Questions that need to be considered from the onset: 1. Do you want to invest in a long-term project? How long is long term? 2. How much personal time is needed for the project to be successful? 3. Can the project be done during school hours? 4. What types of supplies are needed? 5. What is the financial arrangement? 6. Will you need to write a grant? 7. Are there other art teachers or local artists that want to be part of the project? 8. Have you talked to people in the community? What do they want?

What Makes a Happy City? Cities can feel like concrete jungles with more cars than trees causing a canopy of pollution that hovers among closely crowded, tall buildings. Leading city planners are rethinking the approach to urban space, paying more attention to what makes for a “happy city” for kids to grow and adults to enjoy.11 For example, in Rotterdam, the city is creating a more child-friendly space with playable pavement areas, bringing playgrounds, gardens, barbecue areas, and water fountains to the “sunny side” of the street. Rotterdam is finding ways to accentuate street spaces to become more friendly and inviting for everyone. Other cities are trading in highways for bike paths, adding more community space between building structures, and more. The Happy City idea is becoming a welcome movement as Urban and City Planners have done a great deal of research into what makes a welcoming space, bringing together the fields of expertise in design, education, government, and policy.12 Conclusions have centered around creating spaces where people can freely congregate and admitting less traffic by closing streets to cars. Instead of being isolated in private vehicles, bicycles or trollies are often used to bring people together. Fundamental to a welcoming outdoors is being invited to take a seat in pleasant and comfortable seating spots among green spaces, instead of rushing through. Some of the ideas for creating more meaningful spaces come from the traditional European Plaza that allowed large groups to gather and listen to poets, theatrical performance artists, and open-air musicians. Waterfront spaces are revitalized to take advantage of breaks in city views, offering sweet smells and relaxing sounds that contribute to a pleasant experience. To add to a relaxed experience of people being together at waterfronts are performance stages, play areas, and sculptural water fountains. Large family housing units are also more conscious of offering community gardens, playgrounds for children, places for seated adult gaming, and oases of water, like fountains and pools, as part of easing the burdens of city life.

Introduction

Bringing Art into the City Many city-planning groups are working to bring art into their city to make it happy through public space design. Either by adding murals, sculptures, or other visual elements to beautify a city or engaging the viewer, the Happy City movement believes that interaction with art changes the way people relate to urban spaces. Many artists create works, not for museums and galleries indoors, but to meet the people on a less formal basis where they already are—outside. Sidewalk artists, muralists, and installation artists use outdoor canvases, contributing unique visuals and events to entertain and challenge people on the street. For example, in Madrid, one artist sprayed painted poetry stencils on the ground. This concept has taken off all over the world. In New York, at Union station, there was an art installation by Stuart Semple called “Emotional Baggage Drop,” which was a public confessional—showing how art installations can take part in reducing social isolation. By creating either art interactions or reactions, art engages the public in informal and intimate ways.

How Can the Art Room Contribute to a Happy City? Starting with your school, students can practice by planning for a happy class space, school building, and school playground, as young artists take a look around “home base” and begin brainstorming possibilities in and around the school. Look for places to create sitting areas, outdoor sculptures, meditation areas, and game spaces. Students can learn to identify what is missing and what can be done to rectify the space and change the school culture. Students can find clues and research the city and look for ideas of what makes a comfortable space. How can indoor spaces in schools and outside of the school building be used to bring groups of people together? More ambitiously, look at the broader community: are there ways that art can be brought into the community around the school area to make it happier and more welcoming? Can the class create blueprints and models and their public presentations for how their fresh public space ideas would look and function?

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Part I Art in Public Places and Alternative Museum Sites

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1 Service Places

Chapter Outline Hotels19 The Next Generation of Libraries 28 Cinema Design 34 City Hall 35

Hotels Many hotels have become design landmarks around the world, featuring some of the best examples of modern architecture and housing important design and art collections, which makes them often more like home than a gallery since one can sleep, eat, and live with the art.1 After having stayed at a few hotels known for their art and design collection, I began to realize how important hotel design is in changing one’s mood. One example is the Hudson Hotel in New York’s Columbus Circle. Coming in from the confines of the city, and ascending up the escalator lit by neon yellow lights, which is a theme color throughout, it feels as though this short journey will land me on a different planet. In his over thirty years of creating hotels, designer Philippe Stark conceived of this hotel in Manhattan. When walking into the space it is a classic example of a contemporary, designercontrolled art environment. The interior spaces, from the art on the walls to the light fixtures and couches, display Stark’s innovative forms and the hotel “has been described as a lifestyle hotel for the twenty-first century.”2 Entering the dark, cozy-yet-vast space, all senses are hit by the ambience that Stark is striving to create. Light is softly filtered in by multiple skylights, as well as soft string lights and chandeliers. Once in the space, the busy streets of New York feel far away and a calmness settles in. It is the tranquility that art and design provide by making guests feel at home and yet in an alternate universe.

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The Art Teacher’s Guide to Exploring Art and Design

After leaving the hotel and returning to my classroom, I began to reflect on the experience. How important is building an alternative ambience in creating an art room environment? In the classroom, from the harsh neon lights to the conformity of the desks, students are invited into their studio to work under difficult conditions that are not conducive to feeling at home and creating art. By interacting with art and pioneering design in environments that promote an exciting visual experience, teachers can help students look for inspiration in one’s own classroom.

Hotel Museums There is a current trend to recover landmark buildings and turn them into hotel museums.3 The most notable example in the American South and Midwest is called 21C, which began in Louisville and has been successfully transplanted to several cities, including Cincinnati, Ohio; Bentonville, Arkansas; and Lexington, Kentucky. “21C” stands for the twenty-first century and features art galleries in their hotel lobby with twenty-four-hour free access. In addition, there is art on prominent display in these hotels’ restaurants and gyms. Art installations overflow into public bathrooms and guest rooms. Generally located in historic downtown districts, these hotels create an important cultural presence in a city by becoming art centers for guests and visitors.4 Many examples can be found in Berlin, Germany, a city with multiple art hotel experiences. Hotels such as Art’otel house artist Geor Baselitz’s work throughout the space and offer free guided tours. A second interesting model in Berlin is the hotel Arte Louise, which provides access to the collaborative venture of fifty invited artists, with each designing individual spaces within the building. Each installation lasts for two to three years, and the artists receive 5 percent of the rental fees, a material allowance, and several free nights’ stay.5

Local Hotels with Artists in Residence There has been a long tradition of artists living and working in hotels, going back as far as Claude Monet, who “was the first artist-in-residence at The Savoy in 1901 where he painted the River Thames from multiple views of his top-floor room.”6 In exchange for his stay the hotel received a stunning collection of a premier impressionist’s works. This perhaps set a precedent for other artists taking part in various aspects of hotel artistry today, acts that enrich many communities and bring art to the local community and visiting public. More recently, in 2011, David Dowton, a renowned fashion illustrator, has been the first artist ever to be in residence at the Claridge Hotel in London. Dowton’s lively images document the hotel’s famous guests in drawings that encourage a visual mix of visitors and interior spaces. At the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, up to eighteen international artists are juried into a stay at the hotel for three to six months in return for leaving a notable trace of their visit. Other hotels hold impressive collections that make a visit to the hotel a special experience. For example, the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, curated one of the largest collections of fine Victorian furnishings and art of any hotel in the world. Hotel establishments like these offer more than just a regular hotel experience—they offer an education of the mind and senses.7

Service Places

The Carlton Arms Hotel, or Artbreak Hotel, in New York City is another example of how artists have become a vibrant part of the space through their art-in-residence program. Beginning in the early 1980s with a permanent exhibition of art, the dark and depressed welfare hotel got a facelift as artists from all over the world covered every inch of space with colorful work.8

Hotel Identity Art has become a fundamental, rather than an ornamental element in hotel design. Fine art has been hung in hotels for decades. There are tales of down-on-their-luck residents at the Chelsea Hotel in New York offering their artwork in exchange for rent. In 1984, Ian Schrager, head designer of the Chelsea, commissioned Robert Mapplethorpe to create a series of prints for Schrager’s first property called Morgans.9 But today hoteliers are thinking even farther outside the frame and installing art in the most unexpected ways to challenge guests to think more deeply about their experience. As co-owner of the New York hotel Thompson LES, Jason Pomeranc, said, “The art is a part of the identity of the hotel. Art integrates into the architecture, design concept and what we ethereally call the vibe, the intellectual soul of the hotel.”10 Schaeffer of the Chelsea Hotel explains that “[a] customer whose imagination is involved in a visit to the property becomes all the more dedicated as a repeat consumer. You feel part of an experience without maybe knowing exactly why.”11 With so many contemporary hotels having a similar corporate overtone, art hotels seek the creation of unique experiences by involving artists in hotel projects to create unique places, setting these hotels apart from the rest. The concept of housing art events and providing access for designers to reshape hotel spaces with art has become a growing trend. London’s Corinthia Hotel has a theater residency program. Groups such as the Look Left Look Right Theatre Company have artists perform immersive theater pieces with the guests. Other hotels host musicians, dancers, muralists, and writers to create a new culture of interacting with and experience in the space.12 When thinking about how art has become an integral part of the hotel space, Dan Vinh, vice president for global marketing of Marriott’s Lifestyle Portfolio, states, “The evolution in how managers view hotel artwork is akin to the shift toward showcasing more local ingredients in a hotel’s restaurants.”13 The neighborhood environment that hotels create keeps people coming back to the same hotels, not just as a place to visit, but a show place for the latest in a community’s art.

Teacher/Pedagogy While students in typical art classes cannot take a spree around the world to view Monet’s art at the Savoy Hotel, most students have opportunities to experience hotel art somewhere in their own region. Understanding the history of art in hotels and the various ways hotels can play the role of a neighborhood landmark-gallery can be a valuable foundation for considering many community spaces as important art education sites. Providing glimpses of what has been done is a good place to start and can spur students to imagine and have discussions about their neighborhood.

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Art field trips can involve visits to local hotels. A museum hotel such as 21C encourages visitors, but there are other hotels where arrangements can be made for student visitors. Whether as part of a loftier walk through downtown to see various spaces, or to specifically discuss hotel art, you can foster an important discussion about setting up art in public and private commercial spaces. As students returning from vacations are eager to report on the good, or bad, art they found at their lodgings, conversations about hotel art can elicit interesting exchanges. Students often critique and suggest alternative designs for local establishments, which they can illustrate through photographs and drawings. Art hotels offer a prime opportunity for students to merge their expertise about art in home environments and art in public living spaces. A critical awareness of art in the public environment is an important part of growing up as an art-educated individual. It’s also important to discuss “bad art” wherever it may exist, so while it is important to view images and make pilgrimages to great art in hotels, it is equally important to acknowledge the “bad” and ask: what makes it bad? Why do you think it was picked for this space? The questions that help phrase a debate and discussion about good and bad art in hotels are vital to creating a larger understanding of the art world. Discussions like these help students amass definitions and examples, engage in comparisons, and, ultimately, define and refine personal taste. In hotel art, discussions of how hotels have historically and currently utilized art and artists as a resource can lead to classes thinking of ideas for how they can now, and in the future, form similar partnerships with community spaces and canvases. Will a local hotel hold a show or allow for an installation for student artists? The Marriott Hotel, in Northern Kentucky, has done just that by sponsoring student art shows in their hotel lobby, elevators, and some guest rooms. Hotels in Ohio have provided funds for local art programs through the sale of student-made items in their hotel lobby. Thinking of the hotel as not just a space where out-of-town guests come to visit, but as part of the community, can open it up for young artists to begin thinking of new creative design and display possibilities.

Hospital Art While not everyone thinks of the hospital as a go-to place to see art, the reality is that visitors and patients often stay long enough to spend time and engage with the art. With this in mind, more hospitals are capitalizing on the healing powers of public art to help bring comfort and stress relief to patients, families, and hospital workers. In Lexington, Kentucky, the University of Kentucky Hospital is one of the exciting places to discover outstanding contemporary art. At first glance, the university hospital is an unlikely place to enjoy a fine collection of art. Yet the space houses local, national, and international artists.14 Because the hospital was designed with idea that art can be part of any space, several thoughtful exhibition spaces exist throughout the complex. Furthermore, the University of Kentucky is dedicated to involving the hospital community in the process of purchasing and displaying artwork.15 An advisory committee of hospital staff works closely with

Service Places

the hospital art curator to help shape the exhibition programs. As a result, hospital staff play a key role in curating the different spaces throughout the hospital, so that each office, patient room, and hallway exhibit are unique and chosen with consideration to location. The idea of hosting art in hospitals is not new. As early as 1965, New York City instituted an executive order to spend up to 1 percent of construction costs on art in all public spaces including not only hospitals, but all new development.16 Today, many American cities have emulated the 1 percent Public Art Fund concept, which has promoted serious growth of hospital art. Internationally, countries such as England—through the Arts Council of England—and Denmark—through state funding—have also created gallery spaces in hospitals. Another fine American example of a well-coordinated art space is the Woodhull Hospital Center in Brooklyn, which opened in 1983 with an arts budget of $260,000. Woodhull Hospital used the funds to purchase original prints from emerging artists. Director-emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art led the art selection process. In the comprehensive study Cultures of Care: A Study of Arts Programs in U.S. Hospitals Naj Wikoff notes that “more than 73 percent of hospitals have permanent displays of art—nearly half of the hospitals surveyed 48 percent present performances in lobbies and other public spaces, while 36 percent have bedside activities. 55 percent of surveyed institutions have arts activities geared for the health care staff ”17 (2004, p. 2). When meeting with hospital art curators, the hospital staff passionately expressed a desire to create a more relaxing environment for every patient, visitor, and caregiver. In addition, some emphasized the importance of hospitals providing opportunities for their doctors and healthcare workers to partake in self-expression, as well as to help them convey their emotions of being in a high-stress work environment.18 Many facilities are serious about their first-class art-making workshops for patients and caregivers. As Wikoff notes, Seventy percent of the hospitals surveyed engage medical staff in crafts projects as the second most popular means of providing an emotional release, followed by visual arts activities (64 percent), with creative writing experiences make up [sic] 38.5 percent of the offerings. Not all arts activities for staff and patients take place in the hospital building or use paint and music. Thirty-two percent of hospital arts programs include healing gardens.19

Art makes the building convey warmth and support by showcasing the human spirit, which can reassure patients as they go through the fears of being in a hospital, bolster those caring for patients, or console those facing loss and grieving. Art can be therapeutic, created to heal, refresh, reenergize, or simply, to pass time.20 Artists often speak of art moments as transformative, as going into one’s deepest inner being. Landscape artists often refer to leaving themselves and entering the landscape and becoming a part of it during heightened moments of creation. Art has the potential to transcend time and space and offers the possibility to restore and work out one’s feelings in a deep self-reflection that can promote spiritual and physical recovery.

Brain Research One way that hospitals have justified investments in artwork is the tie between art and brain research. Laura Landro looked at various studies that address the healing power of art in her

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Teaching/Pedagogy The hospital provides an additional and alternative space to view exceptional art in the community. Often there are art guides and maps to use with visiting students. Hospital curators can provide a tour of the facility as students who are unfamiliar with, even fearful of, the setting also learn to conquer their aversion and anxiety of being in a hospital. There are also opportunities to contribute to the community and participate in healing acts with patients. Sometimes, hospitals also have cheerful art and/or community rooms that are designed to make kids feel comfortable in the space. These rooms include bright colors, organic shapes, and interactive elements. There, students can work with young patients and bring their own “get well” wishes to patients in the form of art presents built and fabricated in school studios. Whether it is art made in classroom studios that is shared with patients or art made on site with the patients and their families, there are many opportunities for giving and growing as a person in hospital art encounters. Every art teacher can make connections, assist preservice students in experiencing art in an alternative setting, and contribute to making the world a little better by bringing art to and making art with people who have to be in a hospital.

Wall Street Journal article, “More Hospitals to Use Healing Power of Public Art,” and one area the research considered was what art felt appropriate for a particular space. Landro writes, “[W] ith studies showing a direct link between the content of images and the brain’s reaction to pain, stress, and anxiety, hospitals are considering and choosing artworks based on the evidence and giving it a higher priority than merely decoration for sterile rooms and corridors.”21 Iva Fattorini, a dermatologist and global chairwoman of the Cleveland Clinic’s Arts & Medicine Institute, notes that the focus is on art that is “not disturbing, but uplifting and diverse” and the aim “is to take your mind away from the disease and replace the time you are losing inside hospital with some beauty.”22 Another example of these efforts can be seen at the Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla, California, where the design director of Cannon Design’s Yazdani Studio, Mehrdad Yazdani, has created sculptural walls behind patients’ beds to house medical equipment usually left out in the open. As Yazdani says, You see headwalls in most hospitals. But while they’re very needed, they’re not necessarily aesthetically pleasing and are, if anything, intimidating to patients and their families. [My design] has panels that are removable, so they don’t only conceal a lot of that technology, making it less intimidating, but they also give the hospital flexibility as technology changes and the needs are different.23

Reflections on My Hospital Art Teaching Experience My college students are always eager to visit our local children’s hospital and share their art and art-making activities with patients. Students bring a variety of portable media and plan a variety of projects. We even search the hospital for its discards—brochures, folders, and other materials, to be used as site-specific canvases. For students training to be future art teachers, there is a wonderful

Service Places

experience to be had in planning for places students don’t know, and situations and circumstances in which they have to adjust and be flexible. This type of flexible creativity is not far removed from potential student teaching situations, substitute teaching experiences, or many of the new challenges these students will face in the school art profession. We are able to visit with individual patients or see a few at a time. Some children are excited to see us, while others are simply exhausted and overwhelmed by their current circumstance. Students may be requested or randomly placed. Assignments may bring challenges of working with children who are connected to medical apparatuses, who can’t leave the bed, or have physical problems that make art production difficult. Adapting and learning to make accommodations is not only a classroom necessity but also a concern in the hospital where art may have to be made in bed, lying down, or with limited mobility. Factors such as these foster ingenious adjustments for tools, canvases, and materials. When we leave a hospital art teaching experience, the learning and discussion continue to flow. The experience moves students and requires careful reflection, which needs to be incorporated into a next session. In one of these follow-up sessions, a student shared the following story: “One child in the room just wanted to play with his car. He was so tired I spent a lot of time just talking to him. We decided to draw a road for his car together.” In turn, all my students agreed and felt that this was a very important shared art moment. In the classroom, before we visit the hospital, it is hard for my students to see how the hospital project relates to school art projects. However, the reflections lead to discussions on how art needs to be individualized in schools, and how all students as artists have unique ideas and special needs. Students learn the art of adapting to unique situations and individual artist’s needs, as well as how to encourage creative productions that have meaning for the child. Some students entered the hospital with the goal of teaching an art lesson they designed but came away with something far more important by responding to an individual and their needs and ideas in that moment. As one student pointed out, it may take time in public school art teaching to recognize how much we impact a student’s life, yet in the hospital there is an immediate and clear impact on the kids, which, in turn, produces a positive personal and professional experience for future teachers. Moments like these are perhaps the most important in all of teaching because sometimes they are all we can humanly do.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas Questions to ask the art curator at a hospital: ●●

●● ●● ●●

How is the decision made about what art is appropriate or helpful when selecting works to be hung in the hospital? Are there specific pieces, or themes you are looking for, or alternatively, that you would not consider putting on the walls? What kind of budget are you working with? How is the role of the art curator the same and different in a hospital venue? Are tours of the collection offered?

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●● ●●

●● ●●

●●

Are you in charge of what goes into patient rooms? How do you decide what should hang in the children’s wing versus the main hospital? Do you collaborate with art therapists? How so? What does the art on display provide for patients, caregivers, hospital staff, and the general public? How can we help? How can volunteers participate in the art program?

These are just some examples. Have your students formulate their own questions and goals for each visit. Discussion topics before and after the visit to the hospital: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

●● ●● ●● ●●

In general, how does artwork make a difference in people’s lives? Why is the hospital an important place to see art? How do we select work for different spaces in our home, classroom, and school? How you would approach curating work for a new hospital? When you go to the doctor, what type of art is in the waiting room? What type of art do you think should be in your doctor’s waiting room? What kind of art should we bring children as gifts to the hospital? How can we learn from this experience in the art class? What can art do for a school to create a welcoming, uplifting, and inspiring atmosphere? What can be the goals of art displays in different parts of the school building? Is there a need for healing in the art class? How can art be used in a school art class to respond to students’ problems? How can storytelling and sharing personal experiences become a part of the art period?

School Campuses A favorite thing to do when visiting a new city is to drop by the campus of its local university. Not only because I teach at one such school, but the culture of so many midsize towns and cities are centered around their higher education institutions. These schools often feature a series of related, elegant buildings, framed and surrounded by handsomely landscaped commons spaces. There are often programmed views of the outdoor sculptures punctuating the open landscape. Universities or quaint small colleges may be a display of a series of historic architectural forms, with some well-placed contemporary additions. Sometimes the newest architecture is the work of notable architects prominently placed and highlighted by fresh landscaping ideas. Exceptional campuses are becoming a tourist destination, featuring some of the most ambitious collections of art. Public or private, rural or urban, college museums are tackling ambitious projects like never before, promoting academic curators—who were once part of a sleepier, insular art world—to be lead actors on the cultural stage.24

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Recently, I visited the University of Southern California at San Diego and picked up a glossy brochure about the Art Walk on campus. Starting from the top of the engineering building was a sculptural structure teetering off the edge of the building which you can walk into. Nearby was a large Diego Rivera mural on the wall of the Latin American Studies Building. Many universities encourage visitors by providing constantly changing indoor and outdoor exhibits of energetic and fresh student and faculty art. In most universities, art can be experienced at various “stations” throughout the campus. Brochures for art on campus provide a treasure hunt experience, fun for children and adults. Secret places to go looking for art inside and out will be found on walls, discovered as windows, or outdoor installations all over a campus. College campuses are not to be overlooked as a principal site for experiencing excellent collections of art and architecture, as well as urban planning and designed outdoor places. It is also a space that has smaller elements of archways, railings, doorways, benches, outdoor amphitheaters, and gardens that make viewing interesting. In Boston, I spent several days just going from one well-known university to another. It was a trip focusing on the many departmental museums, lobby galleries, and outdoor art—an architectural pilgrimage of dorms, museums, and libraries, designed by world-renown architects such as Frank Gehry at MIT and many others. I decided to visit Boston through campus walks because I enjoy taking my students on campus tours. On weekends, I often walk through my local campus at the University of Kentucky, trailing my husband who is a photographer. Every time we cross the campus, it’s a new experience. We uncover new sites, new art, and outdoor details that seem to appear out of nowhere. The act of revisiting a space is important. It allows a deeper understanding of a place, rich new finds of things led by the intent to find interest through the camera lens. Seeing through the camera helps to focus, to frame views, to edit and extract the details, to emphasize visual finds. Like shopping for colleges as a high-school student, visiting campuses promotes comparisons of visual impression that are unique to that situation.

Teachers Visiting university campuses to look for art, to visit artists’ studios and exhibition places is a less formal or forbidding experience than going to a museum. There are fewer guards and restrictions about interacting with the art while maintaining a silent decor. The campus is alive and moving, welcoming young visitors as future students and alumni. It is a place to watch art being fabricated, built, and painted in well-equipped studios, to experience works in progress, and to rub shoulders with the young masters involved in creative acts. It is a friendly place to meet art and maker, to ask questions of students and faculty, and to be eagerly responded to by welcoming, insightful artists. After many visits with my young students to the MET when I taught in New York City, later to the National Gallery in DC as an elementary art teacher, I now take my students to university art galleries in Kentucky. Here we are met on the museum floor not by a docent who speaks in general terms about the work, but by the artists. In the art building’s gallery, the artist having the solo show welcomes us warmly, spreading out her portfolio of sketchbooks before us. She passes around hundreds of sketches of the excursion it took to get the current paintings. Students are surprised to see not just the tip of the iceberg—the finished product—but the voyage it took to get there. We

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further visit the artist’s world by entering the deep freight elevator to take a ride to her studio. Not the typical museum experience, the college campus art show, the visit with the artist, and the art department workshops add up to an unforgettable experience. For the art teacher, such memorable visits are easy to arrange, and emerging artists are eager to meet with young audiences to share their works and paths to the profession. Students on an outdoor art walk on campus are led by an enthusiastic young sculpture professor with his students giving plenty of attention to each inquiry and my students’ wise comments. My art department at Eastern Kentucky University regularly hosts high school art students in our galleries, buildings, and studios. When students come a little early for their tour of the art department, I encourage them to walk around the campus with their cameras to find usual objects or moments to bring back to discuss during their visit. How can a campus inspire art students from k-12 and art majors in their art practice? How does the art inspire a college life moment, something that is unusual, or something that you connect to about college? It can be as simple as just documenting a building or door that catches your interest. Making our art department experiences become a part of seeing the entire campus offers a wide range of memorable sights upon students’ return to the school art room. It is during campus walks that students start to see buildings and spaces differently. Comparisons are made with everyone’s home school. How is it different from their school? What is a moment or a subject found interesting that they would want to save and take with them? Most universities have old and new buildings, interesting places to sit, and historic markers to view. It is valuable to acknowledge these moments and understand how important architecture and design is to how one processes the world.

The Next Generation of Libraries As a child, one of my favorite memories was walking between the two great lions at the New York Public Library. Much like entering a museum or government building, passing through the columns into the large echoing halls was both intimidating and breathtaking. The books felt like they held the world’s knowledge, and I was in awe. The other library I spent a great deal of time in was a small library next door to our summer-house in West Shokan, New York. Though it did not offer the same grandiose entrance as the New York Public Library, at a young age I was able to walk over by myself to watch movies, read books, attend story time, take karate and yoga classes, and most recently, use the computer. This local library became a second home to my siblings and me since it has always been warm and inviting. Whether it’s the large scale of the New York Public Library or the small-town charm, the presence of immense knowledge and feeling of awe is still present every time I have the good fortune to walk into a library. These days, libraries no longer solely focus on their book collection. In addition to designing impressive reading nooks, libraries provide a place for civic discourse and community education: there are community areas, computer/media labs, and spaces for youngsters. Libraries had to reinvent themselves for the digital age by finding new relevance. Those institutions that survived the shift have created contemporary style buildings, begun housing digital libraries, and reestablished

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themselves as community spaces. In some cases, the physical books have been pushed to the perimeter and have become part of the interior design. Today’s libraries also hold community art shows, host traveling exhibits, theatrical performances, and offer a range of seminars and group activities. The changing library and its new social scene encourage visual art and culture to be more a part of the space and a larger section of the population to attend art events, particularly those who may not normally go to traditional galleries and museums.25

Soft Services In the summer of 2018, the current library bestseller is not a book, but a Bob Ross–style painting class. Something about “happy trees” has everyone signing up to paint them. According to author Tina Hohmann, “As some people spend their whole day in the library working, ‘soft services’ become more important. Having a café, a shop, or even a day nursery is already a reality in many new libraries.”26 It is these soft services that make the library the new community center and give us Bob Ross painting classes if the library sees the need. In libraries across America, these classes sold out in 2018.27 While seemingly removed from what a library has been, in order to survive in today’s world, libraries have to work with their communities’ interest and requisitions. In today’s library, you can check out a book, a sewing machine, or take a ballroom dancing class.

Mobile Libraries There are many ways in which books, digital services, and access to knowledge are integrated into communities, regardless of location and size. As information is increasingly accessed on the go, and not everyone can easily get to larger city libraries, Little Libraries, or mobile libraries, are a growing phenomenon. Some are homegrown small boxes in front of houses or in public spaces, others are on wheels, and move around the city. One of the first bookmobiles was horse-drawn and operated in 1857 in Cambria County in North West England.28 Today, there are everything from floating libraries in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to donkey-pulled libraries in Ethiopia. 29 Importantly, art is being integrated with these structures and experiences. For instance, as a part of mobile libraries in large Recreational Vehicles (RV), art is displayed on the vehicle or set up at scheduled stops. Mobile libraries also frequently transport art on a loan programs to community centers and schools.

Art in Libraries Librarians are trained as collection managers, and collecting and preserving objects other than books have become a part of a librarian’s job. University libraries that receive alumni art donations are a good example of art in libraries. Michigan State University hosts art competitions for students and seniors in the community, and it houses an art collection that is rotated in the library gallery. There are few private or public libraries today that don’t dedicate at least a wall to art, but some put

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an entire gallery wing in their building plan.30 Many public libraries also not only have art galleries, but, much like art museums, they have teen boards. The teen boards are involved in local art and musical events and speak for the interest and needs of their age group in library event planning. Libraries are often excited to host local artists’ works and lecturers, as well as welcome studentdriven and focused exhibits. The library art shows are becoming a more interesting part of library operations overall.31 Checking for art shows and scheduling art visits to libraries for students have become a legitimate choice in providing art study experiences for children of all ages.

Library Architecture “As physical containers for a society’s shared knowledge, historical documents, and academic musings, libraries have always shouldered an enormous responsibility. But beyond merely serving as archives, the best libraries also inspire.”32 Libraries have always been a proud community architectural landmark. Beyond providing a place to see art, in the past twenty years, library buildings have become one of the most exciting modern architectural sites in communities. The modern library building is a showcase for a community to display its commitment to innovation, modernity, and progress.33 With books evolving into digital information there is a greater demand for “making sense” or giving meaning to our collective experience. The best library architects consider today’s new ways of learning and incorporate them into their designs. They also reflect on and highlight the full experience of the library’s wide-ranging community by showcasing the taste, vision, and achievements of the local community.

Teacher/Pedagogy The library also offers the best-lit, most open, and safest place for student art. In contrast to the school’s fast-paced and busy hallways, the library welcomes you to come in, spend time, and engage with the art and displays. Kentucky art education organization sponsors the elementary and middle school art show hosted by the public library every year. In a small community, the library functions as a community center and students from all over the state are honored to have their art on display there. By visiting the show, teachers and students can discover all that the library has to offer their art classes, from workshops to gallery exhibits to checking out sewing machines. In conjunction with our shows, there are always events that feature local artists. When we visit in the library’s glass cases, there are often collections of unusual objects featuring the work of crafts-people.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas There are several fine examples of library building designs from all periods of architecture to share with students. In fact, the history of architecture can be told through library buildings. Showing students great examples of modern libraries can also lead to a discussion about formulating and shaping their own library building.

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What would a library space for books, art, and community needs look like? What would the most inviting children’s section look like? What would inviting and fun reading spaces look like? How could we imagine and create a mobile library? Can you plan for an exciting performance art, or other special art event, that can take place in a library?

Teachers can do the following: ●● ●● ●●

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Team up with media/library specialist to create art influenced by books Create book art to be displayed with the books Work with library related materials for an art instillation using library cards, book jackets, library carts and so on Work on a little library (https://littlefreelibrary.org) or mobile book space for your school or community

Public and university libraries are also valuable visual resources for art books, art shows, and displays. Brainstorm with your art class about contributions or gifts that they could contribute to or install in the library.

Banks as Community Landmarks Arguably, some of the most handsome modern building forms from midcentury are banks. While banks are not known to go out of business, today there are many mergers and, with them, a need to rebrand. Part of this changing banking life leads to closing older bank buildings and building new ones. As a young college student, I became involved in a public protest to help preserve one of my favorite local buildings—the Peoples Bank34 designed by Charles Nield Bayless of Bayless, Clotfelter, and Associates. The distinct turquoise midcentury building is the last remaining of its kind in the area. As Jamie Mitchel points out, banks are a projection of a city’s, state’s, or county’s wealth and status is tied to the visual appearance of these banks.35 In Columbus, Indiana, a small town known for its contribution to modern art and architecture, the Irwin-Union Bank was built in 1954 by Eero Saarinen. When it was built, the architect was trying to move away from the traditional banking image as “granite fortresses with tellers behind cages.” The building is a glass pavilion with a wide hanging roof and the first open floor plan in the country.36 But banks offer more than highly visible exteriors in most communities. From old stately columns of wealth and power to distinguished modern glass and steel structures, bank interiors can be a site of visual exploration too. A distinct childhood memory that stands out was going to the bank with my mother and getting a lollipop. The space felt significant and fancy. I particularly remember the intricate metal gate we occasionally passed through to get to the vault of safety deposit boxes where we looked through our special container of family treasures.

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By looking at banks, students can study different periods in architecture. Majestic doorways and entrance paths, interesting flooring, lamps, seating, and lighting systems, ways of partitioning space and activities—all present potential details worthy of observation. Though downtown banks with columns and high ceilings feature ornate architectural elements that gave them an extra sense of importance, new branch banks in the suburbs are less impressive. They adapted to the quick stopover culture of visits by car, including the drive-through architecture of a series of carports. Today, many bank buildings present a modern and austere profile, but others still reference the neo-classical look that creates the aura of strength and financial stability.

Banks’ Rich History of Supporting the Arts As early as the thirteenth century, the Medici banking family rose to be the most important house of Florence, Italy. At the time, the Medici family bank owned and managed much of the world’s wealth, but they also established themselves as one of the most powerful art collectors. Through their family’s many commissions, the Medici’s put Florence on the map as the cradle of the Renaissance. Banking families have helped to support and sustain the arts throughout history. Bankers used their expertise in investing to maintain art holdings as a financial tool. “From the mighty Medici banking dynasty in Renaissance Florence, to giants of the 19th century, like John Pierpont Morgan in America, art has been used to project status and power.”37 Understanding the history of the relationship between art and banks showcases the status of art in society. Due in part to this century’s old tradition, today’s bank patrons often get to visit art while visiting a bank for business or as a gallery destination. For more than thirty-five years, Deutsche Bank has offered everyone access to its extensive art collection inside their banks. Furthermore, banks also make additional art venues possible through sponsorship. Fulfilling its motto of “Art Works” “through its collection at the workplace, in international exhibitions, at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin, as well as through educational programs, the Deutsche Bank supports joint projects with museums, art fairs, and other institutions to award and encourage emerging talents, which is best shown in the Artist of the Year award which provides a platform to contemporary artists.”38 Banks understand that supporting artists and the arts are a worthy investment and further, that bank buildings offer large public spaces to display artworks. Even smaller community banks are a good resource for art programs showing student work and donating support for community artists.

Art in the Bank Why art? According to Joan Jeffri, director of the arts-administration program at Columbia University’s Teachers College, “Art confers respectability and respect, and banks need that more than ever.”39 Plus, there is no admission fee for the many who pass through bank spaces and spend considerable time waiting and looking around. Many banks focus on the bank visit as an important visual experience. In the 1950s, a California bank called Home Savings and Loan was known for its

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exciting mosaics and murals which decorated its open interiors and signaled the prosperity of their bank to customers. In a New York Times feature on Millard Sheets, “the best-known designer of the works,” Eve Kahn writes that Sheets “recalled in a 1988 interview, when bank patrons were asked what appealed to them about the buildings, they replied, ‘We like to be associated with something beautiful.’”40 One of the great aspects about your local bank might not be the expensive contemporary art inside, but rather, the relationships with art and artists in the community that banks can establish. Small-town banks like to partner with the community to make their space not only attractive, but also illustrate their involvement with the creative efforts of their neighbors, which is a good business practice. For example, a small local bank in Richmond, Kentucky, regularly partners with artists and arts organizations in its community gallery. Monthly art shows attract large groups to the bank for the openings. Supporting community arts by providing space and financial commitment has proven to be a wise investment for community-oriented bankers.

Teacher/Pedagogy At a young age, one of my favorite things to do at home was to play bank. With an old cash register and some pennies, my brother and I would buy things we created from each other. We printed fresh dollar bills from Styrofoam plates and rolled pennies from Play—Doh. We collected bank forms and shaped cashier compartments from chairs. Students enjoy sharing their own take on standing in a bank line with parents and their memories of bank setups recreated at home. With online banking, time spent in bank buildings has changed, but the exchanges with bankers from a remote car line still leave interesting impressions. Despite today’s online banking atmosphere, there are adventures in brick and mortar spaces that can be challenging and intriguing for student innovators to explore. It is interesting to ponder how and why we build such palaces for wealth. Playing bank designers in the art class opens many possibilities for creative thinkers.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas 1. Considering the future shape and form of banks 2. Creating the art that would go into students’ futuristic vision of banks 3. How could a place designed to house everyone’s savings reflect security and prosperity in its form and function? 4. The form and design of safes can also be studied via historic toys photos, which present an opportunity to discuss and designs safe storage spaces in modern design. In addition, many art forms, art and design professions, and media studies, can be tapped into by looking at banks. Students can bring the experience of studying and creating bank art to school art classes. Among the many project possibilities is the art of currency and designing one’s own. Students can examine the rich story of toy savings banks and design their contributions. Similarly, looking at vintage and antique cash registers, as well as valets, offers a chance to view great design and crafts histories, which provides opportunities

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to construct-related ideas. Also, there are many free bank forms, money rolls, and bank posters that can be collected and repurposed as supplies in the art room. On field trips, discussing how you tell a bank from other buildings is a useful study for identifying and connecting architectural design to its functions. How does a commercial space that buys and sells art differ from what one finds in a bank? How can students transform, using found materials and classroom furnishings, to make the art room feel like a bank? Expanding on bank walks in your community to “larger world trips” in order to explore international banks also leads to a larger visual history and appreciation of these important buildings in the context of different cultures and communities.

Cinema Design From Thomas Edison’s Vitroscope41 theater in 1896 to Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh42 version in the 1950s, to today’s multiplex, the movie theater has gone through significant changes.43 Having grown up during the 1980s and 1990s in the age of the multiplex, the theme behind the experience of the movies was “the bigger the better.” There seemed to be no end to the expanse of screens, and transferring the comforts of home with cushy seating was in vogue. The drive-in theater was slowly dying out, but more advertising, better and more snacks, and even arcades among other amenities, were taking over. How movies are viewed has also changed; today, many try to modernize the viewing experience even further with unconventional theater design.44 With the excess of all of these amenities, there is a renewed nostalgia for experiencing old theaters, where maybe only one or two movies are playing. Though many of these theaters vanished in the last decade, there has been a resurgence effort to save the spaces, if not for the movies then for other staged events or activities such as art shows, live music, full dinners, and more. By preserving the older theaters, cities are creating retro spaces that are more community-oriented.

Teacher/Pedagogy: At the Movies To understand the movie theater and the changing visual aspects it has undergone is a wonderful journey for students. Exploring theater space offers a chance for students to consider themselves as designers. The changes theater spaces undergo open up discussions about what the future of the movie theater look like. As a kid, one of my favorite things about going to the movies was the advertising standups of Hollywood that sit at the front of many movie theaters and the larger-than-life posters. Often, at the end of the movie run, these advertisements will be given away. In the classroom, recreating these stand-up billboards with our own movie characters and superheroes, or redesigning the ones already there, can be an exciting way to think of the movies with “you” in them. Redesigning the marquee, popcorn or drink containers, or

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other food souvenirs, and the ticket booth and movie tickets are also engaging activities for students. Could there be an art exhibit in the hallway, as there is in our historic Kentucky Theatre?45 Can art teachers be part of bringing the movie theater back to a community space versus a corporate space?

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas 1. What type of architecture is the building comprised of? Greek, Gothic, Roman, modern? 2. What are some key architectural elements? Columns? Gargoyles? 3. If you were to create a new space or add to the space, what would it look like? 4. How can you create a different way to watch a movie? 5. What is the difference between watching a movie at home vs the theater? 6. If you took the traditional seats out what would you add? 7. If it were possible to add an art instillation what would that look like? 8. How does the building reflect the space? The city? 9. Can you use old advertising or create new ones as part of your art? 10. With more small projectors available, where else can we see a movie? Under the table, in the hallway, under stairs, in a bathroom?

City Hall The form of every city hall expresses the dominant local ideas of civic power and authority at the time it was built. All that is outside, also is inside, as Goethe observed of all forms. —Bayard Coll46

City hall buildings around the world provide a large central space for everything from gatherings to protests, and are often the central focus and most beautiful structures in a city. Often, these are the oldest city buildings and styles range from Renaissance and Brutalist to modern architecture, which lets the viewer know a bit about the ideals to which a city aspires. But city halls also speak to the visual direction a city wants to go, from limestone to glass, or ecofriendly, or modern, or traditional. Through city planning, the city hall building is often the style that influences the buildings around it, including the green spaces of downtown. For example, the city hall in Austin, Texas, presents a good example of how a city hall reflects its “collaborative, informal community as well as embod[ies] the best in environmental and technological design. Built with limestone, copper, glass and recycled materials, the building has a gold LEED certification for its energy efficiency and sustainability.”47 Furthermore, many cities have begun to feature the arts in their city hall buildings, from music to visual art. Examples range from Louisville, Kentucky,48 which houses art exhibits in the space, to Philadelphia’s city hall,49 which showcases a variety of city’s art throughout the space, from kid’s craft projects and summer camp, to art in the courtyard and city hall art tours. Many cities will showcase student art at their city hall, and if yours doesn’t then it might be a prime opportunity to

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discuss and consider with your students. Also, the state capitol buildings will often have permanent or rotating collections of art that can be toured. Colorado, for example, showcases arts and arts organizations throughout the state with rotating exhibits.50 On April 15, 2019, the world watched in horror as the much-admired landmark, Notre Dame Cathedral, burned in a major fire. In homage to the cathedral, teachers and their students took to the Internet to express their sorrow in powerful drawings and paintings. Many drew from personal snapshots, recalling the indelible memory of standing before the famous monument on a family trip. Others worked from memory expressing their recollections of a movie or art class when they were introduced to the architectural masterpiece. While there were photographs from the devastation, there were few who chose to draw the building in its sad, current state. Beyond religious persuasion, there were heartfelt feelings for this twelfth-century building and its place in cultural history as a landmark for Paris and the world.

Teacher/Pedagogy Art in these public buildings can be easily accessed for viewing. During America’s Youth Art Month in March, many state capitol buildings and city halls ask to have art from the state hung throughout their spaces in celebration. Locating these opportunities or creating them can be an exciting way to showcase student art. When taking your students on a walk through downtown, the city hall building is an important building to discuss. This discussion and study can continue by showing students other cities around the world that have chosen different ways of creating this prominent space.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas 1. What makes your city hall special? 2. If it was to be recommissioned, what would the students create in its place to speak to the values and ideals of the city they live in? 3. What type of architecture is your city hall? What does that architecture reveal to you about the city? 4. What kinds of art can be created in and outside city hall? Projections on the side of the building? A stage for music? Instillations throughout?

A Few City Hall Projects 5. Adam Brinklow, “Hundreds of Faces Projected on SF City Hall,” Curbed: San Francisco, September 14, 2018, https://sf.curbed.com/2018/9/14/17860180/film-sanfrancisco-city-hall-climate-darren-aronofsky 6. Melbourne City Council, “Melbourne Town Hall Christmas Projections 2014 | City of Melbourne,” December 11, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhP1hffE1ek 7. The City of Greater Geelong, “This year the projections follow the history of WW1from 1914 to 1917. As the war continues on the western front and further north, allied forces experienced bitter cold,” April 24, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/ watch/?v=1308809365821466

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A few years ago, after guiding students on their first trip around Europe, we marveled at the powerful presence of magnificent houses of worship: churches, synagogues, and mosques along the way. These buildings are the center of a community and define space as both a visual landmark and a historical center. Situated at the center of the city, Notre Dame was also the center of Paris life for centuries. One does not have to share the spiritual belief; simply walking into the presence of a grand house of worship is a breathtaking experience. Appreciation for the artistic value of religious monuments and learning from their architectural impact on a street and city can be experienced by everyone. In a young country such as America, churches may not have the artistic detailing of their Europe counterparts, yet many visual ideas were carried over the ocean as witnessed in large stained glass windows designs, tall center aisles, and expressive gargoyles. In a city like New York, architecture is a mirror of the melting pot of the city’s diverse residents, represented by all styles of European architecture from French Gothic to Romanesque houses of worship. Over the last seventy-five years, many modern artists have left their mark on towns and cities in the form of houses of worship: from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s stained glass windows, to the modern church design in France by Henri Matisse, or the nondenominational prayer chapel defined by light and the wall-size paintings by Mark Rothko, in Houston, Texas. From Cliffside temples to the most modern marvels, the monumental architectural structures created to worship a higher power have been revised and improvised, becoming an important part of the built environmental experience. Artists are now being asked to work with older churches that might not have the membership they once did to support cultural entrepreneurship. In a program called Partners for Sacred Places51 for example, churches have been converted to artists’ studios, music spaces, and galleries. The buildings often still serve as churches.

Teacher/Pedagogy Taking a walk in any small downtown, one will often encounter majestic houses of worship as a major visual landmark. Reflecting a wide range of architectural styles and religious traditions, one can reflect on changing tastes, local climate, and materials available. While discussing specific religious practices may not be the goal, talking about the history of how art acts closely with religious institutions, or the specifics of the architecture can be considered. In as early as 260 BCE, art has been made and paid for by the church.52 Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or other religious art can also be found and can lead to more enriched discussions. For teachers, the good news is that walking into a house of worship is almost always free and brings about lively observations and comparisons. Depending on how far one wants to delve into religious iconography and ideas, this might or might not be for your group. However, for those students who attend a religious institution, including it in your discussion means that you are including a space with which they are familiar and interested.

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The discussion can be focused on architectural elements, or, if the class is making stained glass windows, it is important to view local examples. Towers and columns of a house of worship can be compared to other similar elements in a city. From local houses of worship, a worldview can be built by looking at edifices such as Hagia Sofia in Istanbul or Sangrada Famila in Barcelona, Spain. Comparison assignments may require student architectural detectives to find similarities and differences between the Lotus Temple in Delhi and Beth Shalom Congregation in Pennsylvania.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas ●●

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Students can create three-dimensional replicas of buildings that have meaning to them. Create an idea for a building in their own neighborhood or city. Photos of individual buildings, or collections of doors, or other architectural elements can be taken and used for drawings, collecting, or collage. Videos of a space could become a digital/social media project. Visual landmarks can also be documented and added to. What would it be like to add a historic building or new store to your town and what would it be?

Some key questions: ●●

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What architectural style of houses(s) of worship can you cite in your town or city? Can you find examples of modern houses of worship in your environment? Does the structure cited pay homage in any way to an older architectural style? Can you list the types of architectural elements being used that are emphasized? Has religious art changed over time? Can you identify some of the changes? Can you describe differences in architectural styles between a church, synagogue, or mosque in your town or city? What are some of the differences and similarities you see in religious building art?

2 Transportation

Chapter Outline Art on Wheels 41 Art with Bikes 42 Subway Art 46 Airport50 Art Is Happening at the Albany International Airport 51

Many students are already invested in modes of transportation at an early age through playing with toy cars, trucks, and buses and studying their every move. Young kids are allowed to climb aboard fire trucks, as well as see the workings of the station. My nephew at the age of three spends most of his day playing with and admiring transportation. His favorite excursion is to the big parking lot where his beloved green garbage trucks are kept. Watching him, he is intent on getting to feel the texture of their large wheels and inspecting the large arms that collect and move trash. It is this daily dedication to shapes, design, and movement that creates great artists. In the art room, transportation is a natural connection that students have been studying and participating in their entire lives. It is part of the everyday and incorporates the history and future of innovation. Viewing transportation as artists is an important connection and can inspire new ways to create. Documenting the transportation and spaces that one sees and visits and creating new ways to move around and through spaces can lead to wonderful innovation. What would a school bus of the future look like? How could we design roads if the cars were flying? The highlight of a trip, for a child, is often more about the journey than the destination. Going to the airport to watch planes or underground to the subway station can be a memorable experience. Students’ everyday encounters can also involve various modes of transportation. Whether it’s the design of a car, the advertising on the side of a truck, or art created for the airport, transportation allows students to experience design, advertising, traditional art in nontraditional spaces, and the relationship between engineering and art.

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The Art Teacher’s Guide to Exploring Art and Design

Figure 2.1  Art Car outside 21C Art Hotel in Louisville, KY. Arillated: The 21C Pip Mobile.

Airports, train terminals, subway stations, and bus stops are spaces where people spend a great deal of time. While we wait, we can observe the inner workings of an airport and how the planes are filled with food and packages, and how airports move people and planes to get everyone to their destination. An airport, a train station, or bus terminal feels like a city onto themselves, some with art displays, some shaped to accommodate the vehicles they house and send off. It is interesting to observe the different spaces and what works for the various modes of transportation. When using transportation, design can influence the overall experience that one might have in the space. In city planning there are issues of biological social needs, safety concerns, and more as people have to get from place to place. For pedestrians, movement, comfort, and safety are all concerns when looking at how people interact with transportation. Today, there are many ways for an individual person to put on wheels and cross the city, interacting with both pedestrians and vehicles on a more personal level, from bikes and scooters, to hover boards and skate boards. Transportation allows for different views, speeds, and heights to see and experience city streets and buildings. Whether on a single street or on connecting roads, a city has a variety of types of transportation— from bikes to cars—and provisions of roads—signage for direction, equipment for safety, streetlights, floor markings, and gates for passing over train tracks. There are many ways of separating traffic from pedestrians and bikes from buses: highways for speed, city streets for slower moving traffic, and transportation for shopping, parking, and storing vehicles.

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Designing space with concern for landscape, light, elements, designing places to sit, things to look at, and lifestyle can help a space flow better as well as be a positive visual experience. Artin-transit programs have led to public art in subway stations, on commuter rail platforms, at bus stops, and in other transportation infrastructure for decades. This means that all people concerned in these modes of transportation, as well as designers and artists, need to work together to build the environment. The term “creative placemaking” (a term coined by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010) utilizes the power of arts and culture to allow for genuine public engagement especially in low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, and among immigrant populations. This term refers to projects in which “art plays an intentional and integrated role in place-based community planning and development.”1 Although not a new idea, [i]ntegrating artists at the beginning of a large project can lead to a better process and product. The arts are able to generate creative solutions for transportation problems, engage multiple stakeholders, as well as heal wounds and division.2 The end results are things such as streets, sidewalks and public spaces that welcome us, inspire us and move us in every sense of that word.3

Chapter 2 surveys transportation not only through examining the vehicles themselves, but also through the experience of going to where they are housed. This chapter references sculpture, interior design, curatorial design, and more in the nontraditional art spaces of the airport or the subway where many artists are displaying their work, as well as in the art of the modes of transportation themselves as art. While this chapter highlights many areas of transportation, there are even more yet to be explored by you and your students.

Art on Wheels Whether a work of art can truly move or has to be guided on an imaginative journey, many art projects hold a kinesthetic element for children. My setup of dolls was pulled on a flying carpet with one sitting in my dad’s shoes, and the parade float was escorted by the shoelaces. Adding movement made art come alive, and, as an art teacher, that mobile aspect continues as part of many of my students’ sculpture projects as they launch, pull, or push found object creations into imaginative rides on wheels. This enthusiasm for wheeled forms moves into adulthood in many configurations.4 Interest in structure on wheels can start with bikes, cars, trucks, buses, and trains to ride, collect, or customize. Artists as transportation enthusiasts take part in larger repurposing projects that are often connected to a cultural movement created as group actions. For example, car shows that parade vehicles, collecting or painting skateboards, or designing bikes to show at the Burning Man Festival of unusual bike-based forms are examples of this phenomenon. Groups with similar interests compete and come together, motivated to be part of an outdoor art movement.5 Customized “personal wheels” add visual interest to experiencing the street and the environment. Modifications show great innovations in personal forms, an art that is used or displayed by

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self-taught artist-tinkerers. For example, at our local farmers market in Kentucky, a bicycle appears that has been rigged with blenders to make juice shakes. We also have a child-decorated art museum on wheels driving around town, a refurbished Airstream camper, that bring art to fairs and libraries in rural settings. The idea of refurbishing or changing the function of a vehicle has a long history. The Art Car museum in Huston, Texas, has documented some of these ideas.6 It’s hard to miss these marvels of art and engineering passing by when they create such popular interest. Vehicles around the world have been transformed into works of art, as a larger itinerant art movement. In Spain, one company started the Truck Art Project which paints art on the side of its trucks and brings “street art back to its roots.” 7 According to one of the curators of the truck project, “thanks to people like Banksy, this kind of art has made its way into the gallery … but I thought it would be interesting and challenging to do the opposite— to get artists out of the gallery or the museum and actually back on the street.” The art truck allows contemporary artists to have their art seen all over the country depending on the truck route. In addition to the art on the truck, some vehicles have galleries displayed inside them, expanding on the exterior show, bringing art to rural communities that might not have access to contemporary art. In the case of the trucks, the founder of the movement Raphael Minder stated, “The viewer normally does the moving to get to see the art, while we’re bringing the art to them, in a very unexpected manner.”8 In some ways, Mr. Sanz said, the project was “a wink to 30 years ago,” when artists were decorating “the trains and trucks of New York.”9 In this case, the art is mostly being painted on the side while the trucks themselves are not being modified. Today’s streets also feature buses wrapped in plastic advertising as enormous moving picture shows. Oscar Mayer’s Wiener mobile fleet in the United States and the giant moving sneaker Nike car in France are examples of sponsored sculptures built for the streets in a variety of interesting materials. Yet moving objects on wheels do not always have to be modified to be appreciated as art. New or vintage bikes, food trucks, or trains as fast-moving forms of design engineering add to the array of street art. Off the street, a bike museum like the one in Pittsburg, USA, can be a wonderful way to look at the history of a specific moving sculpture.

Art with Bikes Spending a day at a bike museum makes the history and design artistry of bicycles come to life. The bike is a good example of where science, art, and engineering intersect. Bicycles have a history of aesthetic beauty, as well as fanciful modifications. Adults and children have used their bikes as canvases to paint, sticker, tape, and add new decorative and useful extensions. There are bicycle museums from Pittsburg to Huston where art and design of the history of the bicycle can be experienced.10 Local antique stores and bike shops around town make it convenient to search for examples of well-designed and interesting bikes. Perhaps the best places to experience bikes of all kinds are cities known for their love of biking such as Amsterdam or Copenhagen where there are more bikes than people. In these cities, there

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The art class can adopt a bike to remodel or customize. Students can create stickers, baskets, flags, and invent decorations for moving parts like wheel spoke covers and attachments to spin their art into optical wonders.

are many interesting variations on the art form and enthusiastic customizers. In places where bikes are an essential mode of transportation, the parade of bikes streaming by during high times of traffic is a fantastic scene. Details have great interests when exploring bike culture and the fashion and accessories associated with it. Some of the striking details to study are innovations to chauffeur young children or accommodate extra riders, basket innovations for groceries, drinks and snack holders, bells, and locks.11

Art on the Skateboard In the 1970s, street art and skateboard culture were strongly connected. Yet, while customizing your “deck” has always been part of the skateboard subculture, it picked up serious speed and became part of the mainstream by the early 1990s. Today even the Museum of Modern Art sells art skateboards, and you can design your own custom “deck” on websites such as Boardpusher.12 While many started doing this by hand with paint, stenciling, spray paint, and stickers, designers soon caught on and became inspired, creating artist-collectors and sought-after limited-edition boards.13 Many of these boards were meant to be hung and collected and would never even touch the ground.14 The skate culture has a strong connection to art and can be celebrated and added to in the art room. Sharing with students the skateboard art can form connections to the everyday and things that inspire them. A trip to a skateboard shop, having a guest collector visit the class, or just sharing some of the various skateboard images can create those connections.

Scooters and Motorcycles Scooters and motorcycles are an important part of many city and country communities. While an easy way to get around town, they also have a history and beauty to each individual form. The shapes and nuances of individual vehicles are the pride of their driver. Added visual features of color, bags, side cars, and stickers are all what make these vehicles unique. Whether you own a Vespa or a Harley Davidson, there is a culture that is unique to that bike. There is also art that goes with it. For example, there are artists who are exclusive to companies such as Harley Davidson and paint or sculpt the images of their bikes.

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Walking down the street and taking pictures or creating drawings of these vehicles can be significant to a student who has these interests. Students who are interested in these vehicles can create their own designs and threedimensional plans.

City Vehicle Rentals Smaller vehicles beyond bikes, Segways, and scooters—such as velomobiles, motorized skateboards, unicycles, hoverboards, and other small, battery-powered low-speed modes of transportation— have made it easier for some to get around a city.15

Stroller and Baby Carriage There is a large expanse of design for strollers and baby carriages. Walking down the street are multiple examples. There are strollers shaped like cars, forward- and back-facing, strollers. There are ones with wheels on the back for older kids to stand, strollers to attach to a bicycle, streamlined strollers for parents who run, and even ones for dogs to sit in.

Mobile Food Vendors From an early age, children are excited about the idea of food stands, from lemonade to cookie stands. The idea of a mobile food vendor being able to sell items from a small space by the side of the road is an adventure. Food vendors have a wonderful way of making large statements in a small space—advertising products, while making the space itself appealing enough for someone to stop and want to purchase. How one interacts with the space as a consumer, the way that items for sale are advertised, and what is displayed are all important. Taking this idea into the art class can be an important one. Can we take our mobile vendor cart outdoors or down the hall to sell our food, art, or other wears? Can we have an art food stand? Can we bring out the real lemonade in unusual colors alongside painted cookies?

Advertising From taxi cabs to trucks, wrapped vehicles and buses offer more and more ways to wheel an advertisement along the streets. Asking students to think about ways to create images and where they can be placed requires knowing the space of the vehicle and that it will be traveling through the streets. How does this change the way that art is created? Drawings become three-dimensional,

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sometimes venturing into the fourth dimension. Some of the better advertisements ask one to question their sense of depth, space, and reality.

Teacher/Pedagogy From constructing on old skateboards, to floats in the class parade, students love the idea of making movable objects, from simply putting wheels on their art to working together with larger parts. While one might not be able to paint or redo a semitruck there are plenty of ways to bring the same concepts into the classroom. Working with cardboard boxes and laundry baskets adding wheels and pulleys as well as a student’s favorite action figure can create a movable art adventure. Many of these ideas can be shared in the community at skate, car, bicycle, or other outdoor shops and spaces. Outside the classroom, older students work on new inventions with old bikes or carriages. Cardboard cars can be created for car parades.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas – Repurposed skateboards or ideas for them can be added to the classroom as students think about personalizing this space. – Painting with toy cars and trucks can make interactive paint brushes as wheels become printing devises. – Projects can be created about: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

food trucks food wagons tractors campers snow mobiles water vehicles trains advertising that moves

Questions: What types of things with wheels can we take apart and repurpose? Where can we display these items? Are there practical ways to repurpose that we can use? For example, Bicycle bike racks or a bicycle juice machine? What type of wheels would we need to make your invention go, and be balanced enough to stand? Does anyone have some old wheeled toys to bring in to be repurposed?

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Figure 2.2  Underground art (Chicago, IL).

Subway Art The first subway system (Metro) started in London in 1863. Today, almost every major city in the world has a version of the underground rail system. Common features include large volumes of riders traveling at fast speeds through a dark, underground, cavern-like space. While a utilitarian necessity in large cities to get from one point to the next, subways are also designed places, offering adventurous visual exploration. Long tunnels are filled with posters and artwork on a variety of subjects and media. The subway provides kinetic moments of seeing art in motion as one goes down an escalator or passes yet another station. Today, the transit authority in most cities spends millions on commissioned art and underground architecture. A beautiful subway system can often be the pride of a city. Art in subways is curated to consider a public moving through the station and is part of the experience of the high-speed ride that follows. From the art and advertising inside the train car itself, to the images seen at fast speeds through the windows, viewers have seconds to see and form an impression of the art and environment that surrounds them. The train in motion produces a riveting feel of speeding light for passengers as they pass columns and whizzing station artworks that appear only for a moment. Certainly, this is a much different circumstance and viewing experience than walking the streets, or the slow pace browsing in a museum.

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Subway stops offer an opportunity to highlight a location’s features, such as the sights or attractions near the station, or the nature and history of the community above. Unlike streets and communities, which have clear visual landmarks, below ground has to be interpreted by the station’s design details. An example of how a city represents its community below ground is New York’s Washington Heights Station, for which there is a yearly subway poster contest that provides opportunities for artists to celebrate local events and tell a visual story of the neighborhood. This New York subway station offers a good example of how art builds community awareness around a common goal, even below the ground. What art could students create to tell the story of their stop, neighborhood, or school campus?

Graffiti In addition to the planned, purchased, and sponsored art in subway stations, there are also graffitidecked surfaces ranging from small stencils and stickered images on walls, columns, stairs, and floors, to the painted marks of fly-by-night image makers that leave large impressions on all parts of the train and station. The history of graffiti art goes back to Roman times when it was common to inscribe messages on public walls. Mayans also inscribed drawings onto various public surfaces. Today, artists are making similar marks but are more recognized and celebrated in both popular culture and in the art world. Artists, such as Poster Boy in New York City, work with advertisements by finding ways to manipulate them. Poster Boy alters ads by switching up colors, body parts, textures, etc. Similarly, the decapitator from London replaces advertisements that feature celebrity bodies with images of bloody stumps. In doing so, these artists address the commercial world through direct commentary on advertisements. Actions like these provide a fresh platform to discuss art versus vandalism. Is political art vandalism? What price does one pay for creating these statements? An artist such as Poster Boy vandalizes the space, yet so did the now highly acclaimed gallery artist Keith Haring in the 1980s. The difference in this case might be that Haring was addressing the devastating conditions of the subway system in disrepair, while Poster Boy is commenting more on already created advertisements. Looking back, there was a time when many subway systems were dingy places, further soiled by angry graffiti marks. For New York, the 1970s and 1980s were a formative time when artists such as Keith Haring used the subway space as a platform for change. The destructive marks and gang symbols that made up his art were a commentary on not only the state of the subway, but also the general condition of New York as a city. To add to the decay, an infamous two-week transit strike in 1980 allowed young spray painters to take over the underground art world and paint graffiti nonstop. It could be said that the voices of underground artists were heard, as today’s New York City Subway is becoming the pride of a city that spends millions on curating stations and commissioning artworks. The city utilizes its artists, graphic designers, digital artists, photographers, and glass and tile artists, in a widespread program that encourages submissions and creative participation in subway station artistry. Most subway art today is commissioned by the local transit authority, but one can still find interesting art that is simply created by individuals wanting to add their

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mark to the underground landscape. Pieces, such as Post It Note Therapy, were created after the 2016 US election, which promoted public art participation in a time of fear and stress. Subway stations were flooded with thousands of notes, creating subway walls of messages.16 Differentiating between graffiti and art continues to be a controversial subject above and below the ground. History, time, and hindsight are beginning to reflect the importance of both graffiti and art in telling our story. The philosophy of bringing the voices of artists to the center of community life is considered part of the mission of cities across the world. This has made locations like subways an important place to look at art. Creating subways as art stations for the community has made mass travel itself more exciting. Though many cities have spent a significant amount of money putting the newest and latest art into their subways, these investments are not always about putting a gallery underground. Designed by art nouveau architect Henri Duray, the 100-year-old Paris Metro17 does not have a great deal of modern art or architecture. However, this gives the viewer an opportunity to look for hidden treasures, starting with the famous grand entrances of metal works from the Art Nuevo period (1890–1910), which invite you to enter the city’s underlayer. The special Louvre metro stop is decorated with pieces from the collection above in the museum. For students who live in a subway city, the historical art spaces available to them are an important aspect of interacting with the opportunities in community art.

Advertising In large cities, advertisers have used the subway space as a platform to grab public attention. For example, IKEA stores have set up large-scale attractions like sample couches as advertising opportunities on subway platforms.18 Timing and placement matter when advertisements face the viewer and their presence is well executed. Smaller, but equally important, the ads near the arm strap of a subway car or facing the turn style grab the attention of every individual using the rails because of their location. The messages of advertisements can be educational, such as NYC metro’s eye-level posters placed inside subway cars in 2018, “Facts About Muslims” or they can be social such as the Poetry Society of America’s “Poetry in Motion” campaign. For more than twenty-five years, poetry on subway platforms and inside cars has been presented in twenty American cities. Other examples of advertisements include poster classics such as Coke or cigarettes and ad installations spectacles, such as the Lays potato farm hanging from the ceiling in an ad instillation.19 Most subway stations and cars have specific places designated for advertisements. Ads are an art form that has become part of that subway system. For example, the Paris metro has long framed posters that fill the walls at the curve of the tunnel creating unusual viewing angles.

Architecture of the Subway The architectural style of subway entrances and interiors around the world spans many years and influences, from the Classical Paris Metro and the Baroque in the Komsomolskaya station in

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Moscow to the Modern influences seen in the Olaias station in Lisbon, Portugal, and futurist styles Westminster, London. Several locations feature interesting mixes of various periods and styles too. These naturally stark tunnels that were bored into the depths of cities have become lively shopping and arts districts—go-to places for exploring art and entertainment. In Sweden, each station of the Tunnelbana (Metro) has its own artists and designers, the idea being that creative minds from all walks of life should come together to be part of the process.20 The creative staging of subway lines has been going on in Stockholm since the 1950s. Yet the Metro in Washington, DC, the American capitol, has taken a very different architectural approach with eleven different distinct elements throughout. There are no sculptures or art letting the architecture speak for itself and creating a sense of cohesion.21

Teacher/Pedagogy If you are close to a subway system, taking a field trip underground can be as exciting as going to your local gallery or museum. Finding the art both concealed and exposed in the tunnels of a city can be pitched as a treasure hunt. Between the search for unusual advertisements and interesting platform furnishings, finding large-scale art installations and small messages on the ground, subways offer unlimited possibilities. Seeking visual surprises is a rewarding experience. By looking at what can be found, taking visual notes, starting collections, and brainstorming about what can be added, subway trips can expand to class projects and discussions about aesthetics, and the ethics of those aesthetics, in the classroom. If there is not a subway nearby, imaginations can lead the journey. Planning a station for art in the classroom, under school tables is a good place to consider what it would be like to create a subway system in your town. Planning the route, mapping the path, students can create the future as they envision digging and preparing new versions of subway cars and tunnels to connect different parts of the city. In the process, art teachers open up access to interesting stories, histories, and visual sources. Subway enthusiasts, or students who have had experiences in metro systems, can share lively stories and visual recordings. Show your own pictures and resources. If there are signs that there will be a subway coming to your neighborhood, plan along with the planners. Make suggestions and students’ ideas known to the public. Compare and contrast student plans. Take seriously student visions and bring to class the progress of the proposed plan for discussion and critiques. Question and plan all aspects of the building process and visit building sites. In doing so, you can generate discussion about the following questions: What would we want to say about our neighborhood in a subway stop planned close to us? What would we want the entrance, signs, cars, stations platforms to be like? How would students use found materials to construct models of their own subway systems? Students in art classes can consider where it would be best to put advertisements in a station or subway cars and why. This consideration for advertising, and how space can be part of the commentary broadens the idea of advertising today.

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Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas Working with subway advertising ideas and objects in the classroom: – Unusual locations/placements/media of subway advertising. – Social or political messages conveyed in subway ads. – Looking at, and creating, political and social art. Finding ways to display art in subway settings: – Hidden corners, on the ceiling, floors, steps, benches, etc. – Participatory art in the subway context. – Thinking about using the light in the tunnel, on platforms, and different parts of the station. – How changing speeds influence the ways in which people can see artwork on the platform and in the trains. Subway Art History – Looking at the history of graffiti in subways and what art has been part of the underground culture. – The history of different types of subway cars, signs, signals, turn styles, and other common subway items. – Looking at the history of advertisements in the subway. Graffiti and the Subway System Since the counterculture movements of graffiti have begun to be accepted and placed into galleries, books, and museums, does the act of graffiti also become accepted? – Graffiti is in museums. – Graffiti type styles are in the mainstream. – Boundary between defacing and beatifying – Creating work for a specific stop.

Airport In my desire to travel, I often find myself waiting for yet another connection at a seemingly random stopover. After enduring the unexpected three-hour delay, or the hurried moment running from the previous flight, looking around the airport can be a rewarding experience. Many airports have transformed empty waiting spaces into mini malls, children’s play areas, and displays of beautiful art, making a long wait a bit more pleasant. A “good” airport exhibit may give a preview of the city, and provide a sense of what the unscheduled visitor may be missing. In the best-case scenario one may even return to the stopover cities as a tourist for a closer look. Due to initiatives making airports more intriguing destinations, entertainment, community, and global positioning are becoming central to the airport’s mission. For the modern airport, showcasing art has become an important component, with perks including a built-in global audience, as well as the vast spaces of modern architecture. For the art classroom, the airport can be an excellent lesson in site-specific art, and preparation for students to use a fast-paced vision as they look at and learn about art in their community. Airport art and displays can also become an important model for a new “hallway art,” and how art could be displayed in schools.

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Another Chicago Layover During a recent trip through one of my favorite airports, Chicago’s O’Hare, I found myself on one such visual layover. Though I could not make it into the city itself, the airport allowed access to a small slice of Chicago’s art and culture. For my daughter Emilie, there was a wonderful architectural play structure designed by the children’s museum. In addition, we stopped along the way to the next terminal to look at the beautifully painted benches created by Chicago area teens. The benches introduce notable artists and well-known city landmarks. O’Hare is a powerful example of how strong community connections can be explored in airports. In fact, some quick research on the O’Hare website uncovers a description of its Art and Exhibits Program: “In addition to its permanent art collection, the Chicago Airport System invites cultural institutions, nonprofit arts organizations and artists to participate in a variety of exhibition opportunities available at the airports.”22 This outreach to local artists lends itself to an overview of Chicago’s vibrant art community.

Art Is Happening at the Albany International Airport Experiencing Art at the Airport Airport art is unique in that it provides exposure, in a limited time frame, to an audience that is not necessarily there to view art. Unlike a museum, however, which has to work to get patrons in the door, the airport does not have to labor to attract an art audience. While traditional museum-goers might take issue with the airport way of interacting with art, does that make the art experience any less valid? It is, in fact, the proliferation of triumphant, twenty-first-century architecture of new airports and contemporary museums that has changed our rituals of art viewing because these are spaces that are no longer the familiar temples of art, to be slowly and silently experienced in strictly divided period galleries. As art teachers examine new ways to introduce their students to the art world, there will be a need to venture beyond the traditional museum models in order to showcase the alternative spaces in which art lives. It is important to teach students not only to look at art in traditionally designated areas, but also to be acutely aware of art showcased in unexpected places, in open and non-ritualistic spaces.

Community Art and Breaking Down Barriers of the Elite The airport is an example of today’s community art spaces that break down some of the barriers and etiquette that have become associated with “high art.” Unlike a museum, which might showcase art and culture to a few visitors, airports “transport” art to a location with a vast audience. Art at the airport can be viewed casually or carefully; it can be enjoyed as a main course or be used to just feel comfortable in an entertaining and supporting role, decorating the space and easing the

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burdens of the traveler. (While there is often a high admission price to the terminal, the art inside feels comfortable because it is there primarily to entertain the traveler and decorate the space.) Compared to a museum, an airport is an informal setting, where the experience of art is often presented in casual and nonthreatening ways. Since moving through an airport is part of a larger experience, viewers can choose to look at and attend to the art in any way they want. A viewer can spend much or little time with the art or just walk right by. Art at an airport is open to everyone because it is a common, public space where background or knowledge of art is not in question, nor does art have to be discussed in any prescribed manner. Audiences don’t feel that they have to know the language and etiquette of communing with art at the airport, the feeling that one has to “get it,” or to understand a challenging exhibit they came to see. Airport art is generally nonconfrontational, or controversial, as it does not challenge the history or viewer’s notions of art. It is art selected for the senses and designed to be pleasurable, beautiful, and enjoyable to the tired traveler in need of visual refreshment.

Arts Advocacy Some airports, such as JFK in New York, have become places for the international exchange of ideas, displaying prominent international artists and exhibits. According to Suzanne Carmichael, the “pieces at the International Arrivals Building … make up not only the country’s first major airport art collection, established in 1969, but also one of its most impressive. Today over 200 pieces greet travelers, including work by Miro, Picasso, Calder and Salvador Dali.”23 After all, an airport with international visitors has the potential to become a global art center. Other airports have a more regional focus, promoting a more localized community of artists. The airport as an art gallery often becomes a place to learn about hometown artists, key art events, and the history of the area. Chicago is a good example of a municipality that has outstanding resources, which also promotes art that relates to the local community. For example, the art in Chicago is a mix of artworks by notable international artists, local artists, and students. Many smaller airports showcase student art from a local museum education department and exhibits, which introduce visitors to local artists. In fact, Carmichael states that “[o]nce limited to trite Lindbergh statues or forgettable photographs of historic planes, airport collections now contain work by a roster of accomplished international, regional and local artists.”24 Today’s airport works to support higher levels of art initiatives. Art is showcased on the airport websites, and it frequently appears in the airport mission statements, and many airports have even hired curators. All of this indicates that airports, large and small, are striving toward becoming prominent places for art viewing that enhance cities’ cultural status by showing flourishing art communities.

Limited Access Before the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, school classes could freely visit their local airport’s art collections. During this period, the airport was on its way to becoming a true community arts venue. While trying to remain an art showcase for the city, as well as promote

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community art, airports increased security following the attacks of 9/11. Although many airports, such as Albany International, have galleries outside the security gates, at many other airports, one needs a high-priced plane ticket to get into restricted areas. Much like an earlier era of American art museums, when the doors were not open to everyone, 9/11 security requirements have sharply limited public access art in airports. While the airport environment has the potential for breaking down the elitist barriers that the art museum continues to face, and the number of potential viewers is impressive, there still remains a question of who is allowed in.

Art Museums and Airports For the airport, the potential art audience is much greater than any art museum. For instance, according to Carmichael, “[i]n 1990, America’s busiest airport, O’Hare in Chicago, handled over 60 million passengers and uncounted meters and greeters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in the same period, welcomed only 4.5 million visitors.”25 Of course, one could argue that, while such numbers are important, the experience of visiting an art museum is unique. As such, the museum provides an isolated viewing experience in a designated art place, which individuals seek out. In fact, the ritual of attending an art museum, some would argue, is just as vital as the art on the walls. According to Carol Duncan, the museum is a total experience; it is a setting that connects the viewer to an uplifting journey of discovery. Duncan describes the museum as a site “which enables individuals to achieve a subliminal experience to move beyond the psychic constraints of mundane existence, step out of time, and attain new larger perspectives.”26 In addition, she writes about how the public is served by the “performances” they enact while in the museum. She suggests that the structure of the space provides for different ritual scenarios for visitors to explore. However, many who have been to an art museum have not experienced a level of comfort necessary to participate in Duncan’s journey. Yet might they find the comfort necessary to appreciate art by spending a few minutes looking at or discussing art at the airport? Will a brief encounter with art at a terminal result in further curiosity in art? There is no question that the airport has a vast potential in building new art audiences, but it is difficult to say how many of the new audience members will become museum-goers. Interacting with art at the airport breaks down some of the traditional rituals of viewing art, which Duncan addresses, and creates new ones. For example, viewing the new art from the airport trams in Phoenix includes quickly passing by a mural as if in a performance, something to which even experienced art viewers are not accustomed. This can either be exhilarating, or it may feel like being trapped with the art. Instead of Duncan’s proposed quiet contemplation, venues such as airports may force an interaction with the work during a high-speed journey. While on the tram, there is little time for comments, or meditation. Time is condensed and minimal, but nevertheless, forced interaction occurs, due to the viewer being confined in the space. To see the possibilities in the moment and to acknowledge that one’s personal space was changed, that the environment had been altered, that an artist commented on the surroundings, almost requires a new definition of the art-viewing experience.

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Artists whose works are exhibited in the airport are beginning to recognize and explore the sensibilities of a different viewing public, changing the nature of some art in airports to site-based installations that reflect their surroundings. While it may be a powerful experience to spend perhaps hours with a painting by Miro at the Chicago airport, the light show between terminals in Atlanta is meant to be seen at a fast pace. By playing with the viewer’s sense of movement as they ride the moving sidewalk, artists have created powerful transformative effects. What was previously a long, empty corridor, racked with the tension of people trying to get to their destination, may now be a space that flows with soothing sounds and florescent light shows. Now, there is an art experience for every speed: for those who are waiting out their five-hour layover, or passengers buzzing through to their gate. In fact, fast-paced viewing does not have to negate moments of contemplation, but can take into account how students see the world today, which is often a struggle for artists and educators. Looking at the way students engage with technology, educators need to begin utilizing these viewing techniques in the classroom. Shafter, Squire, Halverson, and Gee state that “most educators are dismissive of video games. But corporations, the government, and the military have already recognized and harnessed their tremendous educative power. Schools have to catch up.”27 Because technology is so powerful and fast-paced, the way one sees the world takes on these qualities, and teaching students from these points of view is essential.

Traveling as Art To be at the airport is to travel through art experiences that may leave lasting impressions, or simply contribute to a more pleasant journey. Art critic Lucy Lippard discusses in her book Off the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place, the process of traveling as a performance piece.28 The nature of airport terminals’ spaces creates an atmosphere of unlimited artistic possibilities. The mix of images, faces, and seating partners creates an experience where we can tell our seating partner almost anything, reinventing ourselves as well as our surroundings. Long corridors to the great unknown and airplanes that lead to an endless number of destinations are all part of the ambience. Contrary to the museum experience, going from room to room, viewing art at the airport is part of a different movement. The art at the airport blends into our popular culture, not separating itself in special rooms. In between the art, there are kiosks, stores, large-scale advertisements, rich sounds, and different types of lighting, which mix with hurried passengers. The airport has a unique pace and setting, which contributes to a singular mix of perceptual qualities. These elements alter the art on display, as well as the art-viewing experience. They also contribute to the creation of unique works of art, which can be engaged with as the event of today’s travel. For Duncan, the tradition of viewing art is part of an overall practice. In order to be enlightened, for instance, one has to be present within the space and experience its totality. In other words, Duncan believes that art can only be appreciated when in the art museum.29 Certainly, the rules of traditional viewing do not apply to the airport, but experiencing art at the airport has its own totality of space and experience—its own rules for viewing. While some may argue that a viewer walking through a long corridor between terminals, or passing by on a moving sidewalk, cannot experience an artwork

Transportation

appropriately, this assumes that traditional viewing is a standard by which all others are set. So, can art be experienced on an elevator or tram? Does art only “function” in the museum? Even Duncan notes that the current state of the museum is shifting from a transcendent art experience to that of a consumer-driven one.30 Therefore, the consumer-driven airport, and its suggested ways of viewing and experiencing art, represents and houses many qualities of that shift.

Masterpieces of Architecture and Art While the architectural prominence of new churches and town halls has faded into the background of modernity, the architectural marvels of the twenty-first century are museums, stadiums, and airports. When travelers and students in an art class look at art in the airport, they will find it in the buildings, starting with the magnificent exteriors and the continuous interior flow. Eero Saarinen’s Pan Am building at JFK, for example, stands as a widely admired masterpiece of airport architecture, and many contemporary examples followed suit. An airport provides a different type of architectural form and space, one of constant movement that is viewed in the buildings’ form. Architects design airports by creating indoor pedestrian highways, clear open paths for efficient movement punctuated by rising skyways and waiting rooms. Artwork in an airport may take advantage of spectacular runway views and places for indoor art. Long corridors and movementoriented spaces provide a new sense of design and function for art at the airport. For example, in Atlanta, moving light shows and active statues move with the speed of changing passengers and planes. As large employers of commissioned artworks, airports inspire artists to create new works that speak to the space. According to Lucy Lippard (1999), “[a]rtists have always traveled and provided a lens through which the rest of us look around.”31 The art installations at the airport challenge artists to comment on the unique space and architecture, as well as the experience of travel. The pace of life today makes children fast observers. Video games and other contemporary media require fast viewing and quick response. Students feel comfortable seeing the world passing by the windows of a car or school bus. This way of viewing art in an airport is perhaps a realistic depiction of how children, our future artists and designers, see and think. Accustomed to the fast pace, many students are fascinated by flight and space, and so they already see the airport as an exciting place to be, as well as an exciting place to see art. Children are less content going to the museum, where they are asked to slow down, to enter quietly, and contemplate artworks for long periods of time. The airport, in some sense, is the new way of looking at art, one that our students can embrace and from which they may learn. The interest in art at the airport can easily be expanded to students looking at new designs in luggage and conveyance, as well as art in seating areas and airport counter designs. For students, the complex and fastpaced airport environment, combined with students’ unique ability to process information and multiple events, contributes to quick moments of interaction in which perhaps the right way of looking at the visual offerings of the airport can occur. Our students are trained by society and media to learn, to think, and see in short intervals. Despite their brevity, these small segments of time accumulate meaning.

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Teacher/Pedagogy: Accessing Art beyond the Museum For art educators, the airport opens up new questions about place, time and environment. By putting art in the airport, one may ask about the impact of the chance encounter, or forced access, on those who would otherwise not be exposed to art. Some questions arise from such contemplation: What is the nature of this impact, and how can it be studied? What can art educators do to prepare students who are seeing art today in many places other than museums? Art in airports gives art teachers the opportunity to discuss art in terms of students’ travel plans, and this discussion creates an awareness of the airport-as-art-venue as well as an awareness of art more generally, outside the museum and classroom. Art teachers can help inform students about art in airports and larger community settings. Albert Camus states that travel is “a grander and deeper process of learning which leads us back finally to ourselves.”32 It is the airport that transports or launches us to another world, to new sights and new experiences, which now includes artworks viewed at the beginning and at the end of our travels. Art and travel transform us and open up new worlds for our student artists. Art in airports is a way to merge the subject of travel and art in classroom discussions. These discussions may include the changes in the works of artists as they travel and explore new places. The airport art experience can be connected to the destination itself, and it may emphasize the importance of experiencing other cultures for future artists and art appreciators. Studying art in the airport can be the introduction to learning about art in relation to place. Students can study art made for specific spaces, and compare viewing art in a museum to seeing art in other community settings. Since more students will encounter art in the community, rather than through museum attendance, this is a crucial area of study. In an art class, students should be prepared not just to look at art in museums, but to benefit from everyday encounters with art in the community. Many community art experiences are of the fleeting, airport kind, as students pass by billboards and mall displays, or view areas of their city from a car window. Future art teachers need to prepare students for fast-paced encounters with art in many places. Using the airport as an example, students can see how some artists collaborate with architects in developing public spaces. These often unplanned encounters may be with artworks that are not labeled, surrounded by frames, sitting on pedestals, or explained by curators. Art classes need to prepare students to find art everywhere—in chance meetings, and in places they did not go to look exclusively at art. A willingness to experience art in the world, wherever it may be found, should be an important element of art education. Airport illustrations may include how drab, long corridors were given new meaning by incorporating art. Interesting conversations can be initiated about the changing ways in which art is viewed “on the go,” at 2 a.m., or in unusual locations, influencing the way students see and make art. Educators need to emphasize that art is everywhere. Art education, in its most distilled form, is pointing out the extensive scope and influence of the community of artists displayed not just in museums but in the street, in parks, and in public buildings, such as airports. Airport art experiences can instruct teachers and students about site-related art in more specific ways as well. The airport provides a different way to view art, and much of the art commissioned specifically for the airport reflects its surroundings. Art made for the airport relates to a special place: contributing to the mood and well-being of travelers, relating to the space, and the architecture formed around

Transportation

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas For example, the following questions have been posed to middle-school students discussing art at the airport: ●●

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If you were a tired, and perhaps angry traveler facing a forced layover, what would make you happy to look at? If you had to design art for a long pedestrian path at an airport, what would you recommend to the architects? How could your art help transform the space? How would adding artistic elements reinvent the airport experience? If you knew that the audience would always “speed view” your art for only ten seconds, how would it change your designs and plans? How is the art on an airport wall different from the advertisements on the walls? Does art change according to where it is placed? Can an artwork made for the airport be displayed in an art museum?

movement and change. Every student can study art as it relates to place, from art in churches, to subways, malls, hospitals, and representations in airports. In fact, art that relates to a place in the city contributes to the visual quality of the community. Looking at public art, such as that displayed at the airport, can be a starting point for discussions of art in school: Can there be site-specific school art? What would it be like? How can school-hallway art contribute to passing through the building and to life in the school? Would site-based art in a school be a bulletin-board display, a mural, or an installation? Airport art is a good comparison for school-hallway art, which often consists of bulletin-board displays that are reminiscent of looking at art museum walls, requiring viewers to stop to contemplate in the busy thoroughfares of the school. The fast art experience in airport hallways can be looked at as inspiration for school-corridor art in the use of different media, as well as the display ideas used for art experienced in passing.

Conclusion Along with malls, parks, restaurants, and public buildings, airports have become lively places for twenty-first-century art experiences. Airports are becoming acknowledged in the art world as a space of artistic innovation. For the art teacher who is used to discussing art on the walls of museums, it is important to create awareness of other places that house art outside traditional settings. The airport provides an authentic art-viewing experience that viewers can reflect upon on the plane, on the ride home, and again in the art classroom. Even if time does not allow for a long visit, the time required when transitioning from one terminal to another affords an insight into an airport’s art. The study of airport art in school is symbolic for a new art world—a world in which new placements for art, and modern ways of viewing and experiencing artworks, may need to be explored in the art classroom.

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3 Food and Art

Chapter Outline Playing Restaurant 60 Eating Out 61 Restaurant Art 61 Art and Themed Restaurants 62 Fast Food 63 Drive-through Culture 63 Food Carts and Stands 64 Hotels and Restaurants 64 Restaurant Murals 66 Looking for the New in Art 67 Coffee and Art 68 Conclusion69

Each Thanksgiving, my students and I sit around a banquet-style setup of classroom tables to share a meal together. Much like the celebrations they will have at home, our classroom gathering consists of stories, reflections, and lavishly constructed foods. At other times throughout the year, we build similar environments through activities such as picnics on the floor, pretend tea parties, and birthdays designed for the students’ teddy bears. Although our Thanksgiving dishes are not “real,” the table creations are unique examples of food arts. On a hand-painted tablecloth rests a three-dimensional, somewhat abstract turkey among a garden of innovative centerpieces and delightful fixings. Students are eager to sculpt food from found objects and participate in the art of plating, proudly displaying a handheld art-show. Food and art have a powerful connection for artists of all ages. Many toddlers paint with their food using fingers and the highchair as a canvas. Most children will use the kitchen to establish their first art studio. This section addresses ways in which art teachers can foster awareness of the bonds between food and art and create experiences that demonstrate how restaurants in the community function as art inspirations and art spaces. In the restaurant world, art is sometimes

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dismissed as mere decoration, but many restaurants today function as art galleries and expand our understanding of the many places where art can be found. As eateries vary among cultural backgrounds and historical settings, certain restaurants also inform us about art both past and present across contexts. While learning about the connection between restaurants and art, students will begin to consider all spaces as possible places for meaningful aesthetic experiences. By looking to restaurants students already frequent, students start to consider restaurant interiors as design art and discuss the aesthetics of table settings and food displays, all of which fosters the desire to participate in placing their art into neighborhood restaurants.

Playing Restaurant Playing restaurant is a favorite game for many young children. Kids invite the complex challenge to invent play foods from objects found in the house, design tables from books and interesting boxes, and paint menus to construct a total installation piece. Restaurant art in its many forms allow for inventions and innovative ideas to be tested and showcased. When kids “play restaurant” they lease a large part of interior real estate, such as the corner of the room. Borrowing all kinds of kitchen objects and home furnishings, they try out the tasks of different designers. Family members become invited guests to test and experience improvised home restaurants. Children realize that the food made out of colorful sponges, bright yarn, rubber bands, and shaving cream has to look good, and can be plated and served in interesting ways. As artists with experience in creative table setting, children learn to coordinate the many elements of a meal, showcasing food and envisioning new dining experiences as artwork. Children often extend their innovative spirit and ideas to “real” restaurants too. When waiting for food orders to arrive, they find plentiful items to manipulate at the table, using straws, sugar, and condiment packets as free building construction materials. Napkins and plastic utensils are deeply explored to create figurative sculptures and impromptu performance art. Although restaurant plays are often ignored or frowned upon by adults, these experiences are memorable, free artistic acts that advance curiosity, building, and design skills. Children grow up as food artists, and the art class can serve as a reminder of the coexistence of art and food, as well as a refresher of early instincts that can be furthered in art classes. The art room can legitimize children’s earliest food play experiences and demonstrate how food continues to inspire adult artists working in all media. Food and art have close connections. Children’s play art is the design of unusual tables and unexpected table setting for meals.1 Playing in the kitchen with dough, decorating desserts, helping to plate salads, setting tables, and designing place settings are all aspects of children’s art that can lead to a lifetime of art interests. Constructing cake dreams, designing menus, and executing complete meals are modes of play in children’s food art histories. Art students of all ages enjoy recalling and documenting their earliest restaurant plays. Where else, if not in the art class, can students transform these memories with a range of forms, including sculpture, painting, environmental, and performance art from a child’s first art studio—the

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kitchen—to numerous food-related play practiced at home and in restaurants, students naturally grow an interest in the subject of food and art.

Eating Out Eating out is a family event that presents a wealth of opportunities to experience and discuss art. Families used to gather at the end of the day for a meal in the home, which was an important time to relax and converse. Although this practice might seem antiquated, many families still appreciate this practice, even if the venue has changed. For many, restaurants have taken the place of the home when it comes to family meals. Family members vividly discuss possible places to eat, and selections are made on the basis of both food and environment. Unlike a casual home meal, restaurants offer a combined art and eating experience. Restaurants are often in distinct buildings within the community where patrons are ushered into a multisensory installation of sounds, smells, and visual stimulation. Foods are displayed in showcases and salad bars, and designed on plates brought to seated guests. Most restaurants provide an aesthetic environment by surrounding guests with interesting displays of objects and art collections of visual interest. This is a time dedicated to enjoying a relaxed experience in a special environment. Chefs and bakers set their foods onto special canvases with dishes of different styles and vintages to enhance the colors and textures of what is being served. The lighting of the room and tables and the control of music contribute complexity to dramatizing the presentation of space and food forms, which can form a dazzling environment rife with many sensory elements.

Restaurant Art Restaurant art is the collaborative work of designers, chefs, painters, and display artists, each with a different area of expertise, but it is the complete package comprised by these many visual curators that makes the study of food and art so interesting. In their discussion of visual culture, art educators Day and Hurwitz state, “The study of visual culture in art education can be exciting and meaningful for students of all ages. Teachers have the opportunity to exercise their own creativity and apply their knowledge of the social world as they develop art curriculums and engage their students in the art of today, by the artists today.”2 Whether it’s from packaging designers working on kids’ meals or industrial designers presenting sleekly sculpted drink dispensers, food-related art assembles distinct forms and shapes, details, and media. Students may be interested in the striking shapes and materials of lids and food containers or those used for serving trays and to wrap and box foods, all shapes and materials not readily found in art supply stores. Neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, and even supermarkets are fascinating places to study. Each may include designed objects and murals, mounds of stacked items on interesting shelves, and handsome cardboard display units. Grocery stores are multisensory markets that house inviting cardboard partitions for vegetables to be separated from brushing up against each other,

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box paddings for fruit to gently rest on so they won’t bruise, as well as an extraordinary assortment of logos and packaging inventions. Settings of local coffee shops may feature corporate visuals, while privately owned eateries often provide more unique and personal atmospheres that promote relaxation as well as opportunities to view and consider art. Food displays, whether on a plate, shelf, or in a showcase of baked goods, invite a mindful meditation of forms and colors for those eating out or shopping for food. These are places to look, smell, touch, and closely and slowly focus on the joys of eating. From the signage out front to the carefully detailed atmosphere and interiors, restaurants have become neighborhood galleries that compete for patrons. Restaurants as art can be studied at places as common as the Cracker Barrel, a large chain of restaurants throughout America or more sophisticated eateries. As Damien Hirst states, “food and art are a natural symbiosis. Whenever I’ve made any money I’ve always celebrated with food—great meals in great restaurants. A lot of my good friends are chefs. I believe that anything done well is art, and great food is like great art but without the evidence.”3 In the 1980s, like gallery owners who championed the work of emerging artists, restaurant owners like Mr. Chow “traded noodles for artwork … and now his restaurants show works by artists ranging from Andy Warhol to Keith Haring.”4 The infusion of art into restaurants made world-class restaurant galleries and changed the culture of where great art is seen. Twenty-first-century art educators have to appreciate the ever-changing relationship between art and food. Our students may not be eating at the Cock and Bull restaurant where artist Damien Hirst had his work featured in East London, but even if our students are not going to the most refined art restaurants or coffee houses, they do participate in the culture of food art and can discuss aspects of the visual interest and inspiration it offers. Art education is ongoing, both within and beyond the classroom. One of the most ubiquitous after-school activities is eating out. In some contexts, fast-food restaurants have become play spaces that allow for unstructured action and creative investigating. Children might learn to appreciate their fast-food meals as art inspiring by using the trays, foil wraps, French-fries containers, and scores of other materials as art supplies. Art teachers can help initiate making the places where our students eat out a source for visual studies: “Restaurants around the world are attracting patrons with their own art collections and rotating exhibitions.”5 Because restaurants have become design laboratories and exhibition space for artists, their artistic merit should not be overlooked, but examined for their art and design concepts that bring together the works of many creative individuals.

Art and Themed Restaurants In restaurant play, children create their own themes, such as tea parties for Barbie’s or birthdays with dolls and stuffed animal guests, but many students have also been to themed restaurants. After these experiences, they often recreate them as lively establishments run under the dining room table or over a plush carpet in a living room. The themed restaurant has gone through bouts of popularity and art inspirations. In the 1990s, Cracker Barrel (origin 1969) and the Hard Rock Café

Food and Art

(origin 1971) gained traction as two of the first themed restaurants. Medieval Times (1983), Planet Hollywood, (1991), and Rainforest Café (1994) premiered a few years later, focusing primarily on the themed visual “experience” rather than the menu. At Disney’s Epcot, one can travel the world by eating in restaurants that represent different countries. Though there was no name for themed restaurants in their early days, we can easily trace them back to the 1970s, and even earlier in theme parks and world fairs, which featured similar kinds of detailed fantasy settings.6 It’s interesting to consider with students what happens when you transform an entire space to become an artwork and serve food to go along with it. Designing restaurants with different themes in an art room develops an interest in this art form. Examining the history of themed restaurants provides students with inspiration to invent their own architecture and interior designs. Working on a lunchbox scale or using art room tables and floors, students can develop ideas for menus, unique dishes, cutlery, and imaginary food items sculpted for a theme setting. When art comes with food in a restaurant, it presents an opportunity to reshape every aspect of a building and its spaces.

Fast Food A quick and low-cost dining experience in a fast-food restaurant often includes toys, games, play structures, coloring pages, comic books, and interactive food containers. Fast-food restaurants work hard to keep children entertained and wanting to come back for the food and the experience. By acknowledging students’ excitement about visiting fast-food restaurants, we can encourage students to expand on the subject in order to come up with their own designs and plans for kidfriendly restaurants of the future. Though often discarded, kids’ meal containers and their contents can be saved for study with art class designers. Collections of items from fast-food places can be used as part of our own “meal” adventures, creating selections of our own takeaway containers, equipped with to-go figures and vehicles as part of the sculpture. This can lead to adventures of envisioning future packaging and meal giveaways. Finding and designing visually appealing containers for a kid’s meal, fries boxes, or trays for drink containers can also generate new ideas. Art forms that relate to the interest of youngsters’ experiences and collections are powerful resources for shaping new design ideas.

Drive-through Culture In a world where much of what is seen happens through the car window, the drive-through experience feeds into a fast pace, or some might say, lazy mentality. From banks to fast-food restaurants, the architecture of a building changes depending on need. The “drive-through window” is an important American invention that altered restaurant architecture, and its appearance on the street. From large windows for passing along food to groceries being brought out to your car since 1947 in Baldwin Park, California, there has been a prevalent culture of the drive-through.7 This

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culture has also seeped into children’s make-believe games in which they use home furnishings to emulate the drive-through restaurant food experience. How does this affect the art room? The culture of having food handed to you through a window is a fascinating one. While there might not be a drive-through in the classroom, an understanding of how this affects architecture, design, and our relationship to the dining experience is significant. Students can model drive-through experiences and their take on the culture in art room spaces. With toy cars or by driving their classroom chairs around tables, new design ideas can be simulated and elaborated on in drawings and plans.

Food Carts and Stands Food carts are the rage today. Each vehicle and vendor on wheels presents their food as a unique visual show with a different decorated truck, smell, and way of attracting an audience. Neon signs, big umbrellas, interesting sitting areas, and fun menus are all part of the rolling food carts’ performance. Many of us have not had experiences with food trucks during childhood, but most of us have impatiently waited for the ice cream truck to parade by with its bells and songs enlivening our street. Children used to memorize the schedule of the ice cream trucks passage in their neighborhood, and know the joy of running for treats with money in their hands. While customized vehicles are a wonder on a street, ice cream trucks have a special memory shared by children. They are an important part of the street art scene. Ice cream trucks aren’t the only street food memory for many children though. As a child of eight or nine, one of the most exciting summer activities was to have a lemonade stand, the forerunner of food carts and trucks. By the time anyone actually stood outside in the hot sun for hours selling little cups of lemonade, many creative hours had been spent on designing special signs, cups, or even a place to sit. Thus, veterans of lemonade stands have a great deal to discuss in the art class because translating ideas into the display of foods and setting up particular designs to sell products on a sidewalk form lifelong memories. Tapping into those experiences opens up discussions for many more art and food-related street affairs to be planned, formulated, and designed in art classes. These discussions are also important in the art room because when students share their food and art-related memories, they prompt each other to build new ones.

Hotels and Restaurants Dining and lodging have long shared a relationship, and art has often been a part of both venues. There is a rich history of art within restaurants to learn about since many fine artists made significant contributions to the hotel-restaurant art scene. In 1920s, in guesthouses such as the Colombe d’Or in Provence in the south of France, post-impressionists like Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro would famously trade meals for paintings.8 To this day, the renowned hotel-restaurant keeps its walls covered with original works from what were then impoverished and hungry artists. While this exchange of food for art may not happen as readily in today’s commercial establishments,

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contemporary artists are still engaged in selling and showcasing all forms of art in hotels and restaurants. In Cincinnati, Ohio, the Terrance Plaza was one of the first modern hotels remembered for its art display.9 Created by the design firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill based in New York, the Terrance Plaza featured a restaurant with a large mural by Joan Miro as its focal point. Alexander Calder’s large abstracted shapes and primary colored mobile graced the hotel lobby, while Saul Steinberg’s mural adorned the larger and more formal Mail Restaurant.10 In 1956, the art from the hotel was donated to the Cincinnati Art Museum. Although no longer functioning as a hotel, the Terrance Plaza, like the Colombe d’Or, stands as an iconic example of a hotel that incorporated great artists in its decor.11 Some of the most celebrated works of art connected to a restaurant are the Mark Rothko paintings known as the “Seagram Murals.” In 1958, these murals were commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s Seagram Building, designed by renowned architect Mies Van der Rohe. Famously canceled by Rothko a year later, legend has it that Rothko learned that his art would not be set up in the employees’ cafeteria, but inside a plush restaurant for wealthy patrons.12 This is the kind of rich history students can tap into when learning about the connection between hotels and restaurants to the art they display. Today, there is an important movement taking place to revive landmark buildings as hotel museums. Perhaps the most notable is the museum hotel 21C that started in Louisville and was successfully transplanted to include the cities of Cincinnati, Ohio, Bentonville, Arkansas, and now resides in Lexington, Kentucky. 21C includes art galleries in its lobbies and restaurants. Located in historic downtowns, the hotels create opportunities as important cultural presence by being art centers for hotel guests and city visitors. In towns and cities that may not have a major museum, the hotel-restaurant has become a downtown model of the place to find art. For this reason, major architects like Frank Lloyd Wright insisted on designing not just buildings, but living artscapes in which every element from doorknobs to stain glass windows, and furnishings were all Wright’s art creations. Contemporary designer Philippe Stark’s hotel in Manhattan, the Hudson, is a wonderful example of a designer-planned art environment in which art, design, and hotel living come together in a total experience. Conversations about hotel art elicit interesting reactions as students return from vacations eager to report on the types and quality of the art found at their lodgings. A critical awareness of art in the environment is an important part of growing up as an art-educated individual. After studying and perhaps even visiting notable art hotel-restaurants, students in my art class set out to examine and formulate designs for school spaces. They create plans to transform the school cafeteria into an art space. We also work on plans and design suggestions for familiar local establishments, which we examined in the art room through videos, photographs, and drawings. Art classes can also explore ideas for arranging their own rooms, kitchens, and dining rooms, by discussing and creating plans for living with art in home spaces. In an art class, it is important to empower students to look for art at home and discover its existence in their community. An art class is a place to bring and exchange observations, share new findings, and create plans for improving the visual world. Students learn to amass definitions, find examples, engage in comparisons, and develop personal standards that ultimately define a personal taste.

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Restaurant Murals In the study of restaurant and cafeteria art, there is also a significant history of murals that can be raised with students. In preparation for this book, I visited LA, Chicago, and New York to search for and photograph notable examples of murals and large-scale restaurant art. In New York’s West Village, I found the Waverly Inn housing caricaturist Edward Sorel’s marvelous visual diary of the neighborhood’s history. In his fine example of the mural form, Sorel surrounds patrons with fanciful portraits of the celebrity characters who shaped the legend of the area. The murals have adorned these walls for many years and add a sense of permanency to a city with changing styles, fashion, and neighborhoods. The childhood fictional celebrity, Madeline, and her schoolmates, adorn the walls at (New York City’s) Bemelmans, a place named after the author and illustrator. Documenting a romp through Central Park, the giant mural framing the restaurant includes pictures of skating elephants and a stylish New York snake wrapped in fur. Madeline continues to please diners with her appearances on lampshades and table menus. My visit also included a trip to the Café Carlyle with the famous Cabaret Mural of dancing dogs and ballerinas by artist Marcel Vertes. Another notable merging of art and dining is the grand museum cafeteria at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. My students, who are future art teachers, are very interested in the subject of food and murals whether we are discussing eateries at the mall, fast-food restaurants, or supermarkets. The students learn to become interested and sometimes concerned about the general visual environment of our students in the school and in their community. We often discover and discuss what is worthwhile to study, what may need preservation, and how murals could be added to prominent walls the students encounter daily. We take mural tours in central Kentucky to follow a historic portfolio of images, and we visit restaurants and cafés in Richmond, Georgetown, and Lexington. This is important to prepare students for engaging in local visual discoveries. Our backyard discovery tour demonstrates that every city and town has murals to visit, and art teachers can help uncover local treasures that may not be listed in a visitor’s guide. In doing this, every student gets to “travel” and can inherit the desire to look beyond museums to enjoy discovering and valuing local art treasures in the many eateries they frequent. At the culmination of our studies, one of the directions some students take will be assisting and interviewing local mural artists. Others will want to create proposals for specific restaurants or supermarkets in the community, or even select a community wall as a canvas and create proposals for painting them. Increasing awareness of community murals helps to simultaneously develop basic skills in acquiring community permission and gain support in executing them.

As an art teaching challenge, students rethink the school cafeteria and discuss what kind of mural would work best for their school. It’s important to think about what might appeal to students and their contemporary sense of culture, reviewing and discussing students surroundings, and how not to overwhelm the dining experience. On large paper rolls, students prepare test murals to be placed on the wall to gauge the response of the faculty and student body. In making these plans, we turn to restaurant art studies for inspiration about what murals would work best with the school breakfast and lunch meals.

Food and Art

Looking for the New in Art It used to be that one had to attend avant-garde galleries or follow the work of the most intrepid museum curators to uncover the new in art. Today, one can also look toward restaurants for artistic innovations that don’t necessarily come out of the kitchen. There are many artists who are thinking about the entire trip to the restaurant as an artistic experience. Boundaries are blurred as restaurants serve as galleries, and galleries host dinner parties. Many artists are thinking about art in terms of creating environments and installations that have set the stage for restaurant artists who are working on interesting happenings in restaurants around the globe. Art galleries have traditionally served food at openings, but now there are galleries that open up their space for dinners and put artists in charge. At the Zagreus Project in Berlin, the gallery holds dinners and invites artists to use the space as they want.13 On one occasion, artist Karl Heinz Jeron “gave all diners headphones that played the diary of a patient with borderline personality disorder.”14 The four words that most commonly occurred in the patient’s talks were “branded” onto foods being served. In creating food fantasies, students can learn about landmark projects and study images of uncommon restaurants, such as Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy (1998), a restaurant in Notting Hill, London, where restaurant waiters dress in surgical gowns designed by Prada and move around a space framed by wall-to-wall medicine cabinets stocked with empty pill boxes.15 These contemporary museum cabinets encase white boxes of medicine, surgical instruments, syringes, vintage Band-Aids, and other medical paraphernalia. The house wine is alluringly named “ph.” Looking like a real pharmacy, the Hirst’s Pharmacy interior became a model for many restaurants around the globe that moved into old apothecaries, vintage department stores, garages, and train stations. Although the Pharmacy was controversial, Hirst brought to light many new questions regarding art and food that had not been addressed before while also commenting on themed restaurants.16 Could art be the primary reason for being in a restaurant? Can themed spaces exist in the realm of high art? Hirst asked viewers to rethink food, not with art, but versus art. Many restaurants are known for the exceptional art hung on their walls. Caravaggio in New York has as its permanent display original art by Henri Matisse, Elsworth Kelly, and Frank Stella. Today, some restaurants offer up their complete space for artists to reenvision. Mourad Mazouz, a restaurateur-art impresario, whose establishments include Derrière in Paris and Sketch in London, asked Turner Prize-winner Martin Creed to design a gallery restaurant. In his announcement, Mazouz stated, “A new artist will be picked each year, and given free rein to redesign the entire room, down to every last chair and teaspoon. In the kitchen we are creating art every day, but it is ephemeral art.”17 Akin to the move from wall-hanging art in museums to committing a room to a concept, the restaurant is welcoming the excitement that accompanies an individual artist freely tackling an entire space as artwork. Elite restaurants are now known for refinement in their selection of wines as well as artistic choices on the walls. Nowadays, street artists are invited to redefine restaurants by exhibiting their works in these new cultured museums. The SushiSamba18 chain that blends Japanese, Brazilian, and

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Peruvian cuisine uses street artists to design all its restaurants around the world. In Hong Kong, “[t]he latest trend to hit the city’s booming restaurant and art scene has gallerists and restaurateurs teaming up to combine elements of gastronomy with visual arts.”19 Fine restaurants have become more challenging in their association with artists. The international restaurants featured above are just a small glimpse of a much larger forwardlooking food-art scene. The study of contemporary art in art education classes on all grade levels would be incomplete without the inclusion of contemporary restaurant and artist collaborations. In schools where contemporary art is studied, restaurant art should be included. There are many fascinating sites to explore, and meaningful follow-up experiences that can be established in the art room and in the community. There are constantly new works, artists, and approaches to learn about and be inspired by as young artists of all ages dream about, plan, and create models for collaborations. Children love to play and invent with dough, decorate cupcakes, and create the most innovative salad plates, and teachers can use their experience and enthusiasm in art classes to expand those interests in food creations and couple them with other art media. Challenging the tradition of art hung on walls, school tables performing as dining tables can be set with plates and trays to become a new canvas. Ideas for food art can be centered around art rooms that are envisioned and used as test kitchens.

Coffee and Art In the 1930s, Paris was the center of the art world. Artists celebrated today would frequent cafes, sip espresso, and stir the sparks of a new art called Cubism. The coffee shop atmosphere still provides a unique setting, both with big chains and a growing number of independently owned cafés springing up in small towns and cities throughout the United States. In individually owned establishments, owners often combine coffee with art to attract a different kind of customer. On Third Street in Lexington, Kentucky, Pat Gerhard, owner of Third Street Café, is arguably the city’s most involved art patron. Anyone interested in visual pleasure should visit Gerhard’s Third Street Café where student art of all ages adorns every available wall. In the gift shop section of the café, the work of local artists and innovative crafts enliven the space. Gerhard’s establishment is a sacred place for artists, teachers, and students to congregate, and it is where my classes go on a pilgrimage to look at art and discuss teaching about food and art. An important part of art education is teaching about historic café life where art manifestos were formulated, and the spirit of the founders of modern art was nourished with camaraderie, food, and conversation. Because these cafes, like Third Street Café, can function as centers of civic activities and art, it is even more important to help students experience these spaces where they can get involved in community art themes, histories, and activities. As one of my students has remarked, “It is just as important for art teachers to get together in coffee houses as attend workshops at a conference, or in-service sessions in schools.” Sitting on salvaged chairs across from one another

Food and Art

For an instructive afternoon on restaurant art, my students and I compare the coffee, the art, and the atmosphere between Third Street and a nearby chain coffee house. My students comment on the franchised decor and corporate images, such as the reproductions of photomurals on the walls that depict toiling coffee bean workers from a mysterious country. The students discuss why artists at Starbucks are denied credit for their work and ask a range of questions about the art work’s origins. Do we know who the people are in the pictures? Why were the themes chosen for the mural? Are these the beans that actually become our coffee? Which café best represents the community? How does a large chain versus Third Street make decisions about space and the room’s visual elements? We discuss how art and social justice interact in the space. How is the space utilized for community art, making poetry, storytelling, and other more? As we go back to class, everyone’s mind is taken up with not only problems to solve, but also ideas about how to engage with complex issues and boundless dreams about ideal art spaces that feature food or coffee.

at whimsically painted tables, surrounded by old toys and unusual street relics, the owner of Third Street Café makes sure there is always something new and interesting to see. In this café, one can imagine art still acting as currency traded for past-due bills. While the fate of art may be discussed in forbidding backrooms of museums, or in the dens of major collectors, at Third Street Café everyone can chime in and offer art views in a fanciful, supportive environment. Places like Third Street foster relationships between owners, artists from community schools, and students across the education spectrum.

Conclusion Food and creativity are inextricably linked in children’s creative experiences and memory. Designing with foods, inventing place settings, and formulating pretend meals occur in restaurant play in children’s rooms and kitchen studios. Creative food designers need to be employed in art classrooms where children’s art can be appreciated, and their long list of interests in food and restaurants can be rekindled. Art teachers can bring restaurant art into class conversations by “playing restaurant,” but also by examining restaurants that have been innovations at the centers of contemporary art all over the world. Examining restaurant designs is important for continuing the development of children’s experiences and interests with food and art. When students study and take field trips to restaurants they become deeply connected to the many possibilities for developing and furthering their interest and engagement in community art and the art world.

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Food as Art in the Classroom Children grow up as food artists; it is their way of discovering the multisensory and multimedia nature of the world. The coexistence of art and food should be a continuing exploration in art classes. The classroom should serve as a place of discovery to support student ideas that make fresh connection between food and art. Playing in the kitchen, making and plating foods, setting tables, and designing place settings, in pretend restaurants are a unique aspect of children’s art. Since food art receives less support at home, it needs to find more interest and sponsorship in the art class. Constructing cake dreams, designing menus, and executing complete meals are modes of play in children’s food and art histories that can be reinvigorated in the classroom. Art students of all ages enjoy recalling and documenting their earliest restaurant plays. Where else, if not in the art class, can students transform food play memories into new media and art forms? Foodrelated-plays practiced at home and in restaurants allow students to express their interests in shapes and forms, colors, and textures. Wonderfully illustrated menus, photos, and video clips of my daughter playing waiter and chef on the porch are shared with students. The question to ask them is, where does all this ingenuity and innovation move to after children’s outdoor and indoor restaurants close up? Handling real fruits and vegetables, transforming interesting containers and found objects into pretend edibles, and using plates, trays, and tables as canvases, are just some of the art room experiences you can use to revisit food and restaurant art and design. Creating restaurants with different themes and items is an appropriate activity in an art room that sustains interest found in early art explorations. Looking at the food environment through experiences of shopping, dining out, or preparing foods transforms those experiences into creative sources and furthers students’ artistic eye. In an art room, students learn that art lives everywhere, that everything can be an art supply, and a source of inspiration. Art may be found in the smallest, seemingly insignificant items and occasions. Examining restaurant designs and seeking out other community spaces that feature art promotes a personal connection to food art within the community, in addition to fresh views about what art can be. When students study and take field trips to restaurants they become connected and engaged on a deeper level with the aesthetics of a space and what can be discovered by artistic viewings beyond the classroom.

Part II Community as Art Treasures

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4 Exploring Alternative Museum Sites in your Backyard

Chapter Outline Art and Design Lessons in Different Size Communities 75 Secondary Students Alternative Museum Sites 76 Looking Down 78 Sidewalks79 Puddles80 Manhole Covers 80 Storm Drains 80 Treasure Hunt 81 Underground81 Stairs82 Fences84 Roads and Highways 85

The New York skyline, wrote John Atlee Kouwenhoven in 1961, is not meant to make sense: It is the product of insane politics, greed, competitive ostentation, megalomania, the worship of false gods. Its by-products, in turn, are traffic jams, bad ventilation, noise, and all the other ills that metropolitan flesh is heir to. And the net result is, illogically enough, one of the most exaltedly beautiful things that mankind has ever made.1

Peeling away the dirt and grime and cutting through the noise of the city, photographers such as Berenice Abbott, referenced by Kouwenhoven in the above quote, found and captured the beauty within. The interplays of light and shadows, the changing forms and spaces, the unique details and flow of movements offer visual pleasures and meanings. The abundance of surprises comes with the constantly changing views of one street and as an opening or gateway to others. Looking up and down or into the distance, with each turn there are surprising finds and pleasures. Students

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examine many aspects of streets and buildings, their formal and illogical relationships, planned and accidental elements that add up to inspiring creative moments of active learning for the art student. The biggest show in town, the city showcase, is a living gallery for the works of many different artists, architects, city planners, sign makers, industrial designers, and landscape artists showing their creations side by side. Many contribute creative ideas and look at the city with an artistic eye as they make changes, additions, or erase elements from the existing setting. Seeking to change, improve, and make the city a happier place, creative minds produce not only beautiful spaces, but ones that profess to heal, provide tranquility, dignity, and trigger other rational and emotional responses. One might ask if a city street and its buildings have the power to create change or to elicit all of those responses.2 Think of what it feels like to be in a dark building with confusing passages and dim florescent lights versus a building with clarity on its facade and comfortable, exciting passages through an uncluttered interior. Good lighting and views, comfortable scales, and a sense of ordered “interior streets” make moving through and being inside a structure a rewarding human experience. Ample visual treats can include a masterful use of colors or a stimulating organization of floor and wall textures—some of the factors that have the power to shape how we relate to and feel inside a human-made form. While how much environmental artists and designers can affect health and well-being might still be up for debate, there are always known effects that can be felt when entering and walking in an exciting, comforting, or challenging space. This second section suggests a part of art education that goes beyond the school building or what an art class experience can provide to consider art learning as a community-based subject. In examining streets and buildings, it’s all there to search for and inspire artists of all ages. The city environment is the outdoor art room, studio, a constant reference for art ideas, a vast art supply store to sort through. Driving and jogging through one’s city, it is easy to overlook its treasures, ignore the striking details, street finds, and close-up or wide views encountered. The suggested observations are those that tend to be ignored by casual passing and busy living. This chapter asks student artists and their teachers to take a closer look at streets and public spaces and their furnishings—study buildings of various designs, in all their diverse details and historical significance. Outdoor art education is where students learn to decipher and understand the landscape, its spaces and views, and value their appreciation to benefit from its close study. This second section lays out some of the views, overall sights and sounds, and teaching approaches that can be used to identify and study forms, spaces, and details of urban settings. This part of the book suggests a foundation for active, spirited investigators with suggestions on how to inspect, observe, and discuss views and experiences with students on a field trip, before, and after an art class. Most of the time, architecture is not something thought about, unless seeking out a specific space or place. There are valuable prompts for conversations outside that can be had. With a call for creative action, there is also the consideration of how to put responses to the environment into words. Students, for example, may not even realize why they may be drawn to one street or building versus another. We ask ourselves: what makes a library feel like a library, or a museum or church feel uplifting? What clues do creative designers of urban spaces provide to create a stimulating environment? To have students in the art class leave the school art room is not always possible, but it should be. This chapter provides lessons in doing and seeing, talking, and writing to discuss and debate elements of the urban environment with public school art classes.

Exploring Alternative Museum Sites

Art and Design Lessons in Different Size Communities The concepts in this book can be applied in distinctive ways, depending on where one’s community is located, its size, and its resources, which provide a broad array of visual discoveries and artmaking opportunities. One should start by looking around a specific area within walking distance from school and getting to know local resources. Inspirations for where to look and how to isolate and capture their finds are the subject of this part of the book. When transportation and time of getting to a site are not a complicated issue, a brief visit to a nearby segment of a community can be inspirational. For example, if the school is close to downtown, one can walk through a small section of it to disclose the variety of architecture, murals, store signs, benches, and much more. If the school is on a broad urban street, it may have views to large commercial buildings and may allow a foray into lobbies and passages through interesting doors and entrance paths. There may be streetcar insight and the study of bus stops and other outdoor furnishings. Your neighborhood, a familiar place, is a comfortable place to start exploring the community and noticing design and art-related finds. A community study is essential to art learning, because even if walking by the same shops all of our lives, the way space is seen and experienced needs to evolve. We often remain oblivious to insights and understandings of where we live and the artists and designers that set up our rooms or outdoor spaces. Yet the environment is the largest art supply store, and as this book section will describe, the largest idea gathering place for artists and students.

On a stree t walk, the larger questions in art come up and are asked: ●● ●●

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How does our environment change over time? What are the effects of changes in natural elements on more build environments? What signs can we see of the future of our streets and neighborhoods? What are the warning signs of decay and obsolescence? Which are the hopeful and uplifting sights that we see on a walk that can improve and even heal the community? What can we do to dedicate ourselves and prepare ourselves to become the guardians and preservationists of our streets? What could be our roles as artists, designers, consumers, and preservationists?

Starting with what students see and find on neighborhood walks, they can consider making small changes in new doors, signs, or the colors of homes. Audaciously, on a walk-through imager and sketches, and in art rooms with models, students can create major pieces of architecture, airports, city sports arenas, and skyscrapers and suggest alterations in city planning well beyond their, age, and training.

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Elementary Experiences Most often, elementary students are taken on field trips. Generally, these are first-time experiences, and even the walk up to, or the inside of a space, can be essential to contemplate. These encounters do not need to be elaborate but meaningful. There can be trips to local stores, downtown walks, or hikes through the back yard of the school. Taking students on a field trip can be as easy as getting out of their seats and leaving the classroom. Once back inside, deconstructing and reflecting on the experience start a series of lessons. A group notices the different types of signs, and we bring the photos back to the classroom, where students examine signs from all over the world. From stop signs, to store signs, columns, sewer and water grates, many doors, and windows, each group finds their niche. These are the small things that kids notice and can be researched and expanded upon. The camera and/or journals can be an important tool to document class walks, for example, at home, adding to the visual collections of doors and bringing the pictures in to share.

Secondary Students Alternative Museum Sites Often, it is forgotten that secondary students in art classes also need field trips to get beyond the classroom. Art learning cannot be done in closed quarters by assignments alone. Taking students out of their everyday environment and asking them to interact with the world in ways they are not often accustomed to are powerful tools for learning and growth. Alternative museum sites can be one way of having this experience. Asking students to see everyday places that they may already visit in new ways is asking them to look at and revisit the familiar. In secondary school, goal-oriented project-based learning is exceptionally motivating. Even if in the end, there is nothing physically created, the act of planning and dreaming helps to expand students’ art planning.

As a child, one of the first field trips I remember was to the local chocolate store where we were able to see different chocolates being created. The process of something being made by hand in such large quantities has stayed with me. – Taking a trip down the hall to scout spaces for an art installation. – Walking outside to decide where the right spot would be for an outside sculpture garden. – Taking a tour around the outside of the building to discuss architecture, landscape design, playgrounds, water elements, etc. – Walking down the road to see how the neighborhood is laid out and what kinds of architecture elements can be found.

Exploring Alternative Museum Sites

For example, students who visit their local businesses, hospitals, parks, etc., ask more profound questions about visual culture and their environment. A few questions might be these: ●●

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How was or could space be conceived? What would you add or take away from the space? What types of art could be interwoven? Who is the space for? How could space reach out to other visitors? What is the role that art places could play in making the space more welcoming?

Keeping adolescents engaged with the immediate environment not only is an essential part of their education, but also meets developmental needs. According to the Montessori method of learning for young adolescents. Students are learning to reason hypothetically, plan, understand analogies, and construct metaphors. Concentration is, however, often difficult; young adolescents are easily distracted. To this end, it is

Figure 4.1  Seeing beauty in puddles.

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important to engage students authentically and deeply. This is best accomplished by giving students choices of several options across the curriculum and granting them opportunities for creating individual responses or products.3

To create the authentic experiences and options that Montessori promotes is to let students have a say in their learning. As teachers, we often disregard that stuffing knowledge into students is not the answer to a well-rounded experience. A far more valuable and lifelong exposure is to have students construct their knowledge. They are finding ways to enrich themselves and their community.

Looking Down Our art class takes walks behind the school, down the street, and through the surrounding neighborhoods. Looking down, shifting attention to the colors, textures, objects, and active natural world below our feet is overlooked in a hurried life where wheels, not our feet, seem to take us everywhere. Too busy to examine the canvases of floors and pick their interesting human-made and natural seasonal yield, we always seem to be in a hurried rush. In the meantime, so much of creative seeing and searching is missed, since looking down can be as enjoyable as looking up. On art walks, we ask students to focus on the ground. Students stop and touch, stop and collect, keeping eyes on the ground for a closer look at maintenance hole covers, storm drains, the feel of pavements, the artistry of building materials, and the seasonal droppings of nature that color, weave, and organize spaces. At home, drawers need to be opened, counters reached, and other objects put into playful hands and minds to design and innovate with. By the time children become students in school, learning from teachers and books takes the place of the environmental search as a requisite for education. It requires experience to create and construct art ideas. Before learning to walk, children crawl and pick things up by examining, exploring, and building using what they find indoors and outside on the grounds. From the familiarity of looking down to learning to stand and walk, environmental exploration can be expanded to other canvases besides the floor. By school age, looking down to discover the rich floors and grounds beneath our feet is less frequent and considered less relevant in learning. As we get taller, we are implored to look forward in class, face our seats to the front to pay attention to teachers and the media placed before us. There is no time or efficiency seen in active learning—moving, adventuring, browsing, and exploring indoors and outside. If a student looks around the classroom, they are not paying attention. Experiences of uncovering, detecting, unearthing things on the ground are designated as a distraction from school learning that specifies its sourcing in a book or instructions from the teacher. Oddly, this is a time we need more floor exploration, and in art class students are excited to explore again. Taking exploration kits with us, each student collector acts like an urban archeologist, carrying plastic bags for collecting, art supplies for drawing and rubbing, or a camera for taking photos. The following are some notable floor furnishings we use for taking rubbings, photos, and drawings.

Exploring Alternative Museum Sites

Sidewalks As an adult, I rarely think about the sidewalk except to make sure the pavement is even, so I don’t trip. Yet, as a child, the path was a treasure. I could ride my bike, create drawings, or take wheeled toys out onto the sidewalk, and connect with friends. Sometimes I would find things on the sidewalk like a penny or a bug. Looking down provides a distinct perspective, allowing for unique surprises such as a flattened, lost glove or a hubcap. Shapely sidewalk cracks “don’t break your mother’s back” but are marvels of nature’s giant lines formed by shifting surfaces. One may carefully step over them to avoid cracks filled with oil spills, gum, or other city litter stuck and hidden in the sidewalk. Within these spaces hide lost change, floating and shifting objects, shadows mixed with footprint, and busy crawly creatures taking shelter. Looking down over a street’s floor, one finds unusual homes and hiding places for small life and sprouting green growths. We may find curiosity in uneven sidewalks, crumbling concrete, and other loose materials that can be collected and made into new earthworks built by young explorers. Puddles are sometimes inkwells from which they stamp appealing footprints. Paths and prints are also interestingly leftover snow or ice-covered walks. These are all printed and printing inspirations found on the ground. Art explorers note the changing feel of walking over different surfaces, climbing over uneven sidewalks, and shifting floors. Looking down stretches of a sidewalk, street artists may already have been there, leaving unusual stenciled marks. Over a dark, blacktopped surface, fresh yellow traffic markings create exciting line art. The students imagine “borrowing” the city’s line striping machines and creating a giant parking lot of paintings. As we put mileage on our shoes, many new floor markers are found. Dedications like the Hollywood Walk of Fame stars honor local citizens and historic homes or events nearby. Students offer their thoughts of impressions of their mark or design they would like to leave over a city floor-scape. Leaving our prints on the pavement as souvenirs, pictures made on art walks provide new insight into a space we thought we knew. Spending the entire day in classrooms makes it vital to find inspiration by taking walks outside. While most people think of chalk art, there are multiple ways to approach the blank sidewalk canvas. ●●

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Could a bridge be built over the sidewalk? Could we bring small toys to stage on the sidewalk? Could we use different wheeled objects to run through water as they create line drawings on the sidewalk?

Sidewalks are gateways to treasures, but the path itself might have a few treasures of its own. There are many outdoor wonders and worlds of bugs and plants hidden in the cracks of the sidewalk. Get out a magnifying glass with your class and discover the wonders of the sidewalk. ●●

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Can sculptures or drawings be added to the sidewalk? How about a home for the ants and bugs that travel through the sidewalk?

A sidewalk provides an already portioned-off area for students to create.

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Puddles Even as an adult, there is excitement when I see a good puddle. Maybe it’s nostalgia for a time when I quickly jumped right in, so innocent and free. Today I watch my husband’s, a photographer, excitement as he finds a great puddle to use as a reflection. Viewing the world through puddles is magical. I am experiencing the buildings and sky above from the perspective of a small pool below. Allowing students to understand our shared excitement when we see a puddle is vital in cultivating and not letting go of children’s awareness of them.

Manhole Covers When looking down, one of the most exciting architectural elements found is utility hole covers. Used to either advertise a company or a city, they are often historic and tell visual stories. Maintenance hole covers have a strong history going back to Rome.4 Today, artists have used the designs in printing5 as symbols of a city. In designing a new cover, what can be expressed about our twenty-first-century world?

Storm Drains Like a manhole cover, a storm drain is on the ground, but they are also very hidden and can sometimes become a hazard if something were to fall in, or someone is not watching where one is going. Yet, it is exciting to think about how the spaces connect, and what happens to something once it falls in. Many artists have used this space to incorporate paintings into the sidewalk, allowing people to see the opening more but also create an interesting visual element in the city.6

Teacher/Pedagogy In taking a walk around the block: – Can we make our rubbing, print, or photo of what we find on our wonder ground walk? – Are these images different in other towns, cities, or even countries? – Are there talented people or events we would want to pay tribute to? Artists in our community, perhaps, those who attended our school? Could stepping-stones be added to our walkway that incorporates these people? Perhaps names or pictures could be painted on a walkway or storm drain. – While we can bring back to the class things we find on the sidewalk, we can also leave something to be seen. To become constructors of students’ environment, it is necessary to see it in fresh ways and consider all parts of a city as a discovery place, an active safari to take. An environmentally inspired art class is an example of how creating happy environments, schools, neighborhoods, and communities can become an important area of learning.

Exploring Alternative Museum Sites

Treasure Hunt Adults often overlook a penny on the ground. Looking down can be a valuable treasure hunt. There are lovely shadows that usually appear on the ground, exciting items left to collect that fall from trees or bushes. It is good to observe wind, rain, snow with/without light, and its effects on the ground, possibly taking pictures of an area at different times of day and seasons. Take a bag and go on a safari looking for bugs, found objects, and other collections. Once back in the classroom, containers are emptied as treasures are employed in construction, in sculptures, and paintings.

Underground In Cincinnati, OH, there was a rail system that was dug but never built.7 In Louisville, KY, there is a cavern that was designated to hold 50,000 people during the Cuban Missile Crisis and remains a source of myth and rumor today—some say it is now used to store Hersey chocolate.8 When talking about art and a city’s history, there is a hidden world below us that can be dreamt about and visually explored. Students are excited by the possibilities. In the classroom, our papers drape the floor, and we consider the world below us. What is under the storm drain, in the tunnel, or down in the cave? We use our flashlights to go under the table and explore.

Moving Forward Staircases are one of the oldest building elements in architectural history, though it would be difficult to date their origin precisely. They appear to change with architectural eras, reflecting the prevailing philosophies and symbolic languages, unveiling the talent and ingenuity of those who have created them.9 This book is about living an enriched life by taking notes and enjoying all kinds of visual experiences environments we pass through offers. What a life it could be if our art students learned to find pleasure and inspiration in seeing all things they encounter, pass through, climb, and walk over each day. To experience the ordinary, the daily, in extraordinary and unique ways, we look to artists and art education to make it a lifelong reward. But climbing up and experiencing each step of a grand stairway is not just for artists; the designers and creative

What could be or should be happening beneath the city you live in? Could we create images of the secrets beneath a street to tell a story? How can young artists contribute to the world underground?

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architects created it to be enjoyed all the time and by everyone. Children know how to enjoy magnificent stairs, while adults may hardly pay attention.. Like children, let’s walk up to each stair of our life as a lift to a rich aesthetic experience. May we remember our humble art teachers who reminded us to do this.

Stairs While attending Columbia University, I worked as a nanny on the upper west side of New York. What five-year-old Will enjoyed the best was our weekly visit to the Museum of Natural History to climb the varied stairs. Will tested the grand stairway with long, formal wooden planks that enticed him to go up and down several times. Next, we moved to the more modern, winding, ascending bridge-like stairs to his favorite space exhibit. He also loved to ride the escalator, with each set of stairs requiring new skills with surprises. Children appreciate and differentiate between architectural surfaces and structures. They see the climb over natural building materials as an enjoyable thrill, encountering different levels, changes in height and direction, and shifting views along the way. The paths to public structures are formal promenades of grand stairs, emphasizing the majesty of rising and moving toward something special. Grand staircases may feature guardian figures and properly ceremonial railings. Stairs provide a noble entrance path from ordinariness to an extraordinary structure to be entered. On students’ walks, we climb entrance stairs to private and public buildings, examining their presence and beauty, special features, innovative details, and reporting on the feel of walking over them. We discuss the visual and functional contribution of stairs to each building, noting differences and unique features. Stairs are a multisensory experience. With Will, and now my classes, we touch the ground, rub and trace, measure, and understand the surfaces of different stairs. We search for secret compartments, hidden open doors, side doors, and sides of stairs, inside and underneath it. Some stairs are painted, others feature unusual stones. Interior stairs in public buildings are matched with murals on the stairs or the ceiling above, using the stairs’ architecture to play with the eye.10 Art teaching is enjoying the fanciful metalworks that can add interest to a staircase, and to further enhance our students’ fascination with the subject, show artists who use stairs as a prominent element in their paintings and sculptures. We consider such works as the Nude Descending A Staircase by Marcel Duchamp and Gerhard Richter’s Woman Descending a Staircase. Modern stair art includes the Pompidou Center in Paris. The walk from one floor to another suggests that one is freely suspended on the outside of the building. There are exotic see-through materials used for many modern stairs that expose the vast space below, and around our daring walk over them. An exciting feature of the Art Center in Cincinnati is the extra steep, but narrow, grand staircase to be climbed, set against a textured high wall in the interior of the building. Architect Zaha Hadid takes us to the museum’s highest point through a steep and daring climb.

Exploring Alternative Museum Sites

Like extended escalators at Airports, pad ways are very long flat moving sidewalks that can be boarded to travel long distances through terminals and tunnels, passing by artworks, light shows, and moving images. From the moving walkways at the Atlanta airport, to artist Leo Villareal light tunnel at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC,11 the moving walkway is an entertaining art journey since the 1960s.12 Modern stairs have become a fun adventure for all ages. It is no longer just a vestige or detail in a building, but the principal element in experiencing, providing fun, daring, and adventure for all ages, precisely what Will wanted. As a child, my parents commissioned a room for me to be through the kitchen pantry. Because of the stair’s location, it became my secret room, a magical setting that leads to what became a second-floor bedroom. In my mind, the stairs took me to a hideout, a magical place no one else could enter. At night, the stairs also made a scary break between the safety of my parents’ and sibling’s rooms below. Afraid, I often had to be accompanied to the tower upstairs. Stairs can become more than a way to get to the next floor. The risk and danger, the excitement of growing taller, more significant, climbing to new heights, made Will want to climb every ladder he came across on our Upper West Sidewalks. Staircases also lift tiny kids, give people the power to rise, and reach different levels of existence. A set of stairs can be a division between worlds, a conversation piece, a historical marker, or a work of artistic design. Stairs can be social. In many cities like Rome, or Madrid, people often congregate and sit on the many outside stairs of villas, churches, or a museum. Stairs can be architectural markers, distinctive centerpieces of a building, and serve as the internal circulation system, or “backbone” defining interior space. Art classes can study the history of stairs in palaces, castles, and museums in the history of architecture. The modern version of the stairs is the escalator, invented in 1859, which is well over a century old. Many artists have used the escalator in their work. For example, the eighty-year-old wooden escalator in Sydney’s Wynyard Station (first installed in 1931) has been repurposed into a sculpture called Interloop, hanging over the station.

Teacher/Pedagogy Documenting stairs around the city can provide the wonderful drawing, photography, and engineering lessons. Can stairs be recreated back in the classroom with blocks or Legos? Can stairs be sculpted, drawn, or photographed? How do stairs appear different from the top than from the bottom? What does it say about the identity of the building? Do the stairs go with the building? Can they make or break a design? Can we build things on the stairs, or going down the stairs? They provide a sculptural space that can be added too. Can we have an art show on or under the stairs?

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Figure 4.2  Creating Art on the School Fence (Steve Miller, Grassy Waters Elementary School).

Fences Fences are designed to define and divide outdoor spaces. They can exist to create protected and secure areas or porous, see-through, decorative outdoor walls to complement a building. For children, fences can sometimes be fun to climb over, to balance oneself by walking on them. There are fences constructed from metals, different patterns of wood, or attractive sandwiching of stones. Fences and their gates can have playful and complex wrought iron expressions that can be considered essentially artworks. Fences may be walls painted in exciting colors or graffitied over with passerby art. Rusting, aging, or weathering of barriers can be interesting records to study. Fences can be a statement of outdoor art and not a frame or edging for landscapers. The artist Christo, in 1976, wrapped and highlighted a segment of California countryside with his project “Running Fence.”13 For students, seeing the possibilities of a fence to be beautiful on its own, or creating artistic framing can be a meaningful revelation. Students remark in our study, “Fences meant to keep out, to isolate home from voyeurs can attract and invite viewing, deserving of close examination.” In historic buildings, often great artistry was applied to fencing, worthy of praise and comments. Having worked in city schools in America, it is common to be inside unsightly, outdoor cages, generally to the side or in the back of the school, where tall chain-link fencing encircles play areas. As a city art teacher, my students used their art and creative strategies to soften the cage-prison effect. We found the fencing to be well suited as a large weaving surface, for example. To look less intimidating, chain-linked fencing is perfect for all kinds of hanging art, even to run suspended cable cars from wall to wall. It was an ongoing challenge for young artists to turn an unsightly school fence into a community-friendly, inviting outdoor canvas. Fences can be places for posting

Exploring Alternative Museum Sites

art from mesh feces that hold woven art to wooden fences that can be easy to pin 2D and 3D art to rails, walls, or barriers. Filled with student banners, a fence becomes a valuable part of the visual landscape. Other schools have used the school fence to paint on or create mosaics. In large cities, fences around construction sites act as galleries for pop-up photo exhibits. An excellent example of this is a project called “The Fence,” which is a large photo exhibit that traveled through North America.14 In school Art Safaris, we can examine fences as historical artworks, masterpieces in iron or wood in the community, and also take stock of unsightly neighborhood fence walls and plan for the revitalization redressed with art ideas.

Roads and Highways A memorable part of a child’s early creative experiences is running cars, trucks, and trains around long roads and tracks. On today’s road trips by car, children are occupied more with portable electronic devices than the many exciting finds on the surrounding highways. As a child in the 1980s, we had to find ways to entertain ourselves riding with my siblings on the road in the backseat of the family car. We made up road games that engaged our attention to signs, passing license plates, and what trucks were hauling. We used to enjoy the moving faces of front-seat drivers and passengers, observed facing them in the reversed back seat of our old station wagon. Some kids still like to wave to passing motorists as their fleeting expressions and portraits fly by. We drew and photographed the passing landscapes, commented on unusual turns in the road, compared overpasses, or became mesmerized by the seemingly suspended or hovering yellow highway lines. How do students today gain an appreciation for the wonders of highways or learn to see the art of freeways cutting across the landscape? I noticed children watching the road from different car mirrors, simulated by changing the music that accompanies the moving ribbon of highways. Looking down from an overpass, or finding a good vantage point on a hill, it’s easy to spend time observing the highways. Students can compare line drawings with the reality of the road’s upcoming exciting twists and turns following the highway on the onboard screen or an old map. Large cloverleaf exchanges, merging and connected routes, and crossings can provide interesting visual experiences, unusual signs, asphalt patterns, and signals. Google Earth is a great virtual way to observe roads dropping down on sections of the highway and notice the changes and details. Class walks can reveal some individual highway views, exit ramps, overpasses, and the sounds of vibrations under them. Discussions can center around video clips taken by students or highway wonders taken in their photographs. To appreciate the lines that create gentle curves, subtle climbs, or unique weavings through a space, students need to get down on the floor in the room or long school hallway. Tapes, adding machine paper, long strips of cardboards, or wood planks can be used to stretch highway models across the floor—interesting variations, testing turns and twists, and shapes of highways that can enhance a driving trip. Small vehicles can ride along the test tracks and narrate what the driver may see and feel. In art class, a classic art lesson to learn perspective is to draw a road as it vanishes into the distance. We need to more often search for ways to make the source for this lesson an

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inspiration—the vanishing highway an unforgettable, real experience. There is an assumption that the highway is known since we drive down the same road many times. Art classes need to study and experience the highway as they do a roller coaster, a thrilling experience of speed and movement, fast-changing views of landscapes. They need to examine roadways not as a passenger just getting from place to place, but as the artist-designer who created it. There is the study of roads and the things of interest that can be cataloged along the roadway—unusual signs, light poles, fencing, innovative views, and separations created between communities and the highway and more to discover. Taking time to get to know the intricacies of the road can be meaningful to our art, drawing/painting lines, and interest in a different kind of landscape. In the car on a highway, students can be asked to down their devices and visually document the journey, write about their visions, and find inspiration in the highway ride, forming a connection to the road. Railroad trips and looking out the window of the train was a memorable travel experience for an older generation. Today’s highway seeing needs to be challenged and become a part of each student’s art source and vocabulary.

Looking Up A few years ago, there was a lunar eclipse. During the day, the entire school went outside like a massive street party, with special eye protection, to look up to the sky. Together, we experience the world going eerily dark for a few moments. The world was cast in a shade of darkness we had not seen before. It was a time when everyone present was changed, and became aware of the power of light and darkness. It was a day when everyone looked up together and felt a connection to each other and the earth.

Teacher/Pedagogy Without these experiences, so much of what now has to be done in the art room is teach observation. ●● ●● ●●

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Compare what is the visual difference between a road, highway, or expressway. What distinct types do you have in your community? Highways and roads as a visual expression of speed and movement: examine directions, the highway as architecture and sculpture. How does the highway or road fit into a neighborhood or community? What are some details of a road or highway? What are the qualities of sounds that can be heard both on underpasses and overpasses? What does it look like when several highways merge? What kinds of shapes and patterns are created? Can we view a map and draw out some of these spaces using a paper or Google map?

Exploring Alternative Museum Sites

It is not easy to get everyone to look up and marvel at the sky, the clouds, changes in light, or the evening sky. In our downtown, there are signs spray-painted on the ground that says, “Look up, it’s a beautiful day.” We perhaps need a sign for that, accompanied by innovative art challenges that motivate the act. Not many people realize that they go through each day without looking up, nor acknowledge this as a missing link to a significant experience, views of inspiration. Perhaps art classes can have a sign and many free lessons that students will always recall stopping to see the larger worlds above. Taking the time to notice fosters a love of light, unusual colors, and forms. Spending time looking at the sky and its changes from blue, to gray, or purple and yellow is a fantastic color lesson. The rain, sunsets, sunrises, and everything above color our moods and our world. Art classes can make a great contribution by encouraging a lifelong habit to look up a bit more. The marvel of tracking sunsets, magical rainbows, and the movement of planes can motivate the minds of daytime astrologers and perhaps those who are stirred by the night sky. The formations and changes noticed above us have always been relevant sources for artistic inspiration in painting, photography, and filmmaking. People with awareness and imagination are those who look for inspiration, our art students.

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5 Parks and Playgrounds as Extensions to Art Classrooms and Home Studios

Chapter Outline What Is a Park? Neighborhood Parks Historic Park Pop-Up Parks Nature Reserves Outdoor Sculpture Parks

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Independent artists “grow up,” mature, think more freely, and take up big ideas just by working in a park. It may be the limitless sky, the fresh air, or the open spaces, but it opens up movements and the flow of possibilities. Working outside, in nature, is an important experience for a young artist seeking to be an independent innovator. In parks lie inspirations and solutions to creative seekers that working from photos or doing only indoor art in classrooms cannot replicate. School art is sitting at desks, doing assignments. The park is a kid’s domain, a familiar and friendly open space to spread their wings, to explore, think, and build imaginatively. Parks and playgrounds allow little students to think big marks and plan on big canvases of nature and make seemingly impossible ideas a reality. Outdoors, young artists encounter the public and engage the neighborhood. Attracting instant audiences of other children and adults, young artists wrap/dress a tree for a rubbing, hang forms to decorate it with giant ornaments, or yarn-bomb a tree with patterns and colors. In a park, students can explore the vast grounds of soil or grasses to create installations of twig structures. They can erect visionary playhouses, design architectural castles, huts, outdoor rooms, and playhouses. Paths can be refurbished with found natural materials as an ongoing canvas. Students can organize community picnics with natural forms used to designate foods and table settings, and invite the community as guests. In the park, students can subdivide the space with partitions and fences.

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Figure 5.1  Student-created outdoor art.

They can create rooms in a castle or clubhouse with colorful leaves and yarns laid over to cling to vast portions of grass and underlays to build seasonal gardens. Some art projects in the park will need permission to be set up—to hang, to drape, to build— depending on how long a project will be there, or how strict the parks rules are. Students in a park can practice making art as a team, working together, and learning how to obtain permission for large temporary projects. As environmental artists, students will learn how to propose, convince, and charm adults who may not think art is important, or necessary, and get them on their side. This is an important skill for any contemporary artist who seeks to be noticed, to create changing events, and have a voice beyond safe home spaces. Parks allow for the creation of a true children’s art model, art that is fleeting yet memorable. Like children’s art in their room that is made and remembered, but that has to be taken apart, disassembled for their room to be cleaned, so park art is imagined, meticulously planned, and built to exist for a brief period before it’s taken down. Later in life, a student’s park works become a myth, a legend, a significant moment in the child’s repertoire, deeply stored in their memory. Students being prepared to work outside should have significant experience in school art classes

Parks as Extensions to Art Classrooms

with earthworks, waterworks, crating outdoor structures, and installations that are typically more personal and self-initiated than school art projects. For students to learn to become independent artists, they need to be prepared for more than isolated playing and making art in their room. The park teaches kids to plan and construct, make art collaboratively. Outdoor works build great confidence on large scales evoking complex dreams and ideas. Park art in real, natural materials demonstrates exciting possibilities of art that is made not just for oneself by oneself in a studio. In parks, students naturally cooperate and join forces to accomplish large works with friends. Art outdoors gathers a large audience of the community. In its grand scale creations and ideas, it can involve and excite assayers of all ages. Imagine the impact of works made on uniformly small school papers and traditional art supplies displayed on school bulletin boards in comparison to outdoor works. Art students need to try their hand in wrap art like Cristo, floating fabrics around islands, and hanging miles of unusual fabrics as curtains between mountains. Students in an art room exposed to, and involved with, creating environmental art take large leaps of imagination when returning as innovative artists to a park. Thinking big, effective, disruptive, desirous to make their art to be noticed among the vast competition from the visual world is all important artistic learning for those continuing to involve themselves in envisioning bold, new concepts in making art. Dreaming about new art worlds benefits from the free use of open, public outdoor spaces. For children’s art to move beyond the home refrigerator shows, art in a park is a major outdoor studio where communications with natural forms affect a large audience. In today’s vast art scene, it is most important for young artists to learn to do things differently, to be seen and noticed. Art in the park provides exposure, not only to be seen but also to effect visitors from the community. With social media, today park artist’s creations and new ideas can even go viral and affect the world. Returning to the park, students as park artists can take a giant leap in thinking and how they approach what they want to do. Nature’s elements—when altered, worn, arranged on the grounds, hung, wrapped, and suspended—become mysterious, magic expressions, public curiosities, surprises, and gifts for park visitors. Young artists’ practice and courage grow with experience and confidence. As other children lead adult visitors to their worksites to show and tell about their works, park artists are fuels to expand their reach and gain the powers of other original ideas created and inspired by nature.

What Is a Park? A park is a natural or seminatural space that is often curated for peoples’ enjoyment and recreation. Some parks are geared toward adults, while others devote prime spaces to children’s activities. An urban park can be a green space set aside for relaxation or recreation away from the concrete forms and surfaces of a city. A rural or small-town park may have more room for multi-functions such as large open fields for different sports or hiking trails for physical activity. A park can provide for human needs such as personal space and outdoor living, while also

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inviting community gatherings to play ball, have a picnic, or use a variety of water facilities. Large citywide parks may feature animal exhibits, outdoor stages or bandstands, house museums, historic houses, and outdoor art. In an era of climate change, parks provide shade. While cities are basking in unprecedented sunshine and high temperatures, trees are a welcome relief. As warm climates are beginning to boil over with three-digit temperatures, human beings search for places to avoid the blazing sun. Wealthier homes with air-conditioned interiors are also situated on large park-like properties with mature trees. Luxurious neighborhoods feature lush tree-lined trees, while people in other neighborhoods have to search for shade or, bake on the concrete and blacktop city surfaces. Parks are a great equalizer by providing increasingly important trees and shade for everyone. While cities like LA and NYC struggle to plant a large number of shade trees, opting for awnings over bust stops to make streets more hospitable for pedestrians, one can always head to the parks for relief and protection in a changing environment. A park can be many things, but every park is designed for the human needs of rest and physical activity, and to commune with nature’s light, colors, and smells; they are a place to lose yourself and be alone, as well as bringing people together for relaxing and enjoyable activities.

Neighborhood Parks As a child, one of my favorite places to ride a bike was our small neighborhood park. There, my brother and I would sit under large trees playing games we invented with twigs and rocks, adding toys from our backpacks. We shared the park with the neighborhood, but we felt this was our park, an extension of our home for creative play and to meet with friends. When a neighborhood is planned, a small park is generally part of a city planner’s vision. Reintroducing natural elements to the newly built environment is necessary for breathing space and providing visual respite from architectural density. For children, it is a space that allows for movement and free exploration. If available space to be recharged by the outdoors is small, neighborhoods may have Pocket Parks: petite green spaces generally designed to serve as the center of apartment complexes, or the immediate neighborhood structures. Neighborhood parks sometimes border on a school, or also serve as the school’s backyard. Large suburban parks transport visitors into an expanse of nature away from roads, buildings, and cars, to create a feel of being in the fields, in woodlands, or around watering holes. These parks are large spaces with lush vegetations, hiking trails, and lakes, with designated segments for playgrounds, basketball courts, swimming pools, or picnic areas. Once one leaves the car at the perimeter parking lot, these parks are crossed on foot and experienced by walking or riding bikes. Suburban parks are “go-to” destinations that are not located in the center of the city or close to a neighborhood. Unlike large city parks that add a landscaped green space at the edge of streets and are landscaped for passive recreation or used as a city’s cultural center, suburban parks become an entity of their own to get lost in and forget urban life.

Parks as Extensions to Art Classrooms

Teacher/Pedagogy Large suburban parks are wonderful for short art class hiking trips, picnics, and multimedia visual study of nature. – It is a vast space for a wealth of informal building and using nature debris and collecting nature finds to bring back to the classroom. Students can avail themselves of raw materials: found objects like pinecones, rocks, leaves, and grasses to create within the art class. There are filtered light shows on the ground, between trees, floral forms with varied colors and patterns, earth and large rock formations, reflections in water, fallen branches that offer opportunities for elegant rubbings and tracings, photo studies, drawing, painting, or printmaking.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas – Works can be created on the ground to leave as souvenirs or creatively document on site. – Creating a landscape safari, a hunt for unusual objects yields scores of creative ideas. – Following the long paths and trails with rolled out canvases generates mile-long paintings and drawings. – Making wind sculpture by adding new elements to tree branches or rediscovering the flight forms in open fields, experimenting with the wind. – Making maps of the space, pretend treasure maps, or sketches of what students would want to install or add to a specific outdoor space.

Large city parks are destinations for city dwellers and visitors. While some visitors might live close by and visit often, others are from all over the world so that visitors may hear many languages spoken. Central Park in New York City is considered a masterpiece in Park design, and it is one of the most-visited New York attractions. Other cities also have large parks that are must-see stops and hold much of a city’s cultural experiences. Home to festivals, concerts, and open-air theaters, Balboa Park in San Diego is an example of a park that incorporates many cultural and social events. Multiple museums, a Zoo, a rose garden, summer concert series, and a carousel meet in over 1200 acres. It is a park, but also a large part of what defines San Diego. At San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, as Catherine Nagel, executive director of the City Parks Alliance, describes it: “You can go from the entrance, with a lot of cultural institutions and a great botanical garden, and move through the park, and at the end, you find yourself at the ocean. The park connects a natural space to a built environment.”1

Many of the best parks around the world are also important tourist destinations. – In Vancouver, Canada, Stanley Park has beaches, gardens, and historical monuments, as well as amazing views of the bay. It is an oasis in the middle of the urban landscape. It provides many adventures and also houses an aquarium.

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– In Sao Paulo, Brazil, Ibirapuera Park is a large urban park in the middle of the city. The Skyscrapers can be seen from any point in the park, much like Central Park in New York City, which it is often compared to because of its size. There are many museums on site, as well as an auditorium designed by Brazil’s most famous architect, Oscar Neimeyer. – In Montreal, Canada, Mount Royal Park is designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also created Central Park. It has a wooded landscape and offers some of the best views of Montreal. – In Lisse, Netherlands, Keukenhof park is famous for its tulips that cover the park, creating an amazing array of colors. It is known as one of the greatest gardens in Europe. – In Florence, Italy, the Boboli gardens were originally designed for the Medici family and their backyard. It has centuries-old oak trees, sculptures, fountains, and caves, and is considered an open-air museum. – In Beijing, China, Beihai Park has been around in some form since the eleventh century. It’s filled with beautiful imperial palaces and gardens. Many of the above large city parks would also be considered outdoor cultural centers, housing more than green space including important art, museums, and historic buildings. In 2022, my hometown of Lexington, KY will open its first large city park called Town Branch Park.2 The park’s design will run through downtown spaces. The idea is to bring the feeling of the “bluegrass”—the feel of rolling hills and grazing horses—through the city center using thoughtful programming. Built around Lexington’s first water source called McConnell Springs, Town Branch Park will feature walking paths and bike trails passing serene water features. Town Branch Commons is designed to connect existing park areas to the feeling of the pristine horse farms for which central Kentucky is known. The name refers to “common land,” a term that mostly died out in the nineteenth century due to the enclosure acts, and refers to a shared space where residents could graze livestock, collect firewood, grow crops, and socialize. Today these spaces are parks, sidewalks, or highways. This downtown park hopes to do many things: to bring people outside and enjoy downtown as an intersection of streets and parks, a weaving of historic structures with nature. Building imaginative parks in downtown areas in smaller cities is the latest hope for inviting people to return to American main streets reinvigorate decaying shops and downtowns. Lexington, like other southern cities, was geographically and racially divided. Parks are healing to the spirit, a place of hope to unite communities in the welcoming shared outdoors. Nearby in formally racially torn Cincinnati, Ohio, there is also a fresh start with a new park along the Ohio River. Its calm river views and inviting places of respite and relaxation make it a place for peaceful gatherings and new friendships. A park can become a symbolic backyard back yard for get-togethers and celebrations with family that are difficult to do in small apartments or housing projects. A city park is just a step away from the rush of a fast-paced city life, where one can stay long enough to feel refreshed and enjoy life, nature, and people. Some city parks are geared more toward children with playgrounds, pools, and skateparks, while others have lakes, beautiful wildlife, chess boards, and Bocci fields for adults. In the spirit of parks fulfilling a variety of needs, one of the latest innovations is to enhance the life of a fit nation by bringing exercise equipment specially designed for adults and seniors into parks. Simplified

Parks as Extensions to Art Classrooms

versions of expensive indoor gym equipment, these outdoor machines are more like handsome modern sculptures to climb aboard. Art and design students’ field trips can map and sketch a park, taking note of its topography, revealing its most distinguished accommodations, furnishings, and features. Students can offer visual markups of what is still needed, what could be added to make a park more user-friendly, beautiful, or comfortable. Students’ park redesigns can utilize existing maps, aerial photos, and onsite notes. They can examine different park views of the surrounding city. The border of every park melds and connects differently to its city. Students can examine the borders of the park and try to define the puzzle of the designer’s concepts in connecting the park to its host city. Students can be challenged to go further and design their ideas of how a park and city can be happily married. Art classes need to support city parks as giant works of art and try their hand at landscape designing of great parks for their city.

Historic Park Prominent sons or daughters from a city’s history leave their residences to the public. The Henri Matisse house in Nice, France allows for a visit to the painter’s house-museum, surrounded by a park with beautiful plants, views, and seating areas. Around the park is a portrait gallery of sculptures depicting the legends of jazz music. In former mansions of royalty in England and France, such as the Gardens of Versailles, one can experience the feeling of the royals by walking about the property. Mansions of the rich and famous residents can look onto large carefully manicured flower gardens, sculptures, and handsome decorative gates, elegant light posts, fences, and other examples of historic wrought iron art. Today, on the ground where princesses’ carriages roamed, one can find artists sketching, kids playing, yoga classes, and other modern activities. Visiting the homes of film stars, or former presidential homes in the United States, one enjoys a park with the mansion tour as an added attraction. The Roosevelt House in Hyde Park New York and Washington’s home at Mount Vernon are working parks, farms, and ancient cemeteries, filled with a history inside the home, but the vast property was also where Franklin or George enjoyed the land, the views, and life outdoors.

Visiting the home of Henry Clay, US Senator and Vice President, my art students find the estate-park remarkable. Like a train, we form a single line, each student has drawing paper taped to their back as we enter the formal garden gate to chug through the maze-like formal planting pattern. Students look out from the “train” window gathering the beautiful plants and views passing by and drawing their impressions on the back of their moving easel. As the train line turns and twists around the bend, we sense the feel of the garden’s design. Occasionally stopping to add water to the steam engine, students refine their drawings and we move on to new garden sites. The train stops for a snack, and paper

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plates are passed around. Under the century-old trees, students find beautiful ingredients for a meal fit for a Senator. We meet at the picnic tables as students arrange their colorful plant and tree droppings found on the ground into a visually tasty dish. As we pretend to eat the visual feast, we discuss such topics as: What would the space have looked like a hundred years ago? If you were asked to add a sculpture to the space where would it go and what would it be? Learning about the job of a Landscape Architect, how would you change the space?

One of the most memorable experiences for children is to visit the magnificent home of Hudson River School painter, Fredrick Church, above the Hudson River and to paint outdoors as he did 150 years ago. Inside the home, named Olana, we see the artist’s indoor studio; outside, everyone becomes the landscape painter discovering different river views. For art classes, parks are as they were for Seurat, Matisse, and Church, just extensions of their studio. Some of the most inspirational light-filled and color-laden paintings always happen outside in the park.

Pop-Up Parks Pop-up parks are a way to revive a forgotten area and bring people together. These spaces, while often small and not permanent, get the public reacquainted with their neighborhood, offering programs such as yoga, children’s performances, food, games, or instillations. The idea of a pop-up park is to get people into green space and doing things together offering programs such as yoga, or community performances.3 Today, there are many pop-up spaces from museums, to food trucks, bars, and more. Highly imaginative spaces, a great deal can be done in parks without large amounts of money or permits.4 Often, transformed parking lots or abandoned areas are turned into pop-up parks. While not a permanent idea, it can become permeant depending on how it is received. Many universities are also taking unused space and creating pop-up areas for sitting and playing games, bringing students together in new areas of campus. There are a few items that help establish this space, a large part of which is seating. Just putting hammocks, swings, bean bags, or other seating can bring people together. Adding a few games, trees, lights, fake grass, or other visual elements create a simulated park space. One type of pop-up park is a Park-on-Wheels called ParkCycle.5 Launched in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku as part of an art project, these small green spaces are meant to instantly create a place to relax and be social, raising awareness of a need for green space in the city, as well as cycling. A mini island on wheels, ParkCycle are about the size of a parking lot space and can be pedaled around the city by bicycle.

Parks as Extensions to Art Classrooms

Also temporary is the idea of artificial large grass carpet, called Flying Grass Carpets, that are flown all over the world. This idea creates an extension of the landscape where needed. A temporary and fun pop-up landscape, it is transported to different art festivals, and cities. It brings an instant piece of green space into city life. Right away people come together on it to socialize, have picnics, play games, and connect. Another temporary park event that happens all over the county each September is known globally as Park(ing) Day (3rd Friday in September).6 This event encourages people to rent a parking spot for a day and convert it into a public greenspace. From students to interior design firms, people come together to create a space. Starting in the city of San Francisco, it has evolved to include many interpretations of what should go into that space, from a ping-pong tournament installation in Los Angeles, to artists’ installations or studios in Philadelphia, and a succulent garden in Madrid.7 ●●

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Could a park be created in your parking lot or an unused space? What if groups of students got together to design their parking lot space for the day?

Teaching/Pedagogy Not limited to cities, many spaces lack parks and the small spaces often temporarily are a way to bring a shared space to a community. Pop-up parks open up new ideas for children’s art markets, performances, and outdoor installations—by creating wonderful freedom to redefine what a park is and understanding that a park-like space is not only able to be used or redefined but created.

Talking Points and Key Lesson Ideas Looking at the larger questions, ask students to think about the following: ●● ●●

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What is a park and how can the feeling of a park be brought to a community? Where would it be good to have a park, and what kinds of things would be in a park? How could a park not just be created, but brought to a community in a smaller form? What does it mean to be a park? If one had $50, what would their park(ing) spot look like? What items could be brought into a community to create a parking space?

If you are an art teacher, a park is a valuable extension of your program. If there is a park or greenspace within walking distance to your school, consider it as an extension to the art room. It is outdoors in a park where students can dig and construct earthworks. A park is a place to look down, discover, and collect inspiring natural forms that come complete with art ideas. While learning to make art in exciting park space, students have the opportunity to leave behind art-making tied to tables and chairs. In a park, there are plenty of things to see and find as art supplies, canvases, or art tools. No brushes or canvases have to be taken on the trip since there are plenty of nature’s twigs, fruits, and grasses to paint with. Rocks are fine

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construction, sculptural materials, and painting canvases. Leaves can be used for drawing or woven into fabrics for fashion constructions. Trees trunks and nature fruits laid on the ground can be wrapped for rubbings and printing inventions. Outdoor winds can power all types of flying forms and sculptural creations. Bodies of water in a park can support many inventions in floating or sinking water-powered or related artworks. In the park are real spaces, light, and shadows, interesting forms to be inspired by, views and objects that would have to be imagined in an art class. Large grassy areas, a variety of paths and floors offer giant, seemingly endless canvases. Yarns and strings stick to grasses like Velcro, allowing for drawings to be seen for pilots above. Outside in the park, young artists soak up freedoms; they can move, be animated in their bodies and exploits, allowing for very different works than seated classroom art.

Nature Reserves Through an industrial part of Lexington, Kentucky is a winding road leading to a nature reserve called McConnel Springs. The stark contrast of the industrial area moving quickly into nature cannot be missed, almost as if in a twilight zone. Nature reserves are wonderful spaces that are often outside a city and vary in size. These are spaces that ask one to step away from their daily experiences and immerse oneself fully in nature, much like Monet who spent a good amount of time curating the gardens around him. As artists, it is important to have a sense of immersion whether into nature or other aspects of life.

Outdoor Sculpture Parks During the past fifty years, the outdoor sculpture has been part of parks as a way to create a connection to space. Nothing makes a bigger statement or creates must-see moments like it. Sculpture parks can create a site that is meaningful and relevant to the broader community. Jack

How can or do art and nature come together?

Park Signage Trees Benches Flower beds Paths Information boards or kiosks Drinking fountain Children’s play area

Parks as Extensions to Art Classrooms

Becker, author of “Public Art: An Essential Component of Creating Communities,” says public art can “engage civic dialogue and community, attract attention and economic benefit, connect artists with communities, and enhance public appreciation of art.”8 Whether part of a museum or on its own, putting sculpture on a site brings about a different experience with nature, asking the viewer to gather a different perspective on a space and how both art and they themselves interact with it. A few parks center around great works of art and architecture. One well-known example is the Park Güell designed by Antoni Gaudí, in Barcelona, Spain. Designed in 1900–1914, it was meant to be a residential park, but opened to the city by 1924. Full of the architect’s famous whimsical design and vibrant mosaics, it connects Gaudi’s art to the green space of the park at every turn. As one walks through the park, Gaudi’s architectural mosaic structures lead the way. There are decorative walls, sculptures, trellises, and buildings all created by the artist and adorned by Gaudi. The art is what defines the space and experience. A more traditional example of art being at the center of a park is Millennium Park in Chicago, IL, which houses the Art Institute, a famous sculpture park, innovative landscape design, cultural programs, exhibitions, ice skating rink, and more. A cultural center throughout the entire year, “it is a new kind of town square,” a gathering spot for locals and visitors to share experiences.9 One of the central spots is in the sculpture park, in particular, around a sculpture called Cloud Gate, otherwise referred to as the Bean Sculpture. Large and reflective, visitors love to take their photo with the sculpture and in its reflection. Often, there are other visiting sculptures on exhibitions. Using temporary works of art can make it new and exciting. For example, New York City has a program called Art in the Parks, bringing an extensive temporary series of traditional and experimental arts to the public. There are many artist residencies in parks.10 Some based in art and ecology, and others just supporting arts engagement. Looking at how artists connect with the space is a wonderful idea to bring into the classroom. There might also be the current residence of these programs that can share their experience with your students as part of their residency.

Taking students to a park can be an exciting occasion, but how one implements and connects it to an art experience is an important part of the journey: seeing the environment as artists, creating art that comments on it and adds to it. Multisensory: Sound, touch, smell, or taste is important to add when so many that come to the park have some level of disability. How can these other senses be used in an outdoor sculpture that would be added to the park? Surprising and out-of-place work creates a lasting impression. Take students to an area that is more challenging to become more inviting. Like the Gaudi park, could a park have a theme that is carried through space? If so, what would your theme be, and how would it be carried out?

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Chapter Outline Playgrounds as Art 102 Adventure Playgrounds 103 Imagination Playgrounds 104 Playgrounds and Art Experiences 106 Playgrounds and Earthworks 107 Indoor Playgrounds 107 Conclusion108 The Great Outdoors (The Process of Seeing) 109 Treating the Planet Better through Art 109 Earthworks/Land Art 109 Landscape Architecture 110 Seasonal Art 110 The High Line 111 Building Facades 116 Bus Stops and Bike Racks 117 Benches, Outdoor Seating, and Street Lights 120 Skylines123 The High Line 127 The Wonders of Mighty Bridges 129 Signage132 The Store Window 136

The form of the American playground, chiefly identified with individual neighborhoods and their small parks, was defined by a sand pit and the gymnasium, an early climbing apparatus.1

The playground, an important part of the Progressive Education movement, influenced John Dewey’s educational philosophy of learning: “The playground, particularly during the Progressive

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reform movement of the early 1900s benefited from the widespread belief that play was child’s work. Dewey portrayed children as miniature adults who had to adapt to their environment by actively exploring it.”2 Educators believed that if a child had a place to play, they would not be seduced by the evils of the neighborhood, such as gangs, drugs, or looting. Playgrounds became a place for children and adults to come together and establish a sense of community. The playground became part of the American landscape from the beginning of the twentieth century and many well-known artists, architects, and landscape designers had been involved in creating some of the most interesting model playgrounds. “The modernist preoccupation with children and childhood as a paradigm for progressive thinking influenced innovative playground designs.”3 While school playgrounds are generally not as innovative as some of the modernist playgrounds, it is important for art teachers to be aware of developments in playground design intended to contribute to children’s art appreciation and creative experiences. The rethinking of playgrounds as not just places that utilized adult artistic sensibilities, but also where children performed as designers, occurred between the 1940s and the present in Europe and America. These ideas can be implemented to some degree in every school. The art room can be extended to the outdoors, and the indoor art room can be considered a creative playground. Art teachers can discover inventive ways to adapt existing spaces and structures available in their school to enrich the art program. Playgrounds can encourage children to play and exercise their imagination outdoors, which is exactly what most children have little time for. Learning about model playgrounds can help to envision plans for using creative adventures, constructions, and pretend plays as important aspects of school art. Writings about the importance of the playground in developing a child’s language, physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and intellectual sides seldom address the role of the playground in shaping young creative minds. Playgrounds, however, can be significant contributors to a sense of wonder and creativity that becomes a part of a child’s lifelong art education. A journey to a playground can be a meaningful exploration of ground and space, surface and form, light and shadows, developing visual thinking, and focus on invention. Playgrounds can act as important large-scale canvases displaying children’s creative investigations.

Playgrounds as Art Art became a subject of the American playground during the 1950s when playgrounds, considered as major community landmarks, were also criticized as eyesores. During this period, artists, architects, and landscape designers were asked to design playgrounds. Characterized as cages with bars, artists began to transform lifeless steel structures to sculptural fantasies. Children were invited to appreciate these playgrounds as art placed before them, and experience the art through the act of playing. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and play equipment manufacturer Creative Playthings were instrumental in promoting the union of playgrounds and cutting-edge sculpture. American post-war architects and sculptors such as Aldo van Eyck saw great potential in the playground

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to educate perception and public taste through the urban landscape. Influenced by Scandinavian designers, van Eyck led the way in integrating playgrounds into the urban fabric.4 American landscape designers such as Garrett Eckbo and Daniel Kiley described playgrounds as creative canvases on which artists could most directly communicate with children. Sculptor Isamu Noguchi and architect Louis Kahn explored the playground as a place to showcase art and good design. Kahn sought to embrace variety in playgrounds for children. He reasoned that “play must be free and uninhibited in spaces with interesting shapes not imitative of nature, yet unrestrained in their making.”5 It was clear that artists saw their creations as not only improving the appearance of playgrounds, but also inspiring the visual sensibilities of young players. Artists defined the connections that joined the concept of communal space, play, and the creation of artwork. In 1953, Creative Playthings, a leading American wood toy company, opened a new division to manufacture playground equipment called Play Sculptures. Creative Playthings commissioned sculptors to conceive designs for their new division. Artists such as Egon Moller-Nielsen and Henry Moore were asked to work on Play Structures. A sculpture competition cosponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and Parents Magazine supported the notion that playground sculpture could be an art that children need to experience, an art that could satisfy children’s exploration of beauty, imaginative play, and physical activity. The competition started to solidify the connection between art and playgrounds. The MoMA competition and a subsequent exhibit in 1954 of playground pieces received vast media attention and provided legitimacy for playgrounds in the world of art. By 1955, artists were eager to join the ranks of playground designers. The 1960s saw playgrounds as part of mass consumerism and big business; companies began to sell “cookie cutter” play structures in large quantities to restaurants such as McDonalds. Once the mass production of playgrounds became “big business,” liability was a dominant concern. Since the latter part of the twentieth century, American playgrounds can be described as victims of escalating insurance costs and safety regulations. Safety concerns are an overriding consideration in today’s playgrounds with padded floors, no running rules, and no-creative-playing rules implied. Today, some play structures are made of plastic with rubber chips to prevent accidents. The plastic structures are colorful with more components, yet safety outweighs any emphasis on promoting creative playing. One of children’s first architectural experiences is on a playground. The playground is a mini city, or urban landscape, just the right size for a child. Yet, no one ever asks a child to take a step back and explore it as such, to contemplate it as an art form, and to navigate it as an architect. Children might have played their whole lives on the sculpture and landscape design of great architects, yet they are unaware of the legacy of their surroundings. How does one see the beauty and experience the possibilities of the playground space? How can beauty, placed by designers before a child, be translated to create artistic play within the structures? Artist-designed playgrounds in America placed beautiful forms and objects before children, but they did not promote the child to shape their own art. The child as creator and designer, and the playground as backdrop, was an innovative concept in European design. During approximately the same period when America was focused on building aesthetically inspiring playgrounds, European models emphasized providing a public space for the child to exercise the right to creatively play. Moving from simply providing a physical place to play to providing

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an environment to pretend, to make things, and for children to creatively express themselves was the concept of Adventure Playgrounds.

Adventure Playgrounds In 1931, Danish Architect C. Th. Sornsen saw that kids were not playing on the playgrounds that he designed, but were more interested in litter such as boxes or the dirt-covered ground. He came up with what was first called a Junk Playground, now known as the Adventure Playground. Sorensen’s vision of the playground was a space that supported children’s natural, creative, and imaginative playing. In a sense, you and I have always played in adventure playgrounds. We created a fort in the kitchen cabinets, jumped from couch to couch across oceans; we snuck out through a hole in the fence to a new world … We made a children’s world in the city and in the country. Imagine, a place that provides all that, in the middle of a city. Here you go, hammers, saws, nails, wood, tires, rope, cloth, whatever you can find. Make it yours. You can change this playground right here, right now.6

During the 1940s, war and devastation in Europe, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam became the sites for innovative playground ideas where children could depart from disturbing events and engage in fun and play. It was Sorensen who created examples of how concrete and chains could be lifted in order for kids to feel the freedom to imagine, and playfully venture into an improved world they invented. In the Adventure Playground, children could arrange used tires, nail wood scraps, and build with telephone cable spools. According to Wardle, “Adventure playgrounds help to develop a range of cognitive skills and allow children to be repeatedly inspired and challenged.”7 Popular in Europe, there were over 1000 Adventure Playgrounds that, although now substantially decreased in number, continue to be a way for kids to be creative with found objects in an otherwise prefabricated world. In Adventure Playgrounds, children don’t play on ready-made structures, but are able to build their own constructions. Allowing for design teams and interactive play, children form new social relationships. Building together and making art together, children envision future landscapes, vehicles, and cities. Participants are provided the safety of an enclosed supervised environment where Play Workers supervise the space, mediate disputes, and serve as active audiences. Unfortunately, many American youths have few opportunities to play in community settings. Due to stricter building codes, creating a public play place did not catch on in America like it did in Europe. There are only two functioning Adventure Playgrounds in the United States. New trends in school backyards are art gardens inspired by Monet—often designed by art teachers— and enormous architectural climbing structures developed by consulting firms and built by parent volunteers. Adult-conceived and built spaces, however, are not necessarily promoters of children’s imaginative playing. Art teachers may want to look at their own schoolyards for alternatives, such as the potential for setting up what resembles an Adventure Playground. They can lead the way in

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planning schoolyards where children can construct with donated wood, brick, and stones from local lumber yards, used tires from bike or automotive stores, and other building materials saved from home renovations. These playgrounds can be constructed and deconstructed making the elements recyclable and cost effective.

Imagination Playgrounds Imagination Playgrounds are the newest in innovative American playground design. Similar to the Adventure Playground, the Imagination Playground provides children free space to manipulate the environment, and enlists them as artists and creators of the structures. The difference is that the giant, blue, foam blocks are employed to meet American safety standards. The multi-shaped forms, essentially advanced block playing, allow it to be performed on a large scale outdoors. The child-sized and larger blocks allow young architects to build public structures and enjoy city-type building experiences with large architectural spaces to move thru. Created by David Rockwell in Burlip Slip, NY the playground focuses on soft loose parts, so that kids are able to construct with the blocks through unstructured free play. Users create a flow of new spaces and environments constantly altering the playground. Rockwell explains, “Years ago, he bought his children an art table with cubbyholes and drawers, only to have a eureka moment. I found them playing in the hall with the packing box and foam.”8 Rockwell set out to produce multiuse, movable, and interchangeable simple blocks, and offer them without instructions to promote creative playing. Similar to Sorenson striving to engage children on the playground with building experiences, the uniform blocks of Imagination Playgrounds are a far more controlled and limited, yet safe, American way to explore play in playgrounds. In Imagination Playgrounds, “Play Workers” are hired to set up and dismantle blocks, but, more importantly perhaps, to interact with children. In observing an Imagination Playground in action, I observed a Play Worker speaking to parents when they were overstepping bounds by not allowing their children the freedom to explore. Play Worker Katie commented, “It’s not a space where you can do anything you want. It is a controlled environment, and sometimes parents get intimidated because we don’t just let kids destroy things, we will say no … we will also tell parents if they are building for their kids, and not allowing them to have the full experience.” Katie was hired to take care of the playground, and although she has worked at other playgrounds in the city, she said that this was the only one in which families knew her, and she felt helpful. Katie’s demeanor was similar to an early childhood specialist who understood the social and emotional demeanor of the kids she was working with. Katie spoke of attending intense training sessions, and, when asked about the differences between the participants in playgrounds, she said, “These kids are able to play together and build amazing things. They seem to be far more focused, interested, and creative than what they do on typical play structures.” Both Imagination and Adventure Playgrounds reaffirm the notion that free play is an important part of art learning. Play blocks, as a foundation for creative thinking, go all the way back to the forming of the Kindergarten by Fredrick Froebel in 1840. Play blocks are still used by many art teachers to begin

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an art class and promote student discoveries. Blocks in an art class can also be used to illustrate design concepts and search for new forms in furnishings or architecture. Today, children have little time and few opportunities to play with wood blocks, or any play block, except on the computer. Even Legos are sold in highly scripted kits making free play difficult. Therefore, playgrounds for block players become community events of importance. The blue blocks of the Imagination Playground allow children to enter safe worlds of improvised block constructing. Art teachers can create Imagination Playgrounds in their school yard by gathering large sturdy boxes, plastic forms, giant pillows, or inflatable items to bring into public spaces to build with. This changes the notion of the playground or schoolyard becoming an outdoor space for art learning. When children are able to use large linear or block-like forms to perform, build, and create imaginary places, the playground becomes a backdrop in which to present plays and display constructions.

Playgrounds and Art Experiences A playground is not just an outdoor gymnasium. The exuberance and energy on display is not just physically, but creatively challenging. The playground is a place to discover basic art processes and exercise problem-solving skills. Model playgrounds allow for manipulating ground materials and manmade forms. Art lessons about space, movement, or light, taught theoretically in a classroom can be realistically explored outside. Art teaching can utilize schoolyards as stimulating playgrounds to build forts, explore hidden alcoves, and design places for fantasies. For example, children can use a school playground to wrap up trees for rubbing, or cover playground structures as large presents. As the artist Christo and his wife Jean Claude wrapped bridges, monuments, and buildings to reexamine familiar forms in the environment, school children can experience wrapping playground equipment in plastics and fabrics to provide exciting new forms and canvases. Playground equipment can be used as armatures, stretchers, and hangers redefined by their covering in bubble wrap, newspapers, or gift wraps. Draped outdoor forms provide fresh opportunities for playful musings as sculptural landscapes, opened as new interiors, or vast canvases for drawings and paintings. The playground can be a place for environmental designing or animation, a setting to explore action scenes or still lives. It can be used to set up futuristic worlds in an environment that provides new challenges in scale. School playgrounds can be used to explore lines by following amazing walkway cracks, or intricate lines sprinkled and poured over concrete from watering cans. Open spaces allow for drawings on grassy surfaces, where yarn sticks like Velcro and mile long contrasting colors can be cast. Sharp lines can be freely inscribed on sandy floors as playgrounds offer countless opportunities for fearless art. Space can be felt outdoors. Various “perspectives,” or ways of depicting space in pictures, can be invented and examined firsthand. Also, what better place than a playground to study points of view, where climbing up tall structures, or moving through tunnels and slides, offers a variety

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of changing “world views.” One can drop pebbles, twigs, or wheeled toys down the slide to study motion or visual changes experienced in testing inclines, heights, or depth. What better place to study one’s own moving shadows, or set up figurative shadow puppet shows? Light and shadow are memorably studied in playground experiences. Dramatic shadows, cast beneath play structures, can be traced on the ground or sketched on “shadow trapping” papers. School art programs can benefit from ideas expounded in model playgrounds. Motivated by playful investigations of their surroundings, the trees, and play structures, even ordinary schoolyards can provide children with opportunities to learn about art. Children can be imaginative helpers in designing playgrounds where they initiate their own play experiences. Every nook and cranny behind a school produces unique sounds, spaces, and opportunities for young architects or designers.

Playgrounds and Earthworks Children naturally expand any playground area by finding uses for bushes, trees, and leaf piles. They design with found materials in outdoor spaces that bring play beyond the built structures. How often does one see a child digging in the dirt, or creating pine needle rooms with pinecone furnishings, while ignoring the playground structures? Art teachers, as school yard playground designers, can take young children’s playing into account. Art classes in the playground can design on grounds using water, rocks, and build natural bridges. As art flourishes within model playgrounds in schools, it can spread to connect playground structures to become “tree houses” transformed into imaginative architecture and sculptural uses. Children in sand, dirt, and outdoor water plays are the original Earthwork artists. During different times of year, the playground changes in color and “art” materials, and students can sculpt with dirt, snow, or autumn leaves. Considering that outdoor colors are always changing, growth and decay are some of the elements of a living playground that art made outside can illustrate; it is art that is not taken home, or kept, but added to the environment, possibly going back to the original forms. Sculptures can be built and torn down, and be put back into the earth. When a child constructs on an Adventure Playground, they are also creating a piece of Earthwork.

Indoor Playgrounds Dreams for what could be invented in playgrounds can be thought about in the art room. In the classroom, students can create the plans and models for playhouses and bridges that can be installed outside. Understanding that the playground is an architectural space with opportunities to plan and test a variety of design ideas is a valuable art lesson. Studying the history of playgrounds is not just for teachers, but an opportunity for art class learning. After all, our students will be designing the model playgrounds of the future.

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Conclusion The traditional playground designs that so many of us played on as young children were developed early in the twentieth century, and are still being installed today. According to Peter Heseltine and Holborn, “One result of these poor planning trends in the creation of ‘ghetto’ playground(s) covered in unused metal equipment instead of the more involved creation playgrounds that require supervision, and thus an ongoing commitment of time and expense. ”9 Model playgrounds, however, offer vast opportunities to explore the nature of children’s creative behavior, study modern architectural concepts, and methods related to teaching art. The history of model playgrounds and the creative ideas they suggest provide many opportunities for art teachers and their students. Even in the most restricted schoolyards, model playground ideas can flourish. Art classes can study playgrounds and examine art and its connections to environment, including landscape architecture, Earthworks, and more. Model playgrounds, and their extensions created behind schools, have the potential of offering children important art experiences.

Figure 6.1  Trees: Seeing the beauty and artistic possibilities in the outdoors (Kentucky Governor’s Mansion).

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The Great Outdoors (The Process of Seeing) My husband is a photographer, and on our walks, we often stop for a picture. In these moments, I too am forced to slow down and look around. For those few moments by myself, I wonder what he finds so interesting, or I look for my own reason to discover something in more detail. At the beginning of our marriage, I was annoyed by stopping all the time, but, through the years, I have begun to enjoy both the hunt for something interesting and the time to reflect. Watching him locate his subject, I have noticed that often his pictures are not what all the tourists are looking at, but of the tourists themselves, or of some detail that didn’t catch my eye. I find us often looking, for hidden treasures down allies, or under stairways, doing things I would never do for a good picture. To see the results, even a few weeks later, bring up memories of things I saw, or often missed. It makes me realize that two people can be in the same spot and see very different things, which is why it is so important to not make assumptions about what everyone is seeing. Stopping to take a second look needs conditioning. Although only my husband uses the camera, it forces both of us to see differently. Part of the process for a new way of seeing can be a camera or drawing tools, sitting in a new space or wearing colored glasses, describing what you are seeing or even creating a treasure hunt.

Treating the Planet Better through Art Art is a natural catalyst to how we treat our planet, and it can and should be used to make it a more beautiful and sustainable place. By bringing attention to social and environmental concerns through art, sculptures, and murals, art is creating awareness of our environment and what might be needed to make the world a better place. Students may be interested in continuing the tradition of finding unusual spaces to create art using elements of the environment. For example, art on sewer drains, water barrels, bike racks, water towers … These are spaces where in many cases artists have already painted or redesigned the space and students can help contribute. There are also ways of creating art that uses recyclable or found materials and putting it back into the environment, asking for viewers to recognize the space. Such found art includes bird feeders, yarn bombing, and hanging art from trees. By understanding and participating in how art can create awareness and change, students see the potential that the power of art has. As art teachers, it is important to have students participate in projects that bring their art into the world and show them how it can make a difference.

Earthworks/Land Art In a rejection of the galleries and museums that took place in the 1960s, the art movement Earthworks uses the natural land to create site-specific sculptures.10

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Earthworks range from subtle, temporary interventions in the landscape to significant, sculptural, lasting alterations made with heavy earth-moving machinery. Some artists have also brought the land into galleries and museums, creating installations out of dirt, sand, and other materials taken from nature. Earthworks were part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s, also called Land Art or Earth Art.11 Students leave the class to go outside to the backyard of the school and use only the elements of the landscape as our building materials, finding, rocks, sticks, leaves, flowers, and pinecones. When not able to take a long field trip, the area that surrounds the school can be a valuable resource. Often schools have wonderful outdoor spaces or wooded areas to explore and not just draw or paint but to create in. Many artists such as Jean Claude Cristo or Andy Goldsworthy have mastered the idea of producing outdoor sculptures by just extracting leaves, tree limbs, ice, and water from nature. Taking a walk around the area of the school building can lead to brainstorming new sculpture and instillation ideas.

Landscape Architecture As adults, a great deal of time is taken to design our outdoor space. The field of landscape architecture has a great deal to give students through understanding how to sculpt and define the landscape. From rooftop gardens to arboretums, there are many spaces that are created and manicured using greenery. In an art class we can look at how landscape architects have chosen to manicure property, comparing it to other areas in our city or around the world. As a class we can work on our own outdoor space, creating plans and possible implementation. There could be other areas that we could create plans for as well. This experience is valuable because it is an art form we see every day but is often not recognized. By sharing it with students, we are asking them to reexamine their world through an artistic lens.

Seasonal Art Snow Days The wonders of the natural world: “It’s a snow day.” More magical words have never been spoken. It’s a day to stay home and drink hot chocolate. It’s also a day to go outside and play in the snow, sledding down hills, making snow angels, building, and watching the snow turn colors and slowly disappear. Snow sculptures and sled trails fill the streets. Yet, the impermanence of these creations can be magical or disappointing. How can these memories be captured? A drawing or photo perhaps? Once in school, we plan for our possible snow-day adventures, creating drawings and sculptures of what we will do. While not the elaborate snow sculpture of Japan, there is much to plan for with snow even if it is never produced outdoors, from building or coloring the snow, to the dreaming of possibilities.12 Our class thinks up new ideas, and looks at artists who have used snow/ice to create.

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Fall/Spring My least favorite gift from a child was the carefully packed bag of cicadas placed lovingly on my desk, with a note stating, “I know how you like collecting things.” Still warm, I was both honored and horrified. While we had used our magnifying glasses to do a lot of bug observation that spring, I was not prepared for their arrival on my desk. Bug collecting is one of the many ways our class celebrated spring and this year the cicadas were out in force. Although not my favorite, this is what my students were interested in, and there was a great deal of drawings and sculpture with them that year. The colored leaves of fall and the foliage of spring are a reminder of the ever-changing world. So many seasonal pictures are sadly created in the confines of a classroom. In order to appreciate these times of year through an artistic lens, one has to fully experience the season by being in it. Students love these times of year because they are able to get outdoors and play, and as artists they can utilize their surroundings by collecting leaves, pinecones, sticks, and foliage to play and build with. Students make jewelry, decorate forts, sort creating brushes, inks, and drawings. In the art class, we can have these experiences together by bringing the great outdoors into the classroom for more intensive study.

The High Line Perhaps the most unusual public park in New York City is the High Line. Rising high above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side on a historic freight rail line, the High Line was saved from demolition by the urging of neighborhood residents and the City of New York. The High Line opened in 2009 as a hybrid public space where visitors experience nature, art, and design.13

Yes, the High Line is an abandoned elevated freight line, but it has also become one of New York’s most loved parks. The rescued railroad tracks serve as walking paths and bases for unusual sculpture and potting grounds for magnificent plant life. An interdisciplinary experience, the High Line provides community engagement and as well as opportunities for local youth, performance spaces, and more.14 It is a good example of a city park that can be an observatory of nature, as well as space to view life in the city. A traditional park is not suspended high above the city, sharing space with soaring buildings. The High Line is different than other parks in that one can be comfortably mingling with its line of closely flanking tall neighbors. Each twist and turn of elevated walking paths turn and face an interesting visual surprise. Yet, the interplay works and creates a wonderful relationship between nature and architecture: mysterious tunnels, broad openings of space, and views onto masterful pieces of architecture like the Whitney Museum of American Art. The High Line changes the way one ordinarily experiences activities of the city—the performance of people and play in the lines of traffic. Walking the High Line offers a new sense of city scale, and different ways of interacting with the skyline of Manhattan.

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The High Line is a meandering linear path that asks park visitors to experience the city from multiple perspectives. It crosses streets with sites to watch the flow of traffic beneath. The park reimagines the concept of parks and public spaces. Walking along carefully placed, free forms of vegetation, there are moments that the High Line feels like a traditional park, yet the nature exploration breaks abruptly to remind one that this is in the “hills” over a lively city that surrounds the paths. In one unexpected turn, theater-style rows of seating turn toward a portion of a city street and suddenly drop down dramatically nearly on top of the street traffic. When the park was first conceived, the neighborhood was not very desirable. Then, as in many city neighborhoods, artists migrated to the community. Coffee shops and galleries followed, and, at a fast pace, the area began to shift. Now the expanse near the High Line formally known as the Meat Packing District is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan. Those who bought a place to live in the surrounding buildings, however, never thought that people would one day be looking in their windows. When the High Line Park began in 2006, some dwelling in adjoining buildings added to the High Line by creating amateur art installations in their home, while others closed their blinds.15 Some took advantage of the voyeuristic effect to put in working art studios and galleries. Professional installations combine with art coming from the residents to create an interesting mix of browsing/peeping views. During a long park walk, one finds multiple thrills and pleasures to experience walking high up between the towers in Manhattan. In one gallery, an artist performs his work in the window, so that viewers can experience watching someone create. On the back wall of this studio/gallery, a phone number is advertised, providing a way to get in touch with the artist and get further into his space. One neighboring structure, the Standard Hotel, was built during the formation of the park, and guests were caught off guard when voyeurs started looking into their hotel rooms, an element of this park’s fascination. Every hotel room opens up to the High Line and Skyline of New York. Unlike other parks that allow one to find space to be secluded, this Park is not about privacy, but a walk turns you into an interaction with people in their apartments or hotel rooms, creating, or passing through life on the streets. Recently on a news broadcast about the devastating earthquakes in Porto Rico, the newscaster shifted his gaze from the subject to a box in the background where a young girl popped out. The

Teacher/Pedagogy For art students, the High Line is a great place to start examining how organic and industrial elements of a city can share a place and work together visually as an experience. After exploring the High Line in person, virtually, or in books, students might explore the possibilities of bridges, abandoned strips of elevated highways, railroad tracks, or small plots of industrial land that could be grown into parks. The proposals sketched or illustrated via models can demonstrate the possibilities in rethinking city parks, sculpture gardens, and other alternative community spaces as possible park sites. Young artists can begin to look at balconies, roofs, and parking garages as ways to think about how to reinvent the idea of a park off the ground.

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In an art room, it is important to see not only 2D artworks being assembled, but also elements of the environment and neighborhood coming together in the art of park design. Students can dream of traditional masterpieces like Fredrick Olmstead’s Central Park in Manhattan or new park ideas in forgotten, unused, or neglected community places, giving birth to new uses for old places. Being an observer is part of being an artist, and a place like the High Line simply illuminates the importance of parks as places for inspiring observations. Artists should be voyeurs, or observers, that filter their media. People watching and reflecting on the flow of traffic, city sounds, and street activities lead to new ways of accommodating people in town and understanding how human beings interact with space, whether it’s a building or a park. Noticing everything, from nature to the built environment, and the life in each site, can influence our own lives and think about creating new art areas and forms of art. It is valuable to take trips to places above the city, to find high points—bird’s-eye views—from skyscrapers to bridge walks to the High Line, to generate new feelings and insights and propose new park creations in existing spaces in one’s city.

Figure 6.2  A doorway of art possibilities (The Commons Community Center, Columbus, Indiana).

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girl spoke about the box house she created in the middle of the surrounding devastation. Watching this girl lovingly describe her box house was an important example in how a young child seeking both normalcy and safety may find them in something as simple as a cardboard box. While this child had lost so much, this box had become a space she could control and make her own. With the same interest in boxes, it excites my daughter when the new washing machine arrives. Not for the machine itself but for the box it comes in. She already has plans for the grocery store display she will work on for the next few days. Creating and designing her own space is a priority. When we reach a hotel room, she is the first one into the room designating the closet as her space to decorate will all the items in the room, and things that were brought with her. The chance of having a space that a child has fully designed and executed is invigorating. Parents design the house and children’s bedrooms: few decisions are their own. As one gets older, they might gradually take over those spaces with parent supervision. Deciding on bed sheets, or a new dresser, provides some ownership of the room one lives in, but nothing as great as the box that is the home that one designed and created. As adults, we watch a plethora of home designs shows, wanting to design and recreate our space. With shared desks, tables, maybe a locker, students have little ownership of classroom space. Carrying a box into class creates excitement. Designing an area that students can work together to curate, that will be theirs alone to curate. I ask the students, what should we do with it? The possibilities leap out as they dream of ice cream shops, donut stores, or post offices. This is an excellent beginning to our city study as we take walks through our neighborhood and into our small downtown, looking at houses and stores that make up our community. As the art teacher, it is my job to sit back and listen to students’ ideas, helping them find ways for dreams to come true. There was no need for a plan going in, just a box. The students knew what to do. When the students decide on a space, we talk about what they need—what, for example, a grocery store might look like in one city, or a toy store, getting a deeper study at one community versus another. For example, a Chinese grocery store and a Mexican grocery store can have unique products to serve a culture’s unique needs.

Houses One suburban neighborhood can appear different from another. For example, taking a walk down a neighborhood street in Brooklyn, NY can seem like another world from Los Angeles. The first thing one might notice is the foliage. There just aren’t the cacti, palm trees, and other desert plants in Brooklyn as there are in Los Angeles where they need plants that are drought-resistant. Many of the houses in LA are newer, trying to be earthquake-resistant and have been around for a few decades, as opposed to the old Brooklyn homes that are one or two centuries old. The houses in LA have golden brown Mediterranean slate roofs, variations in colored stucco, and over-the-top entrances filled with lush plant life. While both have highly ornamented figures, they are different in LA, and LA has pools, which you don’t see as much of in Brooklyn. With a different topography, many LA houses will never be seen. There are entire areas that have hidden houses behind tall bushes or gates, inside hills, and canyons where entire neighborhoods reside.

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On the other hand, Brooklyn houses have many tree-lined streets and less enormous properties, but often houses are attached and have plenty of overexaggerated wrought iron to keep everyone out. Many of the larger properties are divided into multiple units, with mismatched extensions coming out of every side, over-the-top ornamentation, and little patches of green space. In New York, space is limited so building onto any house is more about convincing than beauty. Traditional brick, stone, or wood homes are common and there are only a few truly modern houses hidden in a few neighborhoods, and even then, it is more modern on the inside than the outside. All of this to say, that there are many environmental and regional factors to how one lives. If one does not travel a great deal, there are fewer opportunities to notice these differences. The only reference one might have is from TV and movies. When a child draws a house, it is generally a stereotype of what a house might be, or it may be similar to their own. Requesting a student to inspect houses in their neighborhood and around town can be a good place to start the understanding of comparing spaces. What is the history of a neighborhood? When was it built? What style of houses are they: Craftsman, Cape Cod, Tudor, Ranch, Country Style French, Victorian? Was the home built by a famous architect, or was its design prefabricated? Taking a glance at one’s neighborhood and comparing it with other neighborhoods around the world can be an interesting discussion into what constitutes a house and defines its space. In my neighborhood, for example, because IBM had moved to town, expanding business expanded the need for houses, and all the houses were built at the same time, so the houses are all the same size with some exceptions that are mostly additions. All the streets are names for the children of the person who owned and developed the property. It’s interesting to walk around the neighborhood decoding these things. Seeing how homeowners decided to alter their space, adding garages, building out or up, et cetera. The way that space is altered is personal, and with generations of home ownership there are even more variations.

Teacher/Pedagogy Based on the plethora of home TV shows, adults are just as excited as kids when it comes to creating and designing a space of one’s own. Whether two- or three-dimensional planning, taking a walk, or virtually experiencing different neighborhoods, knowing that there are a variety of possibilities can change the way one conceives a house and neighborhood. Where is your house located, and how would it look different depending on that location? How does landscaping change based on where you are located? What materials are you using to create your house? Are your designs more about interior or exterior planning? If this house could be anywhere, where would it be? What does this house say about your interests and personality? If you could add anything to your front yard what would it be? What makes your house and neighborhood special? What could you do to change your house and make it into a unique style?

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Building Facades There is a show on TV that discusses houses that seem ordinary but hold different and ornate worlds inside. The facade acts as a deterrent, not a gateway to hidden treasure. Yet, when a house is drawn by a child or an architect, the facade is most important, as now the one enters the space can give valuable information about who and what is inside. The city of Louisville, KY has worked diligently to keep many of the facades of historic buildings in its downtown while replacing the rest of the buildings as to preserve some of its history. Some houses are more about function than form, as the garage becomes the key element of a facade, or maybe the facade is obstructed by other elements. Yet others use the façade to create a focal point as a porch, columns, or an overarching roof. Looking at different house facades with students is important in thinking about our own space, and the space we want to create.

Walkways Stepping up to someone’s house can be like walking up a runway, constructing a grand entrance as one winds down the path or upstairs to give an impression of what’s inside. Students can take notice of the unique elements that are part of the entranceway; large plaster dogs or lions greeting visitors on either side, shrubbery, potted plants, lights, and flowers are all part of creating a sense of grandeur leading to the front door, which is often painted a bold color and have metal door knockers, or iron, or wood gates providing the last separation between the inside and outside world. The walkway can be a grand gesture, or a quick moment. What does the walkway look like to the front of the school or to your classroom door? Can we roll out the red carpet? Can we not walk but create a dance move as we come in? How can that walkway be an extension of our school experience? How can we make the walkway a thoughtful and meaningful experience for students?

Lawn Decoration Free Library Book boxes have become the latest craze as people are looking to create an exchange of information and ideas. If someone has a spectacle in their yard, whether it is flamingos, lions, or glass flowers, it causes people to stop and consider; yet the idea of the little library creates longer moments of interactions with the space. A yard becomes an important part of defining who we are and what we want to display to the world. For example, political signs or social justice signs also say a great deal to the outside world. From supporting teachers and immigrants, to saying yes or no, they can voice support or antagonism to a proposition wanting to be passed by local government through the front yard. At school, we also have a front yard. What can we say about our school that differentiates it from others? Do we want to add sculpture, wall hangings, and a little library? With so many school buildings looking the same, how can we use art to make ours look unique to us? We don’t have to paint a mural or invest in wall tiles; there are plenty of ways to add to the front yard that speaks to who we are and the school we are in.

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Figure 6.3  The architecture of the bus stop (Bus shelter, 9 Aro Street Xoa Hall, Wellington, New Zealand).

Bus Stops and Bike Racks As a child, building forts over and under my bed by using pillows and other finds in my studio/ bedroom, was my favorite thing to do. There was nothing as exciting as creating an intimate, protective chamber that would provide privacy and shelter from the world. Later, expanding out into the creative studio of the room, forts and castles were supported by chairs and covered with blankets under the dining room table, creating an inner sanctum from the family and the elements. The bus stop, or streetcar stopover, is an adult extension of childhood forts and safe accommodations. These simple, sheltered structures are often created in multiples and have become a favorite form of city expression and introduction of the talents of young designers and architects. These simple-to-build and cozy dwellings can easily be prefabricated and feel spontaneous in wearing construction material coverings. These adult forts provide a safe and protected place from elements of the street but also express the fanciful and energetic art of youths through this favorite design school assignment. The free

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dreamers who create these traffic stops are not yet locked into a style or distraction of architectural tradition. In bus stop design “anything goes,” and construction ideas are freely guided by spirited young minds. Today’s bus stops exploded from cold, boring, and uninviting places to interactive and architecturally engaging, even humorous, parts of the streetscape. Whatever bus stops are in one’s current space, there is always room for playful innovators of all ages, tried out by even the youngest of school students.

Bus and Light Rail Stops In 1824, John Greenwood, the transportation entrepreneur, opened the first bus line in Manchester England with a horse and buggy system. By 1828, “horse drawn buses” started in Paris and by the mid-nineteenth century, maps and guides were available to London bus routes, marking the main stops. The more modern bus stop began in 1960 when two billboard companies, More O’Ferrall and Provincial, joined forces to create a company called Adshel. The idea was to supply bus shelters to the local transportation authority and in return the group would use all parts of the shelters for advertising purposes. In the early 1970s, these shelters first began to be installed in Leeds, England. By the 1980s, bus shelter ads started to really take off, with Adshel still supplying most of Britain’s bus shelters. Around the world, many of today’s bus stops still generate advertisement money with a surge of artists, photographers, designers, architects, and students clamoring to rethink and place their creative visions into constructing these highly visible, public spaces. Light rail, bus, trolley, or streetcar stops challenge designers to reimagine fitting into the city that winds itself around these vehicles. According to the Federal Transportation Agency,16 the inclusion of public art is encouraged on the Light Rail systems because of the sense of pride and ownership that it gives to a neighborhood. For example, in 2008, Phoenix, Arizona developed a new transit system, creating a truly interdisciplinary team made up of artists, architects, engineers, and environmental experts to design the cars and stations that identified neighborhoods. Creating art inside car interiors, the small station-waiting spaces-platforms, and in seating areas is something that many cities have entrusted to designers like Bruno Taylor. He created swings at a bus stop in London and a Book Mobile stop in Columbia. Besides being protected from ice or rain, there are creative and practical moments that can be enjoyable while waiting for public transportation.

Teacher/Pedagogy A bus stop today is a public landmark, something everyone views, yet not everyone pays attention to it. This functional space has become an imaginatively designed space, a “go to” aesthetic trip in many cities. While all cities may not have cool and stylish transportation stops yet, it is something that art students can forecast and plan for as interested community members. Young designers and playful builders from school art rooms explore

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the stops that are already part of the community, and brainstorm offering suggestions and plans of what the next chapter would look like. Many cities offer incentives for community visionaries to get involved. In 2015, the students at the University of Kentucky School of Architecture worked on bus stops with a grant from the Fayette County Urban Government. The students transformed the streets, building visual treats enjoyed and praised by riders and the community. Within the build creations, teachers can discuss site-specific works, art that is weather-resistant, usable, and sustainable, as well as art that works within the limits of specific scales and dimensions. For students who enjoy art that makes a difference in the lives of individuals, there is getting involved in community assistance work, and opportunities to make art in the form of improving the life of neighbors. The question is always: What is needed? What’s missing? What would look better and more interesting, more practical? An example of a city that has already worked with schools on bus stop design is San Antonio, Texas, where elementary and middle-school students through the Southwest School of Students program, Kids Initiating Design Solutions (K.I.D.S.), come together with the city to create new bus stops.17 Using the bus stop as a space to install art could happen. See what your city has planned for the space.

Bicycle Racks From Louisville, Kentucky to Copenhagen, Denmark, people love to bike, and with that has come an amazing movement to transform the eyesore of bikes piled up or attached to poles into using their lines and curves as part of art instillations in sculptural city spaces. Also, the emergence of innovative bike racks is part of a city’s encouragement of public transportation and pride in one’s city. Bike racks are often indigenous to a city or region. Throughout the United States there are calls for entries, challenging artist by commissioning the art of bike racks. Artists have begun to rethink the shape and design of these forms and emblems in relation to the city they represent. Students have worked with local artists and businesses to help design and paint the racks as street furnishings, landmarks on a street, and handsome visual installations for a community.

Conclusion From metro stops to bike racks, the small areas that pedestrians inhabit every day are more important city features than their small sizes would suggest. Through repetition, these stops and racks for bikes become an important multicolored statement that connects city views from block to block. In city safaris with students, it is important to study the many ways artists intervene with the look of cities and interact with architecture and spaces in small, but impactful, ways. For teachers and students, this provides a moment to sit back and ask ourselves: What else needs work, imaginative design, and intervention in one’s community, its land, and its streetscapes?

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With our eyes, tape measures, sketchbooks, cameras, and computers, we are there, ready to offer suggestions, share our ideas, and express our voices. Art classes can be about offering cities a facelift. One’s own school could be the beginning of that journey. While these ideas might never be built, it gives each student respect and confidence as creators and builders who are able to make change. It introduces students to the vital professions that make our environments memorable and uplifting when our students act as urban planners, landscape designers, preservationists, architects, and artists as well as community leaders. Art classes need to be about community walks, studies, awareness of individual and communal needs and how life in the community can be made better through art.

Benches, Outdoor Seating, and Street Lights Based on a 2014 project created in London, England,18 the latest addition to the city of Lexington, KY, is fiberglass benches shaped like books.19 Structurally alike, they are painted by local artists with each representing original Kentucky authors. This collaboration brought libraries, writers, artists, and city workers together to create a space where the public could take pictures, rest, and learn. It also created a community-wide scavenger hunt for benches and authors around town. Once one is found, a picture can be taken and added to the scavenger hunt photo contest. Benches are public artworks. Students, designers, city planners, architects, and community artists act as advocates in the process of designing a bench and deciding how it will function in the larger cityscape. It is created as a piece of street furniture and a sculptural space for people to get together and interact with each other. A simple form, the bench can become an admired visual form on the street, a purposeful design that provides comfort, a respite, and a place for observation of the environment. Around the world, there are interesting historic benches that distinguish older cities and also great recent innovations with fresh forms that dot the streetscape with designs focused on places to stop and sit.

Teacher/Pedagogy Your students can dream and sketch ideas and find materials to make a bench for outside the school. Find and redesign, or repaint, an existing bench. Take part in the recycle-a-bench program.20 Have a contest to design a sitting area in the schoolyard. Take stock, go sketching, and discover interesting public seating areas. Look at places people sit outside when there are no benches available. Find places where a bench would be needed in your community. Work with local designers or woodworkers to create a bench.

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Outdoor Seating Beyond the bench, there often are other interesting community places to sit that can be inspiring to search for. From lounge chairs and hammocks to soft and colorful bean bag-type seats, there has been a surge in well-designed outdoor seating options. Mixing sculpture and comfort in these seats asks one to stay for a while and experience the space a bit differently.21 Colleges are considering new ways of having students spend time outdoors with just a few simple localized seating spots. An excellent example of this is the new colorful Adirondack chairs that have been placed in various spaces contrasting the bluegrass on Kentucky’s university campuses. A grouping of colorful outdoor chairs can create new areas of community places that did not exist before. Along with seated amphitheaters and hammocks to rent, they contribute to the campus landscape.22 Outdoor seating creates a space to bring people together. Many cities add to large outdoor chess sets and other interactive games to these areas. It is important to note that outdoor seating can offset the “Hostile Architecture” that creates barriers between people and their enjoyment of outdoor places. For example, it has become common in some cities to install “separators” or metal elements on benches so that people can’t sleep or skateboard over benches. Outdoor seats can be inviting visual elements of the street that incorporate form and function, but they can also ask people not to stay too long.

Teachers Chairs are known to be the most important signature pieces for designers and architects. It is important for students not only to view at and sketch dining or living room classics in the history of indoor chair design, but also to become familiar with classic park chairs in Paris, and London, as well as contemporary contributions featured in design museums. There are also interesting recycled chairs and benches to survey, for example, the recycled benches created by families saving bottle caps and giving them to the school for a manufacturer to create a bench from recyclables. Could students create their own outdoor seating? Could we test some ideas or working models, out in an area around the school or maybe in the center of town? How about a series or student-designed chairs in a school area, on school property, or in town? Questions for students: Where do you think we should put a place to sit? What would it need to be made out of based on where it’s located? What are some things you would want from the outdoor seating? What colors and shape would be best? What would this project say about you, or your class? What activities or interactive elements could be added to these seating spaces?

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Traffic and Streetlights Whether walking or in a car, lights can look different depending on where one is in the world. Street lighting exists as unique symbols defining the age of a city, and what was needed when the city was established. Like large human-made trees, streetlights are akin to vertical giants, towering forms over spaces providing the safety and direction of light to our travels, and a show of shadows over a vast swath of ground. Students in the arts should pause and admire the elegance of iron or polished steel-designed street sculptures: wandering around the base, discovering the detailed forms, hugging the large circumference to feel its might, and looking up to see the fantastic strength in balancing and bracing a giant structure against outdoor elements. The study of lights demonstrates to art students the history, variety, and beauty that can be found in individual street elements. Many cities have a different account and fondness for their distinct detailing and shapes of streetlights. From the times of ancient Rome, citizens used vegetable oil lamps to light the streets. In 1417, London’s mayor ordered that all houses have a lantern hung outside in the winter, marking the first organized street lighting. By 1802, William Murdock, a Scottish inventor, started a streetlighting movement with his coal-fueled gas lights that illuminated the area outside the SoHo Foundry.23 Within five years, London had its first streets lit by gas. In Sienna, Italy, the streetlights speak to what area of town one is in, and are a homage, a landmark to a specific area’s regional identity. Today’s new industrial-style lights are unusual in their sleek, pure beauty. Students can compare indoor standing lights with outdoor designs considering the differences in forms, materials, and colors used for the base and the fixture. A changing light scene is a fresh form of study that can be explored in art class designing. Lights on the street help one cross, stay safe, and beautify our neighborhoods while keeping traffic moving. There is a consistently new technology developed in these areas, from new light bulbs, solar energy, traffic cameras, directional signage, and more. Many cities, such as Cincinnati, Ohio, which began implementing streetlights in 1837, still have more than a thousand gas lamps in use. The fixtures of older streetlights speak to a city’s past, and its future is often incorporating regional identity. One can often see the excitement of a young child allowed to press the button that controls traffic lights, anxiously awaiting the signal to walk. The power of stopping traffic and controlling pedestrian flow is an excellent personal experience. Young children lead the way for art students to study the changes and new forms and techniques in traffic lighting. Some lights are silent, others can speak, differences in colors of reds, yellows, and greens—infinite variety in paints in painting. Traffic lights today not only are on light poles, but also float with the wind, handsomely suspended far above the traffic flow. Often a string of traffic lights floats over at a large intersection. Students may notice placement ideas and accessories such as cameras, signs, trash receptacles attached to a multipurpose intersection traffic light pole. Building one’s streetlights and traffic lights are a handson way to expand in class on a streetlight-discovery field trip. To appreciate the power of street lighting, art students can be shown and hold a giant streetlight bulb. The unusual bulb shapes can be compared to the form, brightness, and colors of home bulbs and car bulbs. Flashlight play can be an introduction to this study, and it is something students are innately interested in as they explore different heights and distances created in the dark. Students

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Teachers Understanding the history of streetlights and what one’s town or city chooses to keep or purchase is an excellent conversation in city planning, technology, and design. In the classroom, students can design new ways to communicate with and utilize light, creating new streetlights, traffic signals, or other sources of light to get people around. Students can discuss: ●●

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What are some examples and indications of what the future of lighting streets will look like? How can design and technology come together to make exciting new strides in lighting?

may consider retrofitted and new lights, and comment on how they change or fit into the existing neighborhood. When looking at streetlights, there are beautiful forms patterns, sleek lines of modern concepts, and elegant shapes to sketch, wrap, and take rubbings of, film or photograph. Street lighting can be examined in the daytime with students and assigned as homework to study and describe the changes in the dark of night. Students can report on city lights in the evening from the perspective of studying a single light pole, or different places, bridges, tunnels, different neighborhoods, and main streets dressed in lighting at night. How can an area of a street be highlighted? How are shadows cast? How do lights on the street illuminate the world? To make the study even more memorable, art teachers can show books of illustrations from the works of urban painters, and books about the history of photography. Nature has provided great gifts, like standing before amazing mountain ranges such as the Alps or the Pyrenees. Yet, for admirers of great cityscapes, there is the skyline of New York, the breathtaking view from the surrounding hills of Paris, or the visual thrill of a boat ride through the skyline of Chicago. One never forgets the ultimate block towers we built in our childhood, or the most amazing Lego brick scape that filled our room. Many adults make their structural dreams come true by traveling the country to see every famous bridge, baseball stadium, or to ride every roller coaster. But like following the vision of a great rainbow, a view of a city skyline from a distance is a most unforgettable viewing experience. Dreaming of seeing great cities and skylines can motivate many young artists for a lifetime to become contributors, a part of creating these build wonders, as voyeurs, city planner, or architects.

Skylines Many cities are known for their unique skyline and proudly use it as a trademark. As cities sprout in population and density, the race to build vertically begins, moving into air space. City skylines

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develop over time and continue to change with each new element. At first, a mix of vertical and horizontal structures creates a visual balance, later dominating the view to compete in defining the towering views of a city. Some municipalities, like Paris, limit the growth and stature of tall buildings to respect architectural landmarks and treasures of the past. With an abundance of old and well-maintained architecture, ornate and heavy structures hug the ground while the occasional colossal landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Seattle’s Space Needle, or the St. Louis Arch reign above as a powerful contrast. In New York’s monumental skyline, an outcropping of forms from different stylistic periods compete for attention, closely woven in their upward race toward the sky. In lower Manhattan, the new Whitney Museum of American Art’s deck-like balconies with the open portals of a ship provide a convenient lookout over the art of the skyline. Each view is anything but uniform. There are different forms and shapes, tall expressions in steel and concrete, with imaginative overlays or curtain-like glass windows. The glass walls are transparent or reflective of their neighbors, with infinite geometric lines and framing configurations. Modern glass towers are punctuated by water towers, rooftop gardens, and variations in what look like private dwellings, the penthouses planted on top floors. New materials in building wrappings provide a subtle variety of textures and colors. In tall buildings, roofs are hardly noticeable, being so high and closely tied in appearance with the rest of the color and form of the buildings. Without visible roofs that delineate and separate older buildings from the sky, tall structures appear to keep pushing upward to pierce the heavens. On the ground where we live, a horizontal city thrives, suggesting a feeling of being closely connected to the soil and nature. There are visual powers and strength in a vertical city allowed to stand and rise as high as human ambitions allow, proudly symbolizing man standing erect and reaching toward the sky. Skylines present a statuesque drama that has endless interpretations and are great influences for generations of painters, inspiring designers, and young students who notice many other facets to portray in artistic interpretations. Students’ observations are sharp with a wealth of comparisons between the skyline and other landscape views. Young art students are moved by the observation experience, discovering details and peculiarities, expounding on the skylines with creative interpretations.

Skyscrapers Without the exposure of field trips, skylines and skyscrapers are just depicted as formulaic, characterless tall boxes. To draw and paint, sculpt and design one’s own skyline enables one to have a rich imagination, flexibility, twisting and breathing scenes, with fanciful forms. Computer design and engineering have allowed for shaping brutal materials in flexible and delicate ways, sprouting the most unusual variety of tall giants. To create an understanding of skyline forms and space, art teachers can provide comprehensive visits, followed by first-hand building plays with soft and hard forms, found materials for students to build and experience, construct, and investigate. Art classes miss a great opportunity if they miss first-hand examinations and just use formulas, second-hand experiences to depict skylines from lifeless paper strips and tall buildings from unyielding blocks and boxes used as building forms.

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Experiencing Skyscrapers Art is experience. It requires looking up from the roof or other tall buildings, riding in high-speed elevators, walking about blocks of tall structures, taking the stairs, looking out windows, and of course entering a giant building’s cavernous interior lobbies. The experiences of city safaris allow touching and collecting that allow young artists to go back to their studios in schools and at home to build, plan, draw, and create their futuristic cities. There are cookie-cutter skyscrapers that don’t add much to the city, and there are those that elegantly define their place. What do you think? The students are asked for considered answers. Young artists can investigate building facades. Make comparisons with neighbors and neighborhoods. How buildings function in allowing for light and space, the views it affords or blocks. Students can describe the walk through indoor streets inside buildings. Are passages interesting and clearly laid out? Do they afford surprises, or comfort, or are they confusing and disorienting? Looking out from the inside of a tall building at different levels tells interesting stories of sightings, and other elements the architect may have thought about or should have considered more. Yes, even the youngest students have important reactions and make profound suggestions. Entering through cavernous lobbies, the different designs for the many rows of elevators, details of inside lighting, and the harmonies and contrast created by flooring and wall surfaces of the interior are a large-scale feat of design for students to study. Light fixtures, interior art, signage, staircases, and railings illuminate the building with student’s insights. Walking with an architect’s sketch pad in hand, students make exploratory sketches. How is daylight welcomed inside a building, or how does it affect the outside elevations and details? What surprising views are framed by windows, such as bridges, or water views? How does the inside keep in touch, or block out the world around it? Within a city, there are shorter buildings between tall ones—interesting mixes of older and newer construction. How do they work together? Taking stock of a variety of colors, textures, and materials used is part of the experience. Students should be asked to review the ways a building interacts with the city below and taller buildings above. Details seem to be more ostentatious in older buildings with gargoyles, ornate figures, and elaborate carvings, or inlaid ornamentation. But there are many fine details in the most modern buildings that need more careful study. Students can list and compare. The study of a skyscraper and its architectural elements provide opportunities to look and touch walls and floorings, to follow entrance paths, and to inspect the treatment of front doors and paths beyond the inside. Differences in looking at modern and older buildings can be sorted out by observant, note-taking, sketching students. For example, Jean Nouvel 53 West 53 above Moma,24 or Rafael Viñoly’s 125 Greenwich Street25 are apartment buildings defining the new skyline of New York City. With innovative shapes and forms, concrete, steel, and glass, these buildings feel like they are free forms in the sky that play with light, color, space, and textures. Masterpieces, works by critically acclaimed architects, can be explored, but it’s also important for students to develop their own taste, judgment criteria, and to make note of, and spot, the unheralded pieces of architecture and skyline views.

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Viewing a Skyline A skyline can be studied from a plane, a boat, bridge, a park, across the river, or from an elevated mountain. Look at one’s city and study relationships between forms from a distance through a walk, or a drive-by. To observe Cincinnati from across the Ohio River, one can walk the riverfront or approach it from Interstate 65 by car. Manhattan can be observed from small Islands in the Hudson, from other boroughs, or a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It is an interesting search for great vantage points, to find different views, and to see and compare a city from many directions. It is a chance to bypass individual buildings and experience the design of arrangements, balances, and relationships in a canvas of space. Students often like to discuss the changing nature of this art form: what the city looks like in the morning, noon, afternoon, and night, or what it looks like today and how the skyline has changed and will continue to change over time. The way a skyline is approached by the viewer can also change the experience. Looking from one tall building onto another, standing on top of a tall building’s observatory at the surrounding sites, one feels the astonishing power and majesty of a skyline. Unlike climbing a mountain, skylines speak of mankind’s great achievements. For classes that are fortunate to take a boat ride around Manhattan, the water views of the changing skylines are unforgettable to sketch and photograph— different ways to scale these “mountains” or discover new vantage points to look and experience city views provide fresh insights.

Hands-on Skyline Artists are always looking at their environment through multiple vantage points. It is important to study diverse ways in which to see the world. How a city has developed over time, the age of a city, and the buildings that it is comprised of all are part of how space is seen. The art of city planning should be part of the discussion with students. What are the tools, materials, and challenges of city planners? How do city planners’ decisions and tasks differ from other artists? Creating a city, its traffic patterns, streets, landscaping, and outdoor furnishings that engage the horizontally and verticality of space is an exciting challenge. Some say the higher the better, as students build tall towers and shorter buildings with books, blocks, cups, and clay that places a city vision and plans in one’s hands. Students learn by seeing city plans: drawings and detailed plans comparing famous designers and concepts for the cities they created. Of course, students can try their hands at city planning, documenting their ideas through drawings of what a new city would look like. When one experiences the building of a city, whether through building with blocks or taking a trip through it, there is a deeper connection formed with the place that was explored and responded to as an artist. Art classes need to study cities of the past, present, and future. Looking at an episode of the 1960s televisions show The Jetsons is exciting for students to see how the cartoonist envisioned a city of the future and how much of their projections have become a reality. Art classes can provide important experiences in futuristic thinking and carry The Jetsons fantasy many steps further into the future. Having Tinkertoys26 in a class, for example, allows students to move from the abstract of twodimensional space in drawings or paintings to the three-dimensional experience of manipulating a skyline. Students can work as architectural teams where they designing their skyscrapers as architects,

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Teacher/Pedagogy Teaching students how to improve and add to their city helps art students to take control of one’s art. Working on the wall or floor, creating in vertical or horizontal, high and low perspectives, by looking up at their creations from under a desk or by standing on a chair to see a painting allows students new perspectives that to contribute a new understanding of the media and many interesting ways of seeing and altering one’s artworks. Skyline experiences: 1. Seeing the city from a landing at a big city airport 2. Books that show cities as one would be looking down from space, helicopters, drone photos 3. Seeing the city from the water views, the circle line sketching trip 4. Seeing the city from a bridge, highway, drive-by views Questions: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

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What makes one building different than the others? What makes a tall building truly stand out besides its height? What makes the building feel modern? Are you able to walk into or through the building? How does the building anchor itself to the ground? How does it feel when you walk around it? Going into the main lobby, or to the top floor or roof, does the building itself feel different? Does the city take on a different look? What are the details of an older building versus a newer one?

and then add their creations to others’ handiworks to form unique skyline setups. Tinkertoy skyline sections pieces can be easily moved about, repositioned, and compared for aesthetics and utility. Generally being involved in making plans for one’s city allows control of the environment the same way one can control a still life or perspective drawing. In both scenarios, students manipulate their own objects in space, set up, and rehearse in different ways by the artist who will draw or paint it. A drawing or painting is a skyline of forms. The study of skylines leads to an understanding of seeing and creating in multiple perspectives, to arrange forms and shapes in any 2D media. The study of multiple perspectives helps art students to better understand and vary their sculpture ideas and to set up all 2D works in paper-canvas spaces to be looked at and invented in different angles and viewpoints.

The High Line Perhaps the most unusual public park in New York City is the High Line. Rising high above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side on a historic freight rail line, the High Line was saved from demolition by the urging of neighborhood residents and the City of New York. The High Line opened in 2009 as a hybrid public space where visitors experience nature, art, and design.27

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Yes, the High Line is an abandoned elevated freight line, but it has also become one of New York’s most loved parks. The rescued railroad tracks serve as walking paths and bases for unusual sculpture and potting grounds for magnificent plant life. An interdisciplinary experience, the High Line provides community engagement and as well as opportunities for local youth, performance spaces, and more.28 It is a good example of a city park that can be an observatory of nature, as well as space to view life in the city. A traditional park is not suspended high above the city, sharing space with soaring buildings. The High Line is different from other parks in that one can be comfortably mingling with its line of closely flanking tall neighbors. Each twist and turn of elevated walking paths turn and face an interesting visual surprise. Yet, the interplay works and creates a wonderful relationship between nature and architecture: mysterious tunnels, broad openings of space, and views onto masterful pieces of architecture like the Whitney Museum of American Art. The High Line changes the way one ordinarily experiences activities of the city—the performance of people and play in the lines of traffic. Walking the High Line offers a new sense of city scale, and different ways of interacting with the skyline of Manhattan. The High Line is a meandering linear path that asks park visitors to experience the city from multiple perspectives. It crosses streets with sites to watch the flow of traffic beneath. The park reimagines the concept of parks and public spaces. Walking along carefully placed, free forms of vegetation, there are moments that the High Line feels like a traditional park, yet the nature exploration breaks abruptly to remind one that this is in the “hills” over a lively city that surrounds the paths. In one unexpected turn, theater-style rows of seating turn toward a portion of a city street and suddenly drop down dramatically nearly on top of the street traffic. When the park was first conceived, the neighborhood was not very desirable. Then, as in many city neighborhoods, artists migrated to the community. Coffee shops and galleries followed, and, at a fast pace, the area began to shift. Now the expanse near the High Line, formally known as the Meat Packing District, is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan. Those who bought a place to live in the surrounding buildings, however, never thought that people would one day be looking in their windows. When the High Line Park began in 2006, some dwelling in adjoining buildings added to the High Line by creating amateur art installations in their home, while others closed their blinds.29 Some took advantage of the voyeuristic effect to put in working art studios and galleries. Professional installations combine with art coming from the residents to create an interesting mix of browsing/peeping views. During a long park walk, one finds multiple thrills and pleasures to experience walking high up between the towers in Manhattan. In one gallery, an artist performs his work in the window, so that viewers can experience watching someone create. On the back wall of this studio/gallery, a phone number is advertised, providing a way to get in touch with the artist and get further into his space. One neighboring structure, the Standard Hotel, was built during the formation of the park, and guests were caught off guard when voyeurs started looking into their hotel rooms, an element of this park’s fascination. Every hotel room opens up to the High Line and Skyline of New York. Unlike other parks that allow one to find space to be secluded, this Park is not about privacy, but a walk turns you into an interaction with people in their apartments or hotel rooms, creating, or passing through life on the streets.

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Teacher/Pedagogy For art students, the High Line is a great place to start examining how organic and industrial elements of a city can share a place and work together visually as an experience. After exploring the High Line in person, virtually, or in books, students might explore the possibilities of bridges, abandoned strips of elevated highways, railroad tracks, or small plots of industrial land that could be grown into parks. The proposals sketched or illustrated via models can demonstrate the possibilities in rethinking city parks, sculpture gardens, and other alternative community spaces as possible park sites. Young artists can begin to look at balconies, roofs, and parking garages as ways to think about how to reinvent the idea of a park off the ground. In an art room, it is important to see not only 2D artworks being assembled, but also elements of the environment and neighborhood coming together in the art of park design. Students can dream of traditional masterpieces like Fredrick Olmstead’s Central Park in Manhattan or new park ideas in forgotten, unused, or neglected community places, giving birth to new uses for old places. Being an observer is part of being an artist, and a place like the High Line simply illuminates the importance of parks as places for inspiring observations. Artists should be voyeurs, or observers, that filter their media. People watching, and reflecting on the flow of traffic, city sounds, and street activities lead to new ways of accommodating people in town and understanding how human beings interact with space, whether it’s a building or a park. Noticing everything, from nature to the built environment, and the life in each site, can influence our own lives and make us think about creating new art areas and forms of art. It is valuable to take trips to places above the city, to find high points—bird’s-eye views—from skyscrapers to bridge walks to the High Line, to generate new feelings and insights, propose new park creations in existing spaces in one’s city.

The Wonders of Mighty Bridges My favorite childhood toy was the Fisher Price drawbridge. The toy could be lifted with a crank and all my cars would go back and forth over the water traffic of boats underneath. Today, the love of bridges continues with students creating bridges from Legos (Denmark), Tinker Toys (USA), and building sets from Bing (Germany). Children’s bridge constructions continue with an array of natural finds such as twigs and rocks, and home discards like drinking straws, paper clips, or discarded paint stirrers. The students look at amazing toy bridges created for the passage of great American Lionel Trains, German Marklin sets, and fanciful Marx Toy wind up bridges attached to pulleys and elastic strips moving figures and vehicles across a tin Brooklyn Bridge. Budding bridge designers study innovative concepts in the field by examining toys, sorting through my old postcard collection of famous bridges, and joining firsthand bridge walks and sketching trips. From old covered bridges, to the industrial feel of the mighty Verrazano suspension bridge over

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the Hudson River, students enjoy the study of the history of the bridge and taking designer walks to bridges in the community. A city with a river and a magnificent bridge is a special place. There is an exhilaration in approaching the giant structure of a bridge. The merger of highway strands into a man-made “magic carpet” flowing into stunning river views and passing cityscapes appreciated from the comfort of the family car. A great bridge creates an unforgettable entry to a city, a special preview of the city’s architectural profile and grand views. The notion of starting out in one place, then being suspended in the air, and ending up in another world is a magical ride for all ages. Bridges are marvels of architectural engineering and important landmarks. They symbolize many cities: even if you have not been to San Francisco you heard of the song “I Left My Heart” and know of the Golden Gate Bridge. A Brooklyn experience is highlighted by a ride or walk through the beautiful monument of the Brooklyn Bridge. The concept of looking at artistic expression under the practical constraints of engineering is called Structural Economics. This idea of marrying elegance, efficiency, and economy is a concept created by the Princeton professor, David Billington.30 The bridge is an excellent example of how to combine practical solutions with beautiful design. Building to understand how bridges can be constructed over rivers and highways to connect places is an important part of children’s early play experiences. Building bridges over spaces between furnishings or pillows raises creative building plays to new levels. Young road builders take challenging steps when the roadway or play railroad tracks are required to leap over spaces. The experience calls for innovative construction feats to allow forms to rise above the ground and take to the air. It is exciting to look at architectural-engineering solutions in the innovative ways bridges are raised, suspended, and supported. Walking on a bridge is a more intimate experience than driving because students are able to touch the details, coming face-to-face with the grandeur of a majestic piece of human creation. Every year, my sister who teaches elementary school age children takes her students for a walk across the outer rim of the Brooklyn Bridge. The encounter becomes stamped on the children’s memory. Experiencing their city and waterway from special vantage points alters students’ feelings about bridges and their perspective on innovative building. Students’ vision comes alive as they stop to make rubbings of bridge parts, draw and take notes, take pictures, and discuss their event-filled walk. Many who cross a bridge are compelled to leave marks of remembrance of their special experience, such as the souvenir locks left on bridges over the Seine in Paris. Students take note of how people who cross a bridge often leave art as signature, toasting a spectacular moment. As innovators themselves, students can begin to explore a place where design and engineering meet, creating bridge ideas in the form of drawings and models. Walking under a bridge or from one side to the other not only offers vastly different feelings and views, but also allows for the collecting of an abundance of found materials, souvenirs, and building blocks for young builders. Documenting different cites, details, surfaces, mapping paths, recording views, and discovering mighty structural elements such as secret spaces and hiding places are just some of the approaches to accounting for the bridges as busy living, sculptures.

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Artists Interactions In 1985, the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris. The large-scale art installation was intended as a metaphor for bringing society together through art.31 Today’s artists continue to explore bridges as a space for creative possibilities. In Budapest Hungary, a bridge over the Danube river was temporarily shut down for repair and became a destination where during the summer months there are interactive art shows, music, yoga, and more, turning elements of the bridge into a community space.32 In Norway, a bridge of art opened in 2019 turning the space into a museum that connects a river with a sculpture park on both sides.33 In Poughkeepsie, New York state, an old commuter bridge over the Hudson river is now a redesigned park with a river view officially part of the State Park System. The old Mid-Hudson bridge attracts millions of visitors each year as they walk, bike, and play amid the scenic view of the Hudson river.34 More recently, in 2019 in London, all fifteen bridges of the Thames participated in a project called Illuminated River. Responding with light to the river and the city through the unified interaction of art on the bridges, each bridge is used as a canvas for light shows, the lights celebrating the link that London has with its river.35 This became a widespread art festival, calling for many different communities to come to the river at night and enjoy the reshaped bridge form and space together.

Teacher/Pedagogy By opening up possibilities, even the smallest of bridges in one’s community can unlock ideas for students to see limitless artistic potential, understanding that bridges as public spaces have options for organizing creative events, in addition to being an art element in itself. Uncovering beauty in the lines and forms in its architectural engineering, aging bridges have a decaying beauty in their altered wood or steel surfaces. Art students can describe through creative words and imagery how both nature and humans have changed a bridge over time. Attending and recording through art media how people interact with bridge spaces can also be a student project, relating and documenting bridge events. For example, leaving a lock on the bridge has become a symbol of love, but there are many other things that students can consider adding to the bridge experience and the monument itself.36 ●●

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Can students create their own mock bridges connecting trash cans, tables, and chairs in the art room? What materials is an existing bridge made from and how have the materials and surfaces changed over time? How could change, the aging of the bridge, be artistically documented? How has the architect thought about the space surrounding the bridge when creating it? Can different views and perspectives from and of the bridge be drawn, photographed, or videotaped?

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Can short videos of walking over, driving through a bridge, or walking under a bridge be taken? How can the bridge in the students’ community be redesigned to attract more community members’ participation, or to invite artistic contributions? How does engineering and art come together in a bridge in the student’s community?

The life of a bridge can be pondered by documentation through notes, poetry, photographs, and drawings. Art works can propose a fuller understanding of how a bridge fits into its community space. Young artists can create a homage to a bridge in their community by using light, adding unexpected chalk art, stickers, found forms, and unusual materials. There are small-scale bridges from the size that can fit in a classroom and be built by students, to one that can be created for outdoor spaces in the back of a school, in parks, or stream areas. ●●

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Considering and studying bridge design, young STEAM artists can build a bridge from simple building materials or recyclable items using art, environmental studies, math, and engineering skills. A bridge contest can be set up to involve creating drawings and models: a proposal for a stunning new element in one’s neighborhood bridge. Students can collect postcards of bridges from all over the world. The cards can be used in show and tell, compare, trade, or for drawings and paintings. Creating art to go on the bridge can involve such works as designing a play area on an existing bridge, or a sculpture park under a bridge.

Signage Signs direct attention and action, but can also add to the character and visual interest of a place. Typically, one quickly walks by a sign, understanding it as part of the context of society. Learning to linger and observing them as works of art and design are an important part of learning to patiently see, curating a life of paying attention to one’s surroundings that can be taught and nurtured in the art room and beyond.

Advertising design Some of the first signs were advertisement posters. French artists such as Henri de Toulouse Lautrec promoted dancing establishments such as the Moulin Rouge in Paris: La Goulue (1891).37 In Lautrec’s case, the message was in the elaborate drawing. However, by the first half of the twentieth century, Lucian Bernhard was more direct about his images.38 Bernhard, a graphic designer, presented his posters in bold type and simple products, leaving no chance in decoding the message. While two different eras and styles in advertisements, both remain prominent in the

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Figure 6.4  Art that interacts and comments on the community (Abraham Clet, Florence, Italy).

way to promote a product or event. Today’s advertising signs create an identity for a corporation and a face for the company. Advertising became a way to direct attention not just to a street or a place, but to sell ideas and to sell an image it represents. Signs can have a far larger viewership than works of art in a museum. Most people around the world can identify McDonalds or Starbucks from its designed logo. Yet, framed art is pointed out in museums as something valuable and extraordinary. Un-curated signs on the street can be just as significant an art form as the idolized, framed, high-priced art inside museums. Lacking the slowpaced, attentive, and appreciative viewing public of high art, students can study and appreciate, even be inspired by street art such as signs. Sign art has been a major influence on contemporary artist who uses simplified images, paint on metal, or a public scale, and symbols in their work. A logo offers a repeatable image that becomes a form of branding creating the “perfect” signage that represents a company. Using the simplest marks, a universal identity is masterfully created and spread throughout a city. Many logos are simple and daring, leaving out sometimes letters and words for the sake of an identifiable and striking badge. To simplify a message is an art, to

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create an inviting image to come in and enter public places requires imagination. Creating elegant informational signs that can be spotted in a drive-by situation printed on metal boards is an interesting form of art. City walls and windows carry signs as art displays. Many people collect street and traffic signs and display them on their private walls at home as art works.

Billboard “At its broadest, the term [billboard] applies to any large poster mounted in a public place, whether for advertising, political propaganda, or even decoration.”39 As early as the 1830s, merchants posted signs advertising their wears along the side of the road. “The large format American poster (measuring more than 50 square feet) originated in New York when Jared Bell began printing circus posters 1835.”40 Yet, it was not until the 1900s that a standard structure for the American Billboard was established, and mass-produced Billboards for major companies flourished across the country. Even with TV and radio advertising, today the billboard is still important to advertising, and companies are finding ways to make bigger billboards and even LED Screens with changing ads. Contemporary art owes a large debt of gratitude to billboard art, in moving art from small paintings to wall-sized indoor billboards. Many painters such as James Rosenquist were trained in sign shops as billboard artists, translating their work to museum walls. The American billboard has had a major influence on the street and highway scape. Today, artists such as Shepard Fairy who have created many billboards, produce murals far bigger in scale than the size of an average billboard and he has taken his message into many galleries and museums. There are many modern artists who use the billboard as their medium, using it for display or conveying a social message.41 Artists have begun using billboards to display their art; for example, Los Angeles has a month-long exhibit every year on billboards throughout the city.42 In 1999, at Mass MOCA, there was an exhibit of the artist use of billboards over the thirty years prior, entitled: Billboard Art on the Road. Showcasing Americas love/hate relationship with the rapidly changing commercial and popular culture environment the billboard signified a way of life. The billboards in this show expose the many purposes for which they were created: war propaganda, capitalist consumption of the 1960s, and creating awareness of social and political concerns.

Teacher/Pedagogy In the classroom it is often hard to create large-scale works. However, what if as art teachers we went a little bigger, or even so big that the entire hallway was covered. It is important to challenge the norm of the small-scale paper. It is good to look at artists who have done this for inspiration and see where we can contribute. It is also good to look at the reasons why billboards are created. ●● ●●

What is trying to be said by saying it on such a large scale? Consider location: where one is placed also has meaning.

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Understanding how both advertising and artists have used the billboard is an important way for students to create their own billboards/advertising. If one wants to move large-scale, many local billboard companies will offer large discounted rates for educational purpose and nonprofits. Students create new billboard, signs for ideas they are protesting, promoting and need to build a new visual influence.

Collecting Signage Historically, a shoemaker, watch repair shop, or a barber was distinguished by their outside signage. These not only were identifying markers, but also had presence on the street. The placement of these colorful icons changed the way a street looked, and how viewers interacted with the space. Eventually many of these signs incorporated neon, creating a bolder presence. These icons in history are now collectible and appreciated. Today, there are sign and neon museums that present signs as both works of art and history. The American Sign museum in Cincinnati, Ohio43 and the Neon Sign museum in Las Vegas44 are collectors of these American iconic symbols. Advertising neon is influencing a major branch of light artists who use neon as their media, prized by both history and art museums. Recognizing these advertisements, both historically and those today, can be an exciting introduction to advertising for students, as stores or brands that they are interested in or want to create can be thought of through advertising. Visiting historic signs whether in a museum or on the streets brings about discussion about the history and relevance of signs to tell a story, or give context to a space.

Teacher/Pedagogy From the study of calligraphy and type, the layouts of signs, posters, and billboards need to be part of art studies. Outdoor art forms such as street signs can be observed, recorded, and improved upon by students in an art class. Businesses that are noticed and products that are successful involve artists of various specialties whom students can learn about and related expressions they can participate in. The relationship between street advertising and street signs is an important aspect of attention to the arts in an environment. Where advertising is placed and how it connects to its audience are important influences on people and artists and their work. – Sketching ideas for a store sign for a new business about to open in the neighborhood. – Students create a new billboard, new signs for things they are protesting, promoting and need to build a new visual influence. – Developing a logo for a newly invented product or redesigning one that they find in need of rethinking can be an exciting prospect for any young artist. What is your favorite bag of chips or cereal? Packaging design is a great way to bring art into the

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classroom. While it’s a great field trip to be able to go into stores, bringing welldesigned items into the classroom is also inspiring. In the twenty-first century, we are bombarded with so much design that there is rarely time to discuss any single item or analyze everything. However, the art room can be the place to start the discussion. – What are the important or imaginative signs around us? – What is a company trying to say, and how are the posters they use saying them? – Becoming aware and critical of traffic signs can include students’ redesigns and suggestions. –How can young artists add their contributions to the conversation? Asking students to look, take pictures, collect, and discuss their treasure hunt in this area create a more active and aware viewer.

The Store Window An impressive store window is a gateway to the merchandise. All over the world, one can find examples of great storefront designs by professionals and imaginative store owners who use the window to express fantasies and sense of style. Windows are framed glass canvases to tell stories, spark fantasies, and draw the attention of people passing by using displays of signage, playing animation, and using the latest technology. Although there are many window dressers, one of the most prominent is Simone Doonan,45 an artist and icon in the industry who for years decorated the windows for Barneys Department Store in New York City. Some of the best shows of this art form can be glimpsed New York, London, Paris, or other big cities during the winter holidays, a peak shopping season,46 when some of the most vivid examples of the extravagant art of the store window come to life. It is worthwhile to take a trip to a big city during the holidays just to window-shop and experience the museum-quality window displays. However, there are innovative windows and store displays, unusual mannequins, and staging ideas of visual interest in many cities all over the world.

History As early as the Victorian period, the shop window has been a means to visually connect and communicate with the public: The clever Victorians used their shop windows to display what products they had to sell that their competitors didn’t, it was also used as a way of communication to potential customers; not all customers could read, so displaying their products in the window ensured there would be no confusion.47

Today’s modern store window display can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution, where in the 1890s large plate glass and a variety of lighting were available for storeowners. Around the

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First World War, Henry Gordon Selfridge, who was the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London, began to attract customers by commissioning the creation of grand scale window displays.48 In his window spaces, Selfridge put up the latest news and photos from the war, weaving the news into the latest in fashion innovations to attract customers and just passerby who came to see the artistry of the windows. The idea of “selling shop windows,” or appealing to the desires of customers through advertising, was brought to England by Selfridge and his display manager Ernst Goldsman, both of whom worked for the Marshal Fields Department store in Chicago in the 1890s: “Goldsman was integral to the professionalization of the British display trade, founding the National Association of British Display Men in 1919.”49 In the 1930s, artists such as Salvador Dali and Jasper Johns, followed by Robert Rauschenberg (1950s) and Andy Warhol (1960s) were asked to create windows for the Bonwit-Teller department store in New York.50 Today, there are many artists who collaborate with designers to create store windows. Beginning in the 1950s, store window design became a professional field and a subject taught in art schools such as New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, FIT: Bonwit Teller gave many modern artists their starts in the world of art and design. With free creative reign, avant-garde artists experimented in the department store window, turning a glass case into an alternative art space, and introducing the public to new and exciting styles.51

By 1961, the innovative American Sculptor Claes Oldenburg contributed his voice to this art form when he opened his RAY Gun store on the lower east side of Manhattan, creating painted plaster pastries, ice cream, and many other sculpted foods and toys placed in glass showcase installations both inside and in the store window: “A milestone of Pop art, The Store heralded Oldenburg’s interest in the slippery line between art and commodity and the role of the artists in self-promotion.”52 Many store windows still maintain references to the bridge Pop Artists created with art and product design.

Window Displays in Italy In spite of the encroachment of online shopping, window-shopping is still an important art form of the street. Before entering the great exhibition halls of Florence, Italy, my summer study students have already been introduced to the flavor of the city by walking past the small shop windows. On display are not just objects such as buttons or stationary, but the highly expressive individual artistry of store owners including serious collectors, designers, and crafts people. Stores in Florence are small, but it does not matter if a store has an international presence or not, from Gucci to mom and pop stores, all use their window boxes as enticing spaces to showcase their wares. Worldrenowned designers such as Dolce and Gabbana elaborately hang individual shoes in bird cages … bright and fanciful jewelry is put out every morning in the shops on the famous Ponte Vecchio Bridge. Italian shop owners often include personal collections in the window to highlight their wares. Experiencing the visual feasts of bakery windows involve cookies piled delicately high and carefully arranged breads. The art of display is important to shop owners and appreciated by Italian customers who spend a great deal of time browsing each window. From my travels in other small towns, shop windows are important items of interest, enlivening the decoration on a street.

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Teaching courses about contemporary art in ancient cities requires students to seek out window designs. In Renaissance cities, one of the obvious places to find the contemporary and the latest is in store window designs. On our study tours of Italy, students often go window-shopping with my art class, strolling and imagining the shops as little art galleries. Students draw and take multiple photographs of the “picture frame” and focus on the details of displays, like perusing a canvas that makes up each shop window. The students enjoyed each unique creation by the window designer or the owner who has a love for their ware made visible inside a small display space. Each storefront of leather sculpted bags or contemporary dresses can be a grand cinematic experience or a fine example of a refined personal art form. After a comparative discussion of storefronts, students can’t wait for the opportunity to test their ideas displaying their own collections in the manner of create window displays in differently styled boxes. What is also magical about the shops in Italy is that many store window designers act like little elves, creating their transformations in the middle of the night. About once a week it felt as though the town’s elves came together to completely transform their shop window. Noticing the midnight designers for a month made us realize the importance of storefronts to the merchants who care about creating an element of surprise with the rising sun. Students also started to recognize streets and navigate by the unforgettable storefronts that created an inner mapping of the city. Italian storefronts teach us about our own streets and how store displays shape the outdoor views and experience. It is amazing how much could be said inside a small glass-framed space when the daylight reveals the secret night transformations, how timing and the element of surprise can become a part of shop window designing. Like fine little gift boxes, the merchants of Florence have respect for the craft, devoting their night to creating subtle surprises through their creations. Although very different from the intimate windows of Florence, returning to the suburban atmosphere in the States, students express a new appreciation for the store windows in their cities’ and towns’ Main Street stores. In our art room, we continue creating displays with new themes like designing an unforgettable garage sale table, building a great cake shop display within picture frames, or decorating a make-believe ice-cream store window using boxes with cellophane skylights.

Teacher/Pedagogy Art teaching needs to focus on students, and what they can do to develop this interest in window shopping and, indeed, to fall in love with this art form. Students love to arrange their art in the school’s hallway display cases, in the school library, or when the opportunity is available in local establishments. Often teachers take over the responsibility of art display; yet, thinking about how art can be staged allows one to see one’s own work from a different vantage point. In this process, it is important to let them be the designers. It is always fun to dim the class lights as I tell the story of the elves of Florence, and students are inspired to set up their own store/market displays. In many schools, there are glass cases, but we began to design our own cellophane and plastic store windows as canvas

Personal Connections

alternatives. Shelves can be plastic-wrapped and moved to school hallways that don’t have glass cases. Experimenting by building and constructing inside 3D showcases can feel a bit like working on the famous windows of Macy’s or Barneys while being in art class. To supplement our encounters and inspire our works, we sample and browse for innovative digital window-shopping. We look at the future, such as interactive store windows that are becoming more and more popular as technology advances and store owners embrace their windows as a kind of interactive video games with which to engage.53 While we may not have the technology for interactive window creations in schools, we can look into the future and create plans based on computer gaming experiences. Building store window ideas forces students to think bigger, and on larger scales, than the traditional tabletop art practiced in art classes.

Visual Merchandising In a growing world of advertising, what career path would a student need to choose? Talk to students about the career of visual merchandising, which looks at the creative and physical development of the store space. Yet, any art or architecture background can start you off on the right path. In a typical suburban store the visual can be just as important, with big and bold moves of stores like Anthropologie to give an impression when you first walk in, to the simple displays of just a few elements to tell the story.

A Few Questions – What are some interesting shop windows you have seen in your community? – What ideas do you have for creating your own window display? – What kinds of objects that you found or designed would you want to display?

Larger Ideas to Think about – Looking at advertisements for products, is it all about the product or is it about product placement, creating a look with that product et cetera? – Can you think of ideas that would surprise customers while window-shopping? – Can you tell a visual story with your display? What would be your theme? – Find an item that would “star” in your display case and describe a fantasy setting you could. – Lighting can really enhance a display. Describe playing with lights that could add to your store window. – Saying more with less. Sometimes keeping it simple says more to the viewer. Take out several items from your window.

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7 Community Art

Chapter Outline Defining Community Art 146 Museums versus Community 146 Community Art Projects 147 Large Community Initiatives 148 Lessons for Participating in Art Show Preparations and Gallery Openings 151 Other Stores 152 The Project 153 Interactive Art 154 Art beyond School Desks 154 Installations in Public Schools 155 Looking to the Future 156 Pop-Up Art Experiences 156 Collaboration Tools for Sharing Info 160 Social Media 160 Selfie Culture 160 Availability and Diversity of Cameras 161 Drone Viewing Adventures with Art Classes 162 Reimagined Space 165 Parade166 Other Light Shows 167

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Throughout the American South, there has been an ongoing discussion about the removal of Civil War Monuments due to the message of slavery and hate. In 2019, artist Kehindy Wiley decided to use this as a moment not to erase this history and get rid of the statues, but to educate with reference to them. In Richmond, VA, the capital of the confederacy, Whiley added a black soldier on a horse across from a famous white confederate general on a similar horse. The statue’s placement in the Virginia Plaza hopes to create a new narrative of the south.1 Through community initiatives such as these, the public has a space to learn about history, art, culture and even create new discussions of a shared visual environment.

Figure 7.1  Art vending machine (Madrid, Spain).

Community Art

As this example illustrates, today’s communities face concerns about inequality, poverty, unemployment, poor healthcare, and education. Globally, neighborhoods confront issues that call for creative ideas and sustainable solutions. Art can enable a dialogue for a community to express their identity. Artists can build bridges, by illustrating, and challenging the viewer to connect with neighbors and experience humanity. Community art can be a way of enhancing and personalizing spaces that often feel impersonal, giving that space a sense of identity and purpose. Involvement in the discussions and the search for solutions need to involve art teachers and their students. Creating art in community spaces generally brings people together. The relationship between a community and art that a broad cross section of the population can identify with promotes holistic and systematic interaction within the community. These art events don’t always have to be done by professional artists; citizen artist initiatives can take varying forms empowering new and diverse voices. Whether it be Whiley’s statues or teens helping to create murals throughout the city, art can be used as a catalyst to empower individuals in the community and promote issues of social justice, civic impact, and service-learning. It is through this deliberate manner of bringing art and artists’ ideas to communities that can evoke change. Arts revitalize; they attract tourists and other artists. Art can turn around a decaying section of town or change the appearance and impression of an entire neighborhood. A subject called Creative Placemaking, a form of community art with specific goals that define a group’s objective, needs to be added to the school art curriculum. Creative Placemaking is a way to explain the difference between public and community art. [U]nlike that cool mural that local school kids painted on the side of an abandoned lot … projects must define the community whose lives they seek to enhance, describe the positive change that the group of people wants, clearly outline an arts-based “intervention” to bring about that result, and create a method of measuring the change.2

This concept looks to cultural projects to create change in poor or disadvantaged communities as well as affluent ones. Artists are looking not just at large ideas, but also at the small ways art can be infused with making change: “Both the form and role of public art vary from community to community depending on demographics, culture, social climate, landscape, architecture, and urban planning. Public art is often as much about urban design or social issues as it is about art.”3 Furthermore, it is also within community spaces that our students and future artists experience beauty and destruction, collect ideas, and find inspiration. Understanding and appreciating the history of a place allows for making meaning for future artists to, in turn, make their mark. Today, there are more than 350 public art programs that support thousands of artists’ projects in airports, train stations, libraries, parks, streetscapes, government buildings, and neighborhoods— urban, suburban, and rural. Public agencies, Office of Cultural Affairs, Arts Commissions, or some other operating department generally administer 81% of public art.4

The first two sections of this book considered learning from the community, while this third section addresses the acts of artists going out to change their community. There is more street art than ever before as many artists would rather show their work in public places than traditional museums. Contemporary artists understand that art does not merely happen on a piece of paper

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but that the communal experience can be pondered and explored in the canvas of the community. Understanding that everyone can participate in community art acts and be called to get involved, this section looks at programs that are currently taking place and how kids can become civic artists, inserting their voices and creating an impact through their art. Living in a community that has incorporated public art into its spaces welcomes students to walk by, talk about, and contemplate participating. The challenge to the art teacher is to have consistent discussions in class and at outdoor sites. Asking students about what they observe, experience on their walks, how it impacts daily lives, and what they can add to the conversation are all suggested in the study of community art.

Defining Community Art Community art described in this third section includes works created by artists for the public but also art presented by people who live in the community. While public art by design encourages communal dialogue, it is at its most authentic when the population is engaged in the project’s design and creation from the very start. Community art can be practical; it can be integrated into a public space and be a vital source for social healing. What could be a more important mission of school art than to begin students engagement in community projects? Creating art with visual messaging in their community is an essential experience for student artists. It makes young artists feel a connection to the larger world in which they are making art. Meeting the artists who are part of the conversation on the street helps to create an understanding and heightens the value of art-making as an essential way to participate in the visual world. Through looking at community art, students start to see possibilities in their own spaces and how they can engage as artists. To that end, this section addresses the following overarching questions: 1. How is public art and community art different? 2. What can art teachers do to prepare and motivate students for public art projects that engage the community? 3. What are small- and large-scale community initiatives that students can get involved with as young artists? 4. It describes ways in which art teachers and students can make connections and utilize the participation of businesses in the community? 5. Are there ways to harvest and connect to the virtual community?

Museums versus Community For communities to make art together and display it around their town or city creates a different feeling toward a place because it instills a sense of ownership. Art found in the community spawns new ideas, from the art on the sewer grates to fire hydrants and road signs. The question in so many

Community Art

towns is, where can we find art and place art? How can we move art closer to its public, to be seen and experienced daily? As a longtime proponent of museums and gallery trips for art classes, the reality is that so many students don’t have the opportunity to be involved with a formal art space for a multitude of financial and practical reasons. The street scene can be a powerful alternative, using the community to study and investigate the visual world and involve students in making art for their surroundings. Community art is closer to students both physically and in to their comfort zones of experience. When an artist creates for a public space, they are aware of the sight, on both a physical and social level, the importance of fitting into the cultural and historical values of the society. While the museum strives to be culturally relevant and open, it has been difficult for them to detach themselves from having large amounts of cultural capital and power. The museum’s longstanding role is hard to change when it is the elite who ultimately run the museum. No number of free admission or yoga classes will change that image. Public community art, however, strives to break down the stigma of art being elitist by making it easily accessible, by and for the people. It is where school art learning needs to start. The museum as a public cultural space is a relatively recent development, beginning in earnest as recently as the early nineteenth century when state and private entities reestablished it as a philanthropic project for the public. Increasing access did little, however, to detach these spaces from their relationship with capital and power, serving instead as an opportunity for the cultural elite to obscure the role art plays in the political sphere. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has noted that patronage is not only an effective tool for communication but also a useful public relations tactic for the seduction of opinion.5

Art in a community is created for everyone for unlimited viewing, easy access, and daily availability at the right price. During the worldwide novel coronavirus epidemic of 2020, museums and galleries were closed. Still, people turned to the street to look at art, and many people of all ages participated in art exhibits to bring life and hope to a locked-down public. The liveliest art shows of the period took place in home window, front lawns, and wrapped about fences used as frames and armatures for artworks. Individual homes’ stairs, roofs, facades, front yards, and entrance paths became firmly established as fabulous sites for art displays and viewing places.

Community Art Projects Cities are often defined by their community art, from monuments to murals. Historically significant towns such as London, Rome, or Paris can be quickly recognized for their visual and architectural landmarks. According to the Americans for the arts, free community art can include murals, sculpture, memorials, integrated architectural or landscape structural work, community art, digital new media, and even performances and festivals.6 The list can be continually added to with the work of students and street artists exploring new art forms using such things as sidewalk stickers, painted stencils, and light projections outdoors.

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Beginning in the Renaissance, which spanned the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, European artists played a pivotal role in a city’s revitalization. Smaller communities also have significant buildings, sculptures, bridges, or other identifying features. Art has been a clear example of helping to advance not only visual culture, but also science, politics, and education. Visual innovation in a city or neighborhood provides pride in where one lives and creates a place individuals want to visit, add to, and invent in. Today, the arts are still excellent indicators of a healthy, thriving community. Historically, public art conjures up images of large bronze or marble statues in the middle of the square or possibly a war memorial. While these still relevant, the broader idea of what public art is has changed over time. Today’s public art comes in all shapes and sizes and can be temporary or permanent. The work can also be site-specific, meaning that it is a commentary on the environment, which surrounds it. It can span from architectural to digital to performance-based. In 1999, there was a new wave of public art in America that brought artists to the street painting objects that represent different aspects of their community. Walking down the streets of even the  small town of Berea, KY, one will find art on the streets. In the case of Berea, giant hands are displayed on lawns, in front of shops, and in public buildings. Swiss artistic director Walter Knapp started the idea of creating large shapes that different artists add to in 1986 after a similar exhibition of lions influenced him on display around the city of Zurich and consequently brought cows to Chicago in 1999.7 Later, over seventy-five cities across fifty countries picked up the idea redesigning it to fit the feeling of the town, including Cincinnati, OH, installing Flying Pigs and Louisville and Lexington, KY, creating Horses. “The idea is to bring local, artists, architects, photographers and designers, and celebrities paint, decorate, and dress up fiberglass cow statues, and then exhibit them around the city for several months. While the cow parade concept is still alive and well all over the world, it now extends well beyond cows.8

Large Community Initiatives While art has been transpiring on the streets by way of murals and graffiti for many years, it is only in approximately the last twenty years that the art world has welcomed nontraditional spaces, media, and artists. This new acceptance has pushed a connection with the community in ways that are not possible in the sanctuary of the museum—changing the stakes, moving art out of the museum or gallery, and incorporating the viewer into the experience. This push has united all ages and levels of understanding because it utilizes community space as a platform for visual experience. The art teacher, museum educator, and community artist are living in a critical time of public art. Gone are the days when artist can be cooped up in their classroom without acknowledging the possibilities and resources outside the front door. Seeing art on the streets shows students the importance of creativity, forming community culture. Teachers are now charged in helping young students find their place and voice in an ever-changing art world.

Community Art

Today, there are programs such as the Mural Programs in Philadelphia, where Alexus Tucker, a student from Philadelphia’s Emerging Muralist, inspires leadership. He works to unite different groups of people in a common goal, as well as giving creative voice to those who don’t always feel connected to the world or each other by working on this joint project together. Communityengaged arts are not only done for the public to admire, but created with the purpose of interaction and participation with members of the people. Alexus discusses her relationship with the process stating, “Art making is no longer about being the best or just having a great skill to show off; it is about using this talent that I have to make a difference in a world bigger than myself.”9 Philadelphia’s program grew out of a need to decrease graffiti. Today, the program is about restorative justice, which works to transform individuals, victims, and communities divided by the criminal justice system by paying teenagers to work on murals. Current inmates, probationers, and parolees are allowed to learn new skills and make a positive contribution to their communities, to repair harm to communities impacted by crime through neighborhood projects. They receive art instruction, work on new murals, and perform other community service work, helping to shift community perceptions through these constructive contributions.10

This initiative provides teenagers with jobs in the arts. There are other cities such as Chicago and New York that combine teens and art to create change, and bringing these community art experiences to towns allows people who don’t regularly participate in art to do so. For many cities, that everyday space might begin with a mural or war memorial, and as the city sees the attraction, it creates moves to more murals, bus stops, bike racks, sewer grates, electric boxes, and more. There has been a worldwide push from organizations such as UNESCO to infuse creative forces at varying levels into underserved and underfunded communities. A series of projects called Creative Cities Network has over 180-member cities in seventy-two countries: “Created in 2004, the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) aims to make creativity an essential driver for sustainable urban development.”11 One of their thriving sites is Paducah, KY, a strong example of a town once filled with dilapidated and abandoned buildings. The program called to artists to move to the city from all over the world in exchange for minimal rent for large spaces in which they could make and sell art. Over just a few years, word spread and these artists’ incentives turned Paducah into a thriving community. Another American example is Santa Fe, NM, which, in 2005, was the first American UNESCO city. While already having an established arts district, the global support this program provided has proven to create an even stronger network and boost the city’s arts community to make its mark on an international stage: “One percent of Santa Fe’s hotel tax supports local arts organizations, helping to maintain a flourishing arts community, employ artists, and attract tourism. Furthermore, two percent of the cost of city buildings and infrastructure support site-specific public artwork.”12 A final example of a smaller project that is not funded by UNESCO is in Houston Texas, where, in 2006, they revitalized a series of twenty-two-row houses in one of the poorest districts of the city into art houses. Now they are dedicated to rotating photography, art installations, literary projects, and more, helping to revive the city.13

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Teaching/Pedagogy In today’s classroom, social justice and service-learning projects are already part of many school curriculums. Teaching young artists that using their art to have a voice and make a difference in one’s community creates new meaning from the typical classroom art projects. Creating awareness of the effects the arts have on a city is inspiring for even the littlest of changes, and getting together with organizations that bring different arts-based projects to a city opens up a new bag of resources. Ask students: How can we infuse creativity in our city? What can the lasting impact be if we do? What are the significant effects that can be made, and what would small ones could be? What projects and activities would we be willing to participate in? What is already going on that we could join? As art teachers it is important to ask students how they would want to contribute or shape their own space? What are the needs of the area? There are projects already set up that are easy to take part in, such as the following: 1. The painted rain barrel project in Lexington, KY, or Cincinnati, OH, meant to bring art and water conservation together.14 2. The Neighborhood Postcard projects started in San Francisco’s Bay area. Young artists create postcards sent to other people in their community working to change the negative impression of where they live, which helps to break stereotypes and form new connections. 3. Before I Die project started in New Orleans, consisting of chalkboard sites prominently placed in the community, asking the participants to fill up the statement, “Before I die ….” 4. The phrase can be changed: … 5. My most significant art influence is … 6. What makes me a creative thinker is … Students taking on projects already started showing that your young artists and school are part of the local arts community. However, students can envision original community projects, for example, by asking via community postings: How would you transform your community through art? The project result can generate for students a listing of ideas for writing grants with other students and talking to businesses to empower young people to make changes in their community space. A student-driven project often has strong buy-in from the community.

Local Downtown Spaces A pilgrimage to design studios, advertising firms, artist studios, and sign shops is more memorable than a visit where students can witness and take part in creating community art. In my small downtown, there are many creative businesses. The main street has a screen print shop and studio, an advertising and design firm, a sign shop, a florist, an architectural firm, and an interior design studio. Many painters, sculptors, ceramic artists work in unique studios, such as converted garages,

Community Art

Questions ●● ●●

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Ask students to come to studio visits with a list of questions. What are the ways we can take the lessons inspired by studio visits into a classroom or home? Ask artists about what they created around town and have students take pictures and create an album of host firms’ projects. Do the studios explored offer student internships?

groceries, car washes, or old factories. Each of these inspiring creative spaces contributes to the city centers environment. It is valuable to hear first-hand artists and designers share their stories and view different equipment, tools, processes, and work plans in authentic settings. Visiting creative businesses provides an exceptional opportunity to see how art can be part of a local community’s daily life. From shirts and posters to building designs and billboards, students gain valuable insight into local art practices. Art teachers can bridge school and artistic practice with memorable contacts and experiences that alter the understanding of creative work explored around town. One student inquired, “Can students in a school art class design and create bus advertisements, play equipment for parks, and movie marquis?” Each field visit to a studio embraces the community spirit and skyhigh dreams of students to take on more significant city planning challenges.

Lessons for Participating in Art Show Preparations and Gallery Openings Gallery hop/walk on Friday nights is something that has taken off across America. A day when all the galleries have openings filled with people. Having students join their teacher or encouraging them to go in groups on this hop is a beautiful way to explore art spaces, meet artists and consumers of art, and gain a different understanding of the world. Creating these authentic experiences is an exciting way for students to understand how they connect to the larger world.

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Ask how your school can be part of events like these. From coffee shops to banks, many spaces welcome art. Have students ask questions of gallery owners, artists, or those in the space. If they are at a gallery hop, ask them to talk to an artist and patrons. Students can create a selfie album with the artists they met and the spaces they were in. This is a significant way to form connections.

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Other Stores Furniture, lighting, frame shops, and bakeries—survey the stores in your community and plan ways to gain entrance and get inside to get the inside scoop regarding their creative contributions. We invited the mid-century modern furniture shop owner to our classroom. The proprietors arrived with fascinating samples and told suspenseful stories of making a purchase or a new sale, involving a local artist who used to work in the period. The bakery owner brought in cupcakes for students to decorate and taught the class about the history of various cake styles and fresh cake supplies that can be used with paint. Seeing the artistic skills that go into so many professions opens up students’ view of future jobs and sighting to explore and broaden their perspective of art in the broader community.

Alternative Spaces Over the years I have seen some elaborate art displays done by teachers in the hallway. Generally over-curated, they often don’t take into account the student artist. It’s magical what can happen when students curate the space for their own art, not just in the hallways, but moving it into alternative spaces and breaking down the idea of art having to be displayed on a corkboard. Artists have been using alternative spaces, such as shipping crates, store windows, or alleyways to show their work.15 Discussing alternative spaces and asking students to find their own place to display can add to the full art experience. Like most K-12 schools and college art buildings, the art in our university is placed on bulletin boards or protected inside glass cases. While many contemporary artists have moved off the wall

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Find a shop owner that would welcome you into their space and have them into your classroom. Have students come up with questions. Connect the experience once you are back in the classroom. Find connections to other shops, items, artists.

Other Local Spaces to Consider ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

Flower shops Tailors Opera house Music hall TV stations Grocery stores Hardware stores

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and stepped off pedestals to become a part of the audience and viewing space, the place of art in schools has not changed. We teach about Earth Works, Guerilla, and Instillation art while our hallway presentations seldom represent what we teach. The students and I proceeded to walk around our building, making suggestions about how each space could be altered. Not toting art supplies or being concerned about materials or financial restraints, we simply looked for “meaningful spots” to spend time, sit, and think about what to say and place into the space. After discussions that stretched ideas, produced sketches, and new material collections, my students set out to work. Contemporary artists have used and challenged the architectural elements of museum spaces, showing art on the floor and descending from the ceiling. In the classroom, we talk about the history of the museum, and how art had traditionally been lined up on walls. Many artists today dialogue with the architecture, moving audiences through mazes and reshaping the experience of being in the gallery.

The Project The students began to install their projects in the halls, bathrooms, elevators, lockers, and in freshly discovered crevices in the building. By the morning, the ladies bathroom stalls had been wallpapered and beautified with area rugs. A small stand was set up for lavatory needs. Comment cards were made so they could be filled out, and the scent of exotic flowers was introduced into the air. Custodians and faculty celebrated the bathroom stall project. Men cautiously asked to enter the women’s restroom. Other student installations included Facebook like/comment whiteboard signs outside of studio classrooms where anyone could comment and doodle about the classes, as they might do on a FB wall. On one stairwell, there was an instillation using old textbooks that had been made into chains and tied to the wall. Words taped to stairs unfolded a message: “Even when you fall on your face you are still moving forward!” The art melded into the experience of being there, available for interaction and comment. The projects were gently displayed all over the building without overwhelming each space. In a hallway, a trail of art supplies formed a track to a locker with a plaster head on the top shelf, and art supplies filling the rest of the space below. The neighboring locker became a wall for remarks. Next to faculty offices, flocks of cutout geese were placed. Each piece metaphorically depicted a professor’s disposition and/or artistic persona. These pieces were meant to be humorous, and, a year later, all of them are still on display. An empty landing between floors became a cave of parking lot cones and wet floor signs, while crevices in a brick wall were filled with bendable toy figures. Many exciting ideas were sketched and referenced, but because of financial and time restraints not all of them could be completed. As the building came to life in the morning hours, everyone began to see the spaces and surfaces as a work of art. In hallway conversation throughout the day, new ideas kept blossoming. There was talk of what could be done inside the dorms, cafeterias, and other buildings on campus as well as structures in town that would be perfect for installations.

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Interactive Art Commenting on how art can interact in a public space, Tom Finkelpearl, the director of the Queens Art Museum, stated, “Public art is the best way for people to express themselves in the city. Installation art gets dialogue going. That’s very good.”16 In further classroom discussions, my future art teachers saw their art as creating installations, not as an act of vandalism. Several spoke of their art as a political statement, or expressing a social view. A student suggested that “[a]udiences looking at a work that they don’t think of as ‘art worthy,’ tend to automatically place it into the graffiti-vandalism, or a lower-than-art category.” Repeatedly, we came back to the question of who gets to decide what was art? As one of the students explained, if there is no gallery label, and a piece of art is not in the “correct” spot, then nothing lets the viewer know that it is in fact ART. Finkelpearl doesn’t find graffiti to be art and says, “I can’t condone vandalism … It’s really upsetting to me that people need to write their name over and over again in public space. It’s this culture of fame. I really think it’s regrettable that they think that’s the only way to become famous.”17 Finkelpearl however points out that installations throughout the city are art, made to interact with the public, and it’s not vandalism.18 One of my students entered the discussion by saying, “It is easy to see these acts as vandalism as they are intruding on public space, and may not be called beautiful works.” Another student responded by adding, “What we created was not always beautiful, but we were not hurting anything, or anyone. We used glue or wheat paste that can be easily removed with water, and nothing was permanent. Sometimes one person’s art is another’s vandalism.” I referred to Banksy, who claims that art can have positive effects on the environment by making people think, even if it causes some discomfort. “Thoughtful and attractive street art, however, has been suggested to have regenerative effects on a neighborhood. In fact, the popular street artist Banksy, has catapulted his guerilla street art into a profitable career as an auctionable contemporary artist. He has come under criticism for his art contributing to the gentrification of neighborhoods.”19 In hindsight over the semester, many of our fellow artists in the building not only contributed to the installations, but also came up with editions of their own. An unassigned dialogue began to take form in the art building. To test our experiences in the public schools, I discussed with my future art teachers the notion of children as installation artists. Our class worked on several projects with elementary students in the Richmond, KY, area. The following section discusses taking the theme of installations to children and the public schools.

Art beyond School Desks To enter a child’s room, one has to pass through an elaborately decorated door complemented by doorknob signs and hanging displays. Inside, on the bed, under the table, and in the closet are myriads of play installations set up with pillows, furnishings, and toys. Free to create in many rooms of a home, children’s art in school becomes relegated to table and chair work. Art seldom flows into the room’s space or beyond it to the hallway. To retain the installation artistry of children,

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art classes can provide opportunities for playful use of the art room space, and the possibility of using all school spaces to set up creative ideas.

Installations in Public Schools To promote children’s art room installations, my students decided on a symbolic start: the classroom doors. Decorating doors has become the teacher’s task but can be opened to showcase the work of young installation artists. Moving art off school desks onto the floor became an important step in promoting installations. Envisioning the whole art room as theirs to use and play in allowed the experience of a boundless art that extended beyond pictures on papers. Children’s corkboard works in their room are often amazing installations, going beyond the board onto walls, and moving into the room space. Yet in many art rooms and hallways, adults neatly decorate every display board. My students decided to focus on display boards as the next area of teaching about installations. Several boards were opened to young artists to anchor multi-dimensional creations that involved the ceilings, walls, and even the hallway floor. The art class corkboard became a favorite creative playground, a place where children happily took ownership of the space and created their own child-centered displays. When the whole art room can be used for play and art making, it opened children’s thinking about creations in the hallway, the front lobby, and being active artists in other school spaces. When students sat in the front lobby to discuss what they could do in the large open space, even the art teacher was surprised to hear the proposals. “We could do a pretend playground using packaging stuff,” the response of a student to seeing the pile of cartons and foam pieces stacked before the front office. On the way to the lobby, “We can make a garden with flowerbeds and grasses and rolling out paintings like play carpets in the hallways.” Scouting the cafeteria and its “gifts” of trays, straws, leftover foods on plates, or long tables promote ideas of creating setups with what is available. In one such inventive act, the public school students designed and installed a celebrity birthday party made from found objects placed in between ordinary tables set up for school lunch. My future art teachers also found that the children enjoyed creating installations in outdoor spaces, a place that they were familiar with and had many creative play experiences. The children worked on ideas for involving the trees behind the school and using the playground equipment to install a show on the playground. Seeing the outside of the school for the first time as part of the art class, everyone was excited about the many possibilities to place art on the ground, and into the landscape. Public school students were happy to offer their opinions about the best play setup they made in their room, or the most unusual hanging decoration they created. As students look at floors and ceiling as possible canvases and sites for art making, they can recall the fun they used to have playing and creating setups in their home studios. Future art teachers who participated in the art building installation are preparing to teach their students that art can be made anywhere and demonstrate the natural extensions to children’s home setups and decorating that can continue in school art classes.

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Looking to the Future School installations can challenge the notion of where art can live and expands art beyond what can be made on art room tables. Since so much of children’s art starts out in the form of installations and play setups, this art form needs to be continued in school. Art teachers can follow up on aspirations for recreating spaces, and dreaming of leaving one’s creative marks and designs everywhere. With future art teachers, or young children, thinking of art in terms of installations leads to a great sense of freedom to say and think extraordinary things. Art class discussions become lively and boundless: “[W]e could put art into the coke machine so that every time you get a drink an artwork appears!” and “could there be a secret art show under the stairs in the dark, that one can only be seen with glow lights?” While not always possible to consummate, ideas for art in school spaces just flow with possibilities. Installations turn students into futurists, making long-term art plans and considering the art of the future.

Pop-Up Art Experiences Community Murals Painting the walls of our cities with colorful murals is a trend that has gained extreme popularity. The idea of a mural is to be by, for, and of the people. It is a way to comment on a moment in history, a social issue of the goal community relevance, or beautify and highlight an unattended or prominent space in the city. Formerly used to define the grandeur of walls and ceilings of royal palaces, prominent churches, or wealthy citizenry homes, today, outside murals tend to cover over the graffiti, dirt, and decay of long sides of urban buildings. Outdoor walls painted in intense bright commercial colors display large-scale symbols and community storytelling. Celebrating the neighborhood community murals refocuses attention to the newly layered spot. Some contemporary outdoor paintings are created by professional artists, winners of competitions for prime city locations. Still, there is always room for murals created by school artists and community artist-activists. Unlike gallery and museum displays of artists speaking to artists and art lovers, the new city mural speaks to everyone, people of all ages, and previous art knowledge. From after school teen programs in Philadelphia and Chicago to K-12 art classes led by daring art teachers who accept the challenge of moving students from formal tabletop works to freestyle, large-scale pieces expressive of the community through the eyes of youngsters voices, murals can be practiced anywhere. Once restricted to school lobbies and cafeterias, student mural art has left the school to go downtown. The result is often a once in a lifetime experience for students to work in public places, on a monumental scale. Murals invite community buy-in, sponsorship, participation, and feedback. Large student murals offer experiences to create big statements, jointly planned and researched public art. Creating lasting art together with one’s neighbors as clients is a vital adult act for students who seek serious, grown-up endeavors.

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Teacher/Pedagogy In school art, murals can be rehearsed for a downtown wall. Dressing long school hallways, or available outside walls in large sheets of paper can be a great rehearsal place to try out mural concepts. Instead of painting on a school paper, students can test new large surfaces such as plastics, weatherproof fabrics, or sheets of building supplies to sketch and paint over.

Discussions Can Center Around ●● ●● ●● ●●

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Who is our audience for the mural? What art theme would uplift and inspire the community? What are some of the issues the mural can address? How do the plan and execution need to be different than working on a limited sheet over the school table? What are some of the factors that help to see the work from different angles and long distances? What is unique about the location for which the mural is made? Who are its neighbors? How can we involve the community at different stages of preparing, designing, painting the mural?

Pop-Up Professional artists have been holding pop-up exhibits in New York City since 2007. These shortterm exhibits in prime-but-vacant city spaces caught on all around the world. In cities where space is scarce, artists find a temporary open storefront or an existing store that is willing to share its space, to host a momentary art show can change the way art creates and interacts with audiences. Pop-up galleries can present an interesting experience because they tend to challenge the artists or groups to think radically and create works that are in sync with a specific space and store. Popup galleries are rapidly becoming popular, and for a good reason—they turn up in exciting places, showcasing unique ideas and works. Because of the short-lived experience, there is an urgency to capture the audience attention, so they feel urgent and compelling.20

A quick show in a possible alternative location gives students currency to explore a variety of spaces they had not thought of. A show can be along the front fence of the school, a display can be on the playground, on a sidewalk, in local shops of all types. Having students look for these spaces and arrange the space for art and the work to feel exciting in that space is a challenging task for art classes.

Arts Festivals Arts festivals are a way to bring the arts into a city for a brief, festive celebration. In its festival theme, these exhibits welcome large audiences to see artworks in nontraditional ways. Art in a

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festival can be in tents and many other temporary quarters. It does not have to be displayed in traditional methods, in rows, nor on walls. In art festivals, creations can be carried by hand, on floats, or manipulated by artists. There are adult arts festivals with the idea of setting up in a booth to sell one’s art. Students can use laundry lines, set up the art handing from trees, lift them by balloons, and find an audience through unusual presentation ideas. Starting an arts festival in the schoolyard or out in the community takes the art out of confined spaces and allows it to be tied to, hung on, or carried in unusual parades. Art festivals can join existing celebrations as a unique feature. State fairs, street fairs, seasonal festivals on ice, stir the student’s imagination as they prepare to do individual works and bring their art outdoors.

Teacher/Pedagogy Students can build inflatable booths, foam walls, and tables on wheels. Laundry lines can lift work and move it through space. Festivals can be opportunities to set up to sell student art and begin to understand the business side of art. Students in an art festival often use boxes and crates to create exhibition stalls with signs and price tags. Are there art experiences or installations that can be made as a part of the festival theme? Taking students to set up their art and viewing others’ works in the festival piques everyone’s interest.

Virtual Paths to Exploring the Environment Students intuitively return to class and proceed with eagerness to search for online examples from all over the world after taking a walk through downtown to investigate our city’s unique bicycle racks. The computer images light the way to new paths, expanding student’s knowledge and the joy of being members of a virtual community.21 The works of photographers and designers are easily accessed and become incorporated into our class discussion. Students share a wealth of finds about bike rack designs and information from others interested in that subject. On this platform, phones and the Internet no longer have adverse interruptions to the art room but are useful transporters into other worlds of shared ideas. While this book primarily has been about getting students out of the classroom, inspiring face-to-face, hands-on, and active first-hand interactions, it is also valuable to focus on meeting students where they are and using virtual viewing as a valuable resource. With the aid of the Internet, no longer does one have to rely on the library to find print sources such as National Geographic for global travel through photographs. One can also consider the environment virtually. The touch of the button and individuals can meet people from any part of the world who have varying interests, discovering fresh ideas of what their living spaces, homes, and communities look like. The virtual world has unlocked unimaginable possibilities for a global classroom. Instant imaging resources have created a deeper understanding of other cultures and

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environmental art. Do you want to meet and have a discussion with an architect on the other side of the world? Get a virtual tour of a place and build an online environment thousands of miles away. No need for a plane ticket—images can be examined and discussed in real time by individuals and art classes studying different streets, parks, or cities. As the tangible community is the home for artists, the virtual one is quickly augmenting our environmental studies. At all levels, there are ways of participation. Virtual gallery or studio tours have become an essential means to display the built environment and conduct art room online conversations for students to share ideas using such platforms as Instagram or Pinterest. Yet all this comes at a cost. With so much emphasis on the Internet, it is often difficult to decipher and set into context what one is looking for. In sheer volume, from video clips, TikTok, threads, and tweets are all layered into a vast virtual amalgam, making the real and what we see, challenging to get close to and appreciate with our more tactile senses. Children at an early age and later as students of the art can discuss how not to be swept away by the sea of media images and to get involved in making and creating their impressions and representations. Learning to make one’s own recodings and interpretations, carrying video, film, and photo equipment assures that students not just see the world through another person’s image-making, lens-art. It is also useful to discuss searching for high-quality virtual imagery, the power of masterful virtual communities, images, and art sites. It’s hard to deny that the virtual community has become an enormous part of viewing our cities and human-made environments. What happens to our spirit if we only learn to see nature as it plays on screensavers? Without seeking quality in nature as basic to life in all its majesty, in the colors, surfaces, smells, the sounds of birds, or variations in the plays of light on city surfaces, in the virtual, this is all emotionally empty. Becoming a screen appreciator of the environment is like painting from photographs, interpreting other people’s art and experience. Going out to take pictures, sketch in the city, or paint in the landscape is a memorable experience, not just for the professional artists. It needs to be a part of everyone’s life. While the virtual has opened global viewing, it also narrowed the time spent touching and being touched by the real things that make the outdoors unique places necessary to our breathing and aesthetic lifetime. The images and ideas that we add to our daily feed shape our world as much as the tangible. As an art teacher, we need to inspire encounters and real outdoor explorations and explain to students its importance to human life. It is also putting in perspective the use and possibilities of virtual imagery how and when it can be beneficial. The technology resources for the classroom are continually changing and are often already obsolete when mentioned in a book. However, when I want to know what’s current, I go straight to my sixteen-year-old daughter. Conversations with students about the latest technology can always provide clues and insights for art classes. The latest in apps, video games, fashion, and interior design also arrives in art class from our student’s knowledge as valuable teachers and resources. Instead of fighting against phone time, help children to curate screen explorations with good art content. From working on a Pinterest page of art-related ideas to having them post on Artsonia or other websites, screen viewing life will be with us, and it’s always the challenge to balance with taking long walks and enjoying the pleasures of being in contact with our world and its changing and majestic environments.

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Collaboration Tools for Sharing Info There are many useful tools for collaborating with people from all over the world. My students work with student artists from other states and across continents to learn about the latest trends in architecture and design. Budding architects check-in at the Venice Architecture Biennale and access the Cooper Hewitt design collection in New York for images of old store signs—the Internet is a virtual wonder. Discussing the future of cities with creative minds of Milan’s city planners, or joining a lecture on Zoom, or a discussion on Google Meet is some of the many ways to check the pulse of modern design and meet up with eminent environmental contributors. Virtual initiation to environmental subjects to investigate is boundless in time and place, opening museums’ grandest collections, the unlimited sites of design studios, and, most of all, bringing lively conversations and noble ideas in real time into the art room. There are also opportunities to post running lists of ideas through team websites, blogs, and pages. Or share images a student is excited about posted on YouTube channels. The virtual possibilities for engagement with like-minded people, finding collaborators, guest historians, and critics are boundless. Discovering ways students are communicating helps to provide them with digital citizenship in new areas of environmental curiosities and studies.

Social Media “Instagram worthy” is one of the latest trends of 2019. Many brands stopped advertising, instead, leaving it up to consumers to promote their products. Pop-up stores, events, and activities have allowed the consumer to take a picture in these spaces with advertisement and promote it to consumer’s followers. The Color Factory was one that popped up in New York and Los Angeles in 2019. Wandering through rooms of colored-filled experiences and given a map to other adventures throughout the city allows the viewer to be involved in the space while spending their time wandering while promoting it. Starting by registering your Color Factory Card in every room which allows access to the camera positioned in the space, then emailing the image to yourself for further distribution. Stores create some of these spaces to facilitate subliminal advertising of products, and artists can also use them to promote their own work. How, as art teachers, can we use our students’ need to document where they are? Are there ways to create our own spaces or backgrounds to pose in? Is there a way to advertise places covered on environmental walks? How can we apply the new self-advertising culture to our themes and art room studies? We help to make students aware that they are part of the advertising campaign. Also create and plan our campaign for something we are exploring on the street and in classes.

Selfie Culture A fantastic array of technology tools is transported in our pocket. Unlike any other period in history, there are more cameras available to people of all ages and all walks of life than ever before.

Community Art

The possibilities for visual interpretation start early with young children experimenting with parents’ phone cameras. From our cell phones to drones and compelling digital and mirrorless cameras, high-quality images are at our fingertips. Taking and saving high-quality photos in the digital age is fast and inexpensive compared to film, voluminous and simple to create, duplicate, edit, and freely share with others. While the selfie seems like a recent phenomenon, a part of the invention and widespread use of cell phones, the impulse of youth and adults to play with their image photographed is not a new impulse: “Teenagers have long considered themselves actors, of sorts, performing for what psychologists called the imaginary audience. This is the idea that adolescents think people are more interested in them than they are, that people are always looking at them and noting what they are doing, even if it is just walking across the school cafeteria,” said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist. How cool it was when the imaginary audience becomes real.22

For good or bad, more than ever, students are taking pictures. Investigating the self-portrait more than any artist in previous generations and in ways society could not have imagined even twenty years ago, students are not only looking at themselves but consistently documenting their surroundings. Adopting it to the art class is a vital art teaching consideration. Traveling on a walk in the neighborhood might mean stopping to pose before various sitings to stamp a personal discovery, an unusual sight, and place with our picture. Students not only discover new surroundings and detail, taking apart the environment with cameras, but place themselves in the “crime scene.” Scouting the background and recording it with a snapshot confirm the existence of the find. Having found a delightful spot to get into, a structure to stand in front, students on a walk become their models for the outdoor photo shoot. Documenting daily activities, experiences, and events can become more exciting, carrying and having available the ability to record it with a cell phone camera. While one could attend the Museum of the Selfie in Los Angeles, there are now companies that take advantage of the selfie culture with pop-up outdoor stage sets that invite selfies, instant backdrops, and virtual experiences to be a part of and use as an outdoor photo studio.23 Selfies are mail, to share experiences and sightings with colleagues and friends. Many businesses stage outdoor settings as advertisements, an idea that prompts many prefab structures, frames, props to be made in the art class to take on photography walks. Students frequently invite community members to step inside “booths” or sit on furnishings as street stage sets. Creating street photo places and street stories can involve attracting passerby visitors willing to engage in the new photo opportunities.

Availability and Diversity of Cameras The tools we use to communicate are more readily available and more diverse than ever before. From the cameras on our phones, GoPros, mirrorless DSLRs, and even drones, there are many ways to get outdoor sightings and record community information. Cameras as tools to magnify, close up, frame, and explore the outdoor safaris of young artists are diverse, and the classroom’s availability is ever-changing. I started my career by writing to Kodak to obtain grants for classroom

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cameras. Later, I requested Polaroid support, so my students could experience the instant picturetaking possibilities during our city safaris. As almost all students carry phones, students are eager to put them to use for school projects on walks, taking them out for crucial seeing missions, and not looked upon by adults as a schoolroom distraction. Holding the camera while moving, upside-down images, comparing black and white to color flips, multi photos, video clips versus still shots, shooting at odd angles as the phone is flipped in hands to conjure up new views. To use the phone cameras playfully, and in fresh ways outdoors, involve environmental camera art experiments.

Drone Viewing Adventures with Art Classes If an art student cannot go everywhere they dream of, if they cannot reach the highest points of their imagination, now drones taken on field trips can lift them to new elevations. Like any particular tool—magnifying glasses, binoculars—inexpensive yet high-quality small drones with eyes make any environmental safari more exciting for students. As a student, I used to look forward to each issue of National Geographic magazine and dream of experiencing the world through the photographer’s experience. It took a while to understand that great photos are artworks, already interpretations of places, and not necessarily what I wanted to look at or personally find interesting. Applying the new resources today, one can partner with distant camera holders. Students can walk in faraway cities, one holding a camera while the other gives instructions to a partner from a cell phone. These international walks demonstrated in art rooms garner significant interest in visual explorations. There are many timers and inexpensive aids to point cameras remotely, selecting what is to be framed. My students, for example, love to go on field trips taking along our art room drone whom we affectionately call Izzy. Our inexpensive and easy-to-control flying robot has a good quality camera that is easy to navigate and remote controls that all expert game players in our classes immediately take to. The flying camera’s eyes can carry our vision beyond the street level, searching for interesting environmental points to click on from close-ups to bird’s eye viewing. Led by our “bird” to fresh visual opportunities, students expose pictures remotely as their curiosity moves them from place to place. From larger drones, satellites, or remote camera feedback from cellphones, natural and unfiltered images from anywhere can be “dialed up.” New tools have expanded the range and opportunities of being outside; class walks can also lift us to new heights and detailed screenings. Images of environments can be seen and discussed in real time by individuals, or art class groups studying different streets, parks, or cities. Yet all this comes at a cost. With so much emphasis on the Internet, it is often difficult to decipher and set into context what one is looking for. Video clips, vines, threads, and tweets are all layers of making the real, and what we feel and see, challenging to get close to and decipher in the sea of images waiting to be appreciated. Students at an early age and in art classes can discuss how not to be swept away by the sea of media images and learn to make and create our own.

Community Art

Related to our drone experiences, we are making films in creative ways, pointing our fresh eyes from drones to phone cameras as ways of sorting through the many exciting sites our environment offers. To curate and edit our visual finds using media to develop our seeing, a personal vision that sorts through things and finds what we believe to be worth noticing or pointing out to others. Just because we have so many convenient, fast, and easy eyes to record with, it does not mean that we are automatically more observant. That’s where art teaching needs to focus: that the creative find and excellent depiction are not inside the camera. Like all art forms, it requires taking lots of pictures, practice, and individuality, curiosity, and new ways of recording what we see to the particular media.

Teacher/Pedagogy As art teachers, using the virtual becomes an even higher calling as we ask students what they already consider, and analyze and critique it while layering in items that they may not have seen. While not always a cohesive one, the virtual then becomes a visual conversation. Yes, it asks that we add our layers, but with that, it will select for us or give us suggestions based on what we are adding. Students are also using Pinterest, or sites like it, for everything from planning their outfits, to collecting images and ideas. Regarding this as a virtual idea book allows visual images to gather in news ways to use later. They can then build art ideas for the classroom with a student’s personal visual collection/resources. The fantastic news is students have already done the homework of collecting and feel comfortable cataloging on their phone or computer. Instead of looking at technology as a negative, it’s good to realize that it is not going anywhere. Appreciating the potential it has to show us the world and using it as an artistic resource might strengthen connections with students’ interests in the classroom. So how do teaching artists contribute to the conversation? This is not a simple question since it is a fast and ever-changing medium. Yet giving kids exciting visuals to hang their hat on and build into vocabulary might be one answer. By introducing students to sites that they can manipulate images, on, capture video, organize ideas, they too will want to add it to their collection. Then the phone or computer will give similar suggestions, building a library of resources, and realizing a virtual is just a tool for artistic plans and vision. For example, using a student’s Pinterest board art images can be collected for projects; on sites like Smart History or Ted Talk, they can research a subject in depth. There is no shortage of resources and places to bookmark and organize them—from designing your wardrobe to creating ideas for interior decorating.

Blink of an Eye Neon was a new form of light in the 1960s and contemporary artists such as Dan Flavin created encounters that physically immerse indoor spaces and viewers in its glow. In the fall of 2019, the city of Cincinnati, OH, took it one step further, asking vast audiences to experience full-

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scale projection screens for light art. The event, named Blink (2017, 2019), invites the mind’s eye and participants’ bodies to playfully interact with light and art. Thirty blocks of light shows, projections, interactive light sculptures, and parades of light form a canvas of immense scale. This community event is the only one of its kind in the United States, engaging over 2 million people in imaginative and unforgettable experiences. Those attending the event are not necessarily the same people who would consume indoor art exhibits, nor would they fall into the category of museum goers. Similar to fireworks, a light show turns into a celebration, or festival, that can be enjoyed on many levels. During the day, hundreds of people stand around taking pictures and speaking with the artists of the more than twenty new murals being added to downtown Cincinnati. Across from each site there is scaffolding supporting multiple projectors with a tarp labeled “Blink,” where a light show will appear later that evening. By the time darkness falls, thousands of people are gathering on crowded streets. Many of the pedestrian’s neon costumes add to the spectacle, becoming part of the mural and transforming the neighborhoods with light, colors, and sounds. A row of thirty neon white seesaws as well as an entire makeshift light carnival is put on by the Art Academy of Cincinnati. The bright and powerful projections of imagery generate a new experience that transforms each existing area. One space (about a fourth of a city park in size) has a blowup enclosed structure that can be walked through, “bathing” participants in colored lights. On your way out of the structure and leading into town, you walk over a bridge that becomes the canvas for a musical-light extravaganza. The power of Blink is that the theme invites street performers who interact with lights in various ways, such as dancing with fluorescent umbrellas. From very elaborate and technical costumes, to handmade, people feel compelled to bring their own light into the space even using bikes and cars as part of the show. In 2001, a dark period of Cincinnati’s racial tension culminated in a series of race riots. Yet over the past twenty years the city changed its trajectory, and the arts have played a large part in this success story. In recent years, the city of Cincinnati provided generous tax incentives prompting arts organizations to move downtown. Today, multiple theater groups, art schools, and music venues are all part of the downtown arts scene. Most recently, a large development group called 3CDC bought up over 130 buildings, permanently changing the Over the Rhine area where the riots occurred. This led to a shift in the city; gentrifying neighborhoods and the downtown was symbolic of the change, which happened in the blink of an eye. Blink festival was originally conceived as a way to see Cincinnati as a “future city” a vision outlined in the event’s manifesto: “The people of greater Cincinnati work and play and draw the light from one another until it outshines the sun. Together they shine with celebration, laughter and labor shared for all the world to see, and in the blink of an eye their radiance is undeniable.”24 The city of Cincinnati has had a long relationship with the arts. “The Fine Arts Fund, a nonprofit arts organization now called ArtsWave, published The Arts Ripple Effect in 2008. This ground-breaking research on how to build community support for the arts drew national attention and set the Fine Arts Fund on a course for change.”25 This outlined how Cincinnati changed the course of its city through arts initiatives.

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Reimagined Space Mark Rothko (1903–1970) and other Color Field Painters (1940s–1950s) tried to generate the visual sensation of bathing the viewer and igniting the gallery in colors spread over large patches of a canvas. Dan Flavin (1933–1996) led a movement of fluorescent light artists who sought to impact space with light by using tubes of light set vast loft galleries a blaze. The artist Cristo (1935–2009) asked the viewer to reconsider outdoor spaces by wrapping swaths of buildings, bridges, and islands in fabrics to create new environmental experiences. Many forces created by large scale art including Earthworks, Happenings, Environmental Artists, Outdoor Muralists sought to manipulate the feel of space and the outdoors, laying the foundation for Blink and other large-scale expressive color and space experiments through using community canvases.

Teacher/Pedagogy Note for Art Teachers Akin to witnessing the thrill of changing images being transformed in a darkroom photo tray, there is everything magical about exploring light in a darkened art room. Glow sticks can be a primer for play acts, an appetizer for the vast possibilities of light shows students can design. Following their light play, students will be interested to explore the rich history of light art, discussing particular artists and works, and conducting related experiments. Students enjoy exploring neon fixtures such as under-counter kitchen lights and closet lights they try placing in different parts of the room. Instead of twisting and welding neon tubing like Ben Livingston, students can shape and tape light sticks like Glow Lite and display their trial marks made with neon crayons or paints. In students’ hands, light sticks become glowing Tinker Toys that allow light to be structured or sculpted. Dark towers made from trash cans or other classroom furnishings come to life with Glow Lite attachments. Students attach glow sticks to unremarkable forms such as plastic crystal vases and swim noodles to compose exciting light forms suspended in darkness.

Weaving with Light Young artists explore the possibilities of weaving using day-glow threads, tapes, or Glow Lite. Attached to cords or wires, students find interesting possibilities for tying, knotting, threading, and weaving strings of light. Holiday string lighting can also be added as a light supply to work with, pulling it through laundry baskets, tennis racquets, fly swatters, caned furnishings, and screens, weaving light through open patterns of openings.

Action Light Shows Children love to put on a show! They are masters of playing with flashlights, adding all kinds of filtering devices. Flashlights, signal lights, star machines, day-glow strips, and stickers are some of the media to consider for choreographed light-dances, lights worn as costumes in fashion shows, or projected onto walls, floors, or ceilings. Children’s active

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and moving bodies animate lights of futuristic puppet shows in the dark. Lights wrapped around moving hands and bodies or attached to moving hoops and jump ropes are examples of objects that add excitement to student action light exhibits. Students dance to music with lights attached to hats, buttonholes, belts, and ears—light-masked students, vaulting lights through a dark space.

Light Environments Under a student desk awaits Barbie’s dance club. Smaller scale Glow Lite environments are built inside shopping bags to test in the dark, then young artists transfer these ideas to the room as a large-scale canvas. Inside a pop-up tent, or under a clear plastic umbrella to be swirled, teams of students create what they describe as a light-up video enclosure, an art class planetarium, a light up aquarium under a table, or a 3D videogame inside a plastic comforter-bag. The festive holiday light arrangements admired on the street can begin in decorating anything, hanging lights to everything in the art room.

Parade Cincinnati’s Blink event begins with a parade highlighted by students’ light art. The summer before Blink, youth apprentices worked with artists such as Kenton Brett to create robot costumes for the parade, or artist Jesse Mooney-Bullock to create galactic light beasts. The parade with student groups included light puppets, students wearing light costumes, handmade lanterns, and light floats with kinetic light sculptures. To join in the celebrations, many children brought their own light devices and inventions. Throughout the festival there were spaces for kids to create, such as helping to paint a light up mural and other family light projects sponsored by Art Spaces.

Teachers Working with scheduled community events can be a great way to highlight a school art program and represent student artists at community art endeavors. Making art for a local parade can be an important opportunity for school artists to perform and showcase their works. Students can be involved to propose, design and build installations, and experiment with new forms of video projection in art classes. This is the time to bring out the old slide projectors and film and filmstrip projectors, to refresh with old devices new ways light shows can be presented. Working with the school’s computer and robotics teachers can originate new forms of kinetic light art, costumes, and parade floats. Pulled like an old fashion pull toy or by bikes, or white horses, students can dream to the sky possibilities and work to realize unique solutions. Initial questions can promote a broad scale in brainstorming. What would be amazing to do to transform the space, buildings, nature, and of course people with light? What spaces

Community Art

and forms in town could serve as unusual canvases for projections? What light sources could be used or made to overlay urban forms to be altered and come alive at night? What are the resources we have to accomplish our visions/sketches? What would we need? What needs to be borrowed or built? Preliminary visions are valuable and exciting to keep track of as a scaffolding to build upon, even if they will need to be changed or modified. Thinking big, dreaming large, not being tied to practical considerations at first is an important step toward an affordable, manageable, but still as exciting outcome. Many initial ideas need to be solicited, sorted, with the understanding that these important visions do not always match the final production. Young artists step up to the challenge of large environmental projects, they respond with unbelievable inventions and building plans.

Other Light Shows Almost instantly an empty ghost of a town can be switched on and come alive with streams, patterns, and textures and colors of light. The lights energize and draw large groups of spirited spectators who spend long periods intently watching and interacting with fast sequenced creations. Holiday light shows have also “charged up” with the addition of computers and new bulbs that provide amazing opportunities in the hands of creative homeowners. This same technology can revitalize the audience at a local zoo, or an entire park, transforming these venues into a place for a winter art show. People all over the world take excursions to view holiday lights of individual homes, store windows, and shopping malls. In Lexington, KY, as well as cities the world over, people slow down or stop their vehicles in the middle of the street to see holiday lights displayed in a local neighborhood. Homes and public buildings passed by daily with little notice by individuals become the owner’s artistic playground during the holidays, attracting large audiences. Blink was not a walk-by museum event. Cincinnati bathed in imaginative creations with light became as powerful as any visual statement artists could offer society. People were visibly joyful in pondering, discussing, and being entertained while slowly passing through light and darkness into newly created environments.

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Chapter Outline What life-changing experiences derive from the study of environments for students? What visual breakthroughs can occur? What is so interesting about community spaces? What ideas and inspiration can students derive from environmental studies? What does it mean to be connected to a neighborhood, a community visually? How does the environment change over time? How does one prepare individuals and secondary school art classes to study and engage with community art? How does the model for community-based art education change?

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Experiencing beauty in the world has the capacity to provide people with energy. Simple things like sitting under the forms of mature trees have the ability to inspire us. Magnificently built communities can provide hope. What pleasing and comfortable places we often inhabit! From our home to the expansion of magnificent larger outdoor “rooms” in our backyards, parks, and school playgrounds! This book is about the role art classes play in developing mindfulness of the greatness of nature and what human talent has designed. Art teaching can encourage students to listen in silence, to touch, and to take in, to see the environment freshly. It is also about how artists have interacted with those spaces and how young artists’ voices can be part of those spaces. As Rogers and Hammerstein embedded in our consciousness in the great lyrics form the Broadway Musical, Oklahoma, “Oh What a Beautiful Day,” we live in a beautiful world where oak trees smile at us, and we see our smiling reflections in scores of puddles or monumental glass windows. As people and artists, we drink from the wonders of the environment that connects us. Art education should encourage an expansion of the awareness of the surroundings. I wrote this book to exemplify how the environment can nourish our young artists’ thoughts, plans, and lives. Our landscapes and streetscapes are essential places to study art so students can see the world in different ways and discover its many riches. Art teachers can walk with you, and art teachers can explore with you,

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share the communion with speeding cars listened to from under a highway overpass, engaging silently and actively with the world. This book hints at the critical art learning of receiving our freedom by being outside. Exploring the natural world and the built community offers the most comprehensive art lesson, a search through all that life has to offer. School trips are unforgettable outside experiences that stay with us, replayed in our minds beyond most other in-school art lessons. Students rejoice in what they have, the great rooms, places, and treasures of their community. This book suggests to art teachers that perhaps an essential task is not the assigning of school art projects but teaching students to walk in the world with consciousness, awareness, awe, interests, curiosity looking for creative clues to continuous learning and artmaking. ●●

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This book hopes to encourage and prepare students with twenty-first century skills needed to be consumers of visual experiences. This book hopes to support and promote independent artists to not entirely rely on their classroom interaction for creative ideas and insight. When in the grocery store or walking down the street, from a small town to a large city, artists should have an understanding that even the simplest sightings and finds have artistic value; a place might be seen or experienced numerous times, yet something different can always be found. This book asks art teachers and students to take a more in-depth look at the environment and search for visual meaning and inspiration for classroom art. This book invites the reader to think about the artistic innovation that can exist in everything from small everyday objects to park benches, playgrounds, and airports. Students’ community finds contribute to visual resources and experiences and become teachable moments in the art room. This book asks art teachers to consider alternatives to the same general “desk-top art” lessons taught for the past seventy-five years. The art world is changing, and students have to become the next generation of designers and builders, innovators, and futurists. While traditional art and the places where art is seen and conceived are still important, we need to prepare artists of the twenty-first century to look for answers frequently beyond art museums and art classes. This book asks art teachers and students to observe and teach about the strong relationship between people, art, and the environment. When community art lessons are neglected and young artists find it difficult to see art beyond art classroom projects, people in the future will suffer. This book asks students to regularly take walks out of the art room, using the finds and resources of where students live.

What life-changing experiences derive from the study of environments for students? What visual breakthroughs can occur? A visual earthquake might happen over time, subtly, or not at all. A student walking into the grocery store and seeing the possibilities of found treasure or bringing into class a well-designed

Conclusion

packaging to share is an accomplishment. While seemingly minor, we are empowering students to see the world as the largest art supply store and resource for art ideas. The effects are on students’ artmaking, their perception of more open art boundaries, and seeing art everywhere, influencing how art students learn to see the impact of art in the world.

What is so interesting about community spaces? Community space allows for communication between groups of people who would not always interact with one another. From intimate spaces in courtyards to larger town squares, no matter the size, a shared sense of community can be created. Even something as simple as the type and availability of outdoor seating allows for different interactions and experiences. For example, bean bag chairs on the grass are going to create a laid-back atmosphere, while chairs and tables are more formal, and create the possibility for exciting groupings. Community spaces are attractive because people create purposeful ways to interact with each other, areas that foster visual meaning from murals, and street art, to public sculptures and interest in landscaping.

What ideas and inspiration can students derive from environmental studies? From understanding the environment, students can learn about space and interactions between themselves and the world. Students can begin to understand building and design elements, styles, use of different materials, and how art adds to a community. Inspirations are endless: finding patterns, qualities of lines, color combinations, variations in open and closed spaces, outdoor changes in light, and visual elements. Taking note of their finds, students bring a wealth of interests, knowledge, and surprises back to classroom art practice.

What does it mean to be connected to a neighborhood, a community visually? A neighborhood is connected visually to a broader community through passages, pathways, and other types of visual changes and elements. A community putting in a playground, mural, large outdoor sculpture, and painted electrical boxes has the potential to involve and affect the larger community. Groups of people cross and congregate in spaces differently and identify a part of town by structural symbols, plazas, and other landmarks. In Lexington, KY, we have a park with sculptures of racehorses. That area in the city has become defined by the corner park and its cast horses. People take pictures with the horses for every occasion, and they congregate around them.

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How does the environment change over time? Every time I take a walk downtown, there are alterations, renovations, and significant changes. My husband, a photographer, often documents the same areas as it changes through the seasons, through wear, weathering, or as new things are added or demolished. Some of these are subtle and others severe in their effect on the street and neighborhood. By knowing the intricate details of our community, we recognize, document, and discuss changes. It is easy not to be aware of changes, but recognition and awareness are a part of being an artist. A valuable lesson in the art room is to teach students to be informed, critical, and aware in their seeing, to look for details, which others may pass over. A neighborhood exists as a portrait of its population, sense of design, and value. Changing the way a room is painted or remodeled, or a house renovated creates aesthetic shifts in a street or in the community. On a larger scale, a city is a collective form of art and design based on the different people who live in it. The space shifts as people and neighborhoods change during a different time of day, traffic changes, or population shifts. Influx of new people, or more people, for example, creates unique needs for places to sit, lights in dark Alleys, or community spaces to play and learn. A city evolves and grows based on its population’s use of space. When you look at your city or town, you can learn about its history and collect evidence of different changes. Communities exist at the physical level, as well as on a social scale. Art students can study their neighborhood and community’s different aspects to understand and plan for change. It is suitable for a student to understand their town and be able to reference other places they have been, or wish to go, both physically and in their imagination. Art classes can continuously envision making changes, playing with models for future cities in nearby neighborhoods, or distant planets.

How does one prepare individuals and secondary school art classes to study and engage with community art? Preparing to engage with the community can be as simple as getting out of the art room and beyond the school doors. One can go fact-finding, mapping, or photographing without a single purpose. Often the experience itself is what triggers ideas, so don’t be overprepared. Another starting point can be listing or sketching some goals to look for. It is valuable to take object collection bags and idea collection surfaces like sketchbooks and cameras to document the outdoor safari, and to make plans how the experience, the finds, and elevated thoughts could be followed up in the classroom.

Conclusion

How does the model for community-based art education change? The way people have interacted with the community has changed over time as has communitybased art education. Today, postmodern views on the arts explore connections between individual expression and looking at social and political issues. Today, many programs are about engaging young people in activities ranging from urban planning to poetry about people and places in their neighborhoods. Today’s concerned art teachers often explore with students how we use our environment to become a deep space to share with others. In my teaching, I have worked with art students to solve the current problems of the environment, and social issues, including transportation, the need for trees, and outdoor spaces for social needs by considering art and design as part of the solution. Art teaching needs to seriously stress and focus on involving young students in changing their community through art and contribute to significant world issues through creative design solutions. As the world’s needs change and acute answers for survival are needed, art classes are in the best position to engage freethinkers and imaginative builders of a new world that our students can help to shape.

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Introduction 1

“Manifesto,” Learning Outside the Classroom, July 2020, http://www.lotc.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2011/03/G1.-LOtC-Manifesto.pdf 2 London, Peter (1994) Step Outside: Community-Based Art Education. 3 Walmart can, of course, be replaced with other major retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA Carrefour, and Monoprix. 4 Richard Florida, Rise of the Creative Class ([S.L.]: Basic Books, 2019). 5 Anita J. Ellis, Walter E. Langsam, and Robert A. Flischel, An Expression of the Community: Cincinnati Public Schools’ Legacy of Art and Architecture (Cincinnati, OH: Art League Press, 2001), http://books.google.com/books 6 web. 2021. Public Art for Public Schools. [online] Available at: [Accessed March 11, 2021]. 7 http://schools.nyc.gov/community/facilities/PublicArt/Architecture/default.htm 8 http://schools.nyc.gov/community/facilities/PublicArt/Architecture/default.htm 9 Elizabeth Kramer, “Billboards Aim to Drive Art Lovers to Museum and the Web,” WFPL, January 14, 2008, http://archives.wfpl.org/2008/01/14/billboards-aim-to-drive-art-lovers-tomuseum-and-the-web/ 10 Katrina Weier, “Empowering Young Children in Art Museums: Letting Them Take the Lead,” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 5, no. 1 (2004): 106–16, 44. 11 “Happy Space—Global,” Monocle, January 2019, https://monocle.com/magazine/theforecast/2019/happy-space/ 12 “Exploring the Design-Happiness Connection,” The Happy City, January 2020, https:// thehappycity.com/what-we-do/

Chapter 1 1 2 3 4

Dalya Alberge, “Luxury Hotels Becoming Fine Art Spaces,” Financial Times, October 22, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/59d78f94-6d06-11e5-8171-ba1968cf791a Alberge, “Luxury Hotels Becoming Fine Art Spaces.” Exhibitions, 21c Museum Hotels, April 11, 2020, https://www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ Exhibitions, 21c Museum Hotels.

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“art’otel berlin mitte,” Radisson Hotels, April 11, 2020, https://www.artotels.com/berlin-hotelde-d-10179/germiart/optional/arttour/detail 6 Nick Trend, “The Picture-Perfect Savoy Suit,” The Telegraph, May 31, 2016, https://www.telegraph. co.uk/luxury/travel/savoy-hotel-london-monet-suite-picture-perfect-views/ 7 John O’Ceallaigh, “Luxury Hotels with Artists-in-Residence,” The Telegraph, April 2, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/hotels/articles/Luxury-hotels-with-artists-in-residence/ 8 “Carlton Arms Art Project,” Carlton Arms Hotel, July 19, 2020, http://carltonarms.com/carltonarms-art-project/ 9 Jonathan Vatner, “For New Hotels Art Isn’t Merely Decoration,” The New York Times, May 1, 2009. 10 Vatner, “For New Hotels.” 11 Vatner, “For New Hotels.” 12 “Corinthia Hotel London Artist in Residence,” Corinthia Hotel, July 27, 2020, http://www. thecornershoppr.com/client/corinthia-hotel-london-artist-in-residence/ 13 Martha White, “Hotels Aim to Stand Out With Local Art,” The New York Times, June 6, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/business/hotels-aim-to-stand-out-with-local-art.html 14 “Arts in Healthcare,” University of Kentucky, July 1, 2020, https://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/arts-inhealthcare 15 “Arts in Healthcare.” 16 Jeremy Baron and Lesley Greene, “Art in Hospitals,” British Medical Journal 289 (December 1984): 22–9. 17 Naj Wikoff, Cultures of Care: A Study of Arts Programs in U.S. Hospitals (Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts, 2004), 2. 18 Wikoff, Cultures of Care, 8. 19 Wikoff, Cultures of Care, 7. 20 “Arts in Healthcare.” 21 Laura Landro, “More Hospitals Use the Healing Powers of Public Art,” Wall Street Journal (2014), http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-hospitals-use-the-healing-powers-of-public-art–1408404629 22 Landro, “More Hospitals.” 23 Elizabeth Stamp and Allyssia Alleyne, “Hospital Designs That Are Changing the Way You’re Cared For,” CNN, June 20, 2017, http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/19/design/healthcare-clinicdesigns/index.html 24 Jacob Urist, “Why Do Colleges Have So Much Art?” The Atlantic, November 1, 2016, https:// www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/11/why-do-colleges-have-so-much-art/506039/ 25 Erinn Batykefer, “5 Ways Libraries Cultivate Community Art,” Huffington Post, December 6, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/erinn-batykefer/5-ways-libraries-cultivat_b_5439865.html 26 Tina Hohmann, “New Aspects of Library Design,” LIBER Quarterly 16, no. 2 (2006), doi:http:// doi.org/10.18352/lq.7841 27 Laura Ewen, “Painting with Purpose: Libraries are Helping Patrons Discover Their Inner Bob Ross and Painting Happy Little Trees across the Country,” November 1, 2018, https:// americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2018/11/01/bob-ross-painting-with-purpose/ 28 Piotr Kowalczyk, “10 Most Extraordinary Mobile Libraries,” Ebook Friendly, March 18, 2018, https://ebookfriendly.com/extraordinary-mobile-libraries/ 29 Sarah Peters, “The Floating Library,” July 19, 2020, https://thefloatinglibrary.org/ 30 “MSU Libraries: Art Library,” Michigan State University, July 19, 2020, https://lib.msu.edu/art/ 31 Carol Smallwood, Bringing the Arts Into the Library (Chicago, IL: ALA Editions, 2013).

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32 Tim McKeough, “The Most Spectacular Libraries around the World,” Architectural Digest, November 1, 2013, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/most-beautiful-libraries-trinitycollege-mushashino-bodleian-sainte-genevieve-article 33 Hohmann, “New Aspects of Library Design.” 34 To read more about Mid-Century Modern buildings in Lexington visit: Brandi Andres, “Midcentury Modern Building in Lexington, Kentucky Faces Looming Demolition,” last modified May 13, 2015, https://www.dwell.com/article/midcentury-modern-building-in-lexingtonkentucky-faces-looming-demolition-1d40436b 35 Jamie Mitchell, “The Architecture of Money: The World’s Best Bank Buildings,” last modified October 15, 2013, http://www.designcurial.com/news/the-architecture-of-money 36 Ricky Berkey, “Week 47 (Irwin-Union Bank Downtown—Now the Irwin Conference Center,” last modified December 14, 2014, http://52weeks.rickyberkey.org/2011/12/29/week-47/ 37 “Continuity and Vision: 40 Years of the Deutsche Bank Collection,” Art Works: The Deutsche Bank Global Art Program, March 20, 2020, https://art.db.com/index_en.htm 38 “Continuity and Vision,” Art Works. 39 Eben Harrell and Frances Perraudin, “Cultural Assets: Banks Stock Up on Art,” Time Magazine, October 24, 2010, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024218,00.html 40 Eva Kahn, “The Artist Who Beautified California Banks,” New York Times, June 9, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/arts/design/the-artist-who-beautified-california-banks.html 41 Daniel, “Thomas Edison’s Vitascope,” Atelier Tally, April 11, 2010, https://ateliertally.com/thomasedisons-vitascope/ 42 Lizzie Fison, “New Photographs Offer a Look Inside a Modernist Theatre in Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh,” Dezeen, May 21, 2017, https://www.dezeen.com/2017/05/21/photography-neelamtheatre-le-corbusier-chandigarh-aditya-prakash/ 43 Facebooker_100000644610001, “History of the Movie Theater,” Time Toast, June 20, 2020, https:// www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-the-movie-theater 44 Alexandra Serrano, “50 Unconventional Theaters,” Trend Hunter, October 25, 2012, https://www. trendhunter.com/slideshow/unconventional-theaters 45 The Kentucky Theater in Lexington, KY, http://www.kentuckytheater.com/ 46 Arthur Chandler, “City Halls of Europe,” ArthurChandler, June 14, 2020, http://www. arthurchandler.com/europe 47 “12 Big and Bold City Halls,” Governing, July 1, 2020, https://www.governing.com/photos/bigbold-city-halls.html 48 Adams Kerby, “Ever Dreamed of Having Your Art Hang in City Hall? Now’s Your Chance,” Courier Journal, June 14, 2018, https://www.courierjournal.com/story/entertainment/arts/ visual/2018/06/14/louisville-metro-council-art-city-hall/701918002/ 49 Claire Sasko, “Here’s a Sneak Preview of City Hall’s Awesome Holiday Light Show,” Philadelphia Magazine, November 20, 2017, https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/11/20/light-showphiladelphia-city-hall/ 50 “Creative Capitol,” Colorado Creative Industries, July 1, 2020, https://coloradocreativeindustries. org/opportunities/creative-capitol/ 51 Eileen Cunniffee, “Sanctuary Shared: Artists Animate Empty Spaces in Houses of Worship,” NPQ, July 6, 2015, https://nonprofitquarterly.org/sanctuary-shared-artists-animate-empty-spaces-inhouses-of-worship/ 52 Beckwith, John, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1979).

Notes

Chapter 2 1 “Introduction,” ArtPlace America, June 06, 2017, www.artplaceamerica.org/about/introduction 2 “Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan,” Transportation for America, September 2017, http://t4america.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Arts-Culture-FieldScan.pdf 3 “Arts, Culture and Transportation,” 6. 4 Grace Murano, “12 of the World’s Strangest Vehicles,” Oddee, June 2, 2009, https://www.oddee. com/item_96693.aspx 5 Messy Nessy, “Fantastic French Publicity Caravans of Yesteryear,” Messy Nessy, May 29, 2018, https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/05/29/fantastic-french-publicity-caravans-of-yesteryear/ 6 Art Car Museum, April 21, 2020, http://artcarmuseum.com/ 7 Truck Art Project, April 21, 2020, http://truck-art-project.com/?lang=en 8 Jamie Colsa Abraham La Calle, “Putting Art on Wheels,” The New York Times, August 30, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/arts/design/painted-spanish-trucks-jaime-colsa-abrahamlacalle.html 9 La Calle, “Putting Art on Wheels.” 10 Robin Cembalest, “Pedal Pushers: How Art Museums Are Promoting Bike Culture,” Art News, July 18, 2013, http://www.artnews.com/2013/07/18/art-museums-embrace-bicycles/ 11 “Art of the Bicycle: Wheels Reinvented,” Museum of Science + Industry Chicago, April 21, 2020, https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/exhibits/art-of-the-bicycle/ 12 Boardpusher, April 21, 2020, https://www.boardpusher.com/ 13 Ana Bambic, “10 Best Art Skate Decks,” Widewalls, March 12, 2014, https://www.widewalls. ch/10-best-street-art-skate-decks/andrew-schoultz/ 14 Jacob Gallagher, “Can a Skateboard Be a Work of Art,” The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-a-skateboard-be-a-work-of-art–1542646248 15 Benjamin Schneider, “Why Little Vehicles Will Conquer the City,” City Lab, June 21, 2018, https:// www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/06/welcome-to-the-tiny-vehicle-age/563342/ 16 Matthew Chavez, “Subway Therapy,” Subway Therapy, May 13, 2020, http://www.subwaytherapy.com/ 17 “Art in Transit: Metro Stations in Paris,” NY Habitat, August 13, 2012, https://www.nyhabitat.com/ blog/2012/08/13/art-metro-stations-paris/ 18 “20 Super Creative Subway Ads,” Neat Designs, June 11, 2012, http://neatdesigns.net/20-supercreative-subway-ads/ 19 “Poetry in Motion,” Poetry Society of America, July 19, 2020, https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/ poetry/poetry_in_motion/ 20 “The Subway as Art Experience—Surreal Architecture in Stockholm,” The Allplan Blog, March 22, 2018, https://blog.allplan.com/en/subway-as-an-art-experience 21 Matt Johnson, “Metro Has Eleven Types of Station Architecture. Learn Them All with This One Interactive Map,” Greater Greater Washington, October 6, 2014, https://ggwash.org/view/36068/ metro-has-eleven-types-of-station-architecture-learn-them-all-with-this-one-interactive-map 22 R. Daley, Chicago Airport System; Art and Exhibits Program, 2007, www.flychicago.com/ artandexhibits/ 23 Suzanne Carmichael, “Stuck at the Airport? Then Look at the Art,” New York Times, December 15, 1991, www.nytimes.com/1991/12/15/travel/stuck-at-the-airport-then-look-at-theart.html?pagew anted=all&src=pm

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24 Carmichael, “Stuck at the Airport,” 4. 25 Carmichael, “Stuck at the Airport,” 2. 26 Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London, England: Routledge, 1995), 12. 27 David Williamson Shaffer, Kurt R. Squire, Richard Halverson, and James P. Gee, “Video Games and the Future of Learning,” Phi Delta Kappan 87, no. 2 (2005): 105. 28 Lucy Lippard, Off the Beaten Track: Tourism Art and Place (New York, NY: The New Press, 1999). 29 Duncan, Civilizing Rituals, 14. 30 Duncan, Civilizing Rituals, 6. 31 Lippard, Off the Beaten Track, 4. 32 Lippard, Off the Beaten Track, 5.

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George Szekely, Play and Creativity in Art Teaching (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 45. Michael Day and Al Hurwitz, Children and Their Art: Art Education for Elementary and Middle Schools, 9th ed. (Boston, MA: Cengage, 2012). Jemima Sissons, “When Art and Food Unite: Restaurants and Galleries Bring a New Appreciation to the Dining Experience,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/news/ articles/SB10000872396390443995604578000141840105764 Jordan Kisner, “Eateries Where Brilliant Art Rivals Outstanding Food for the Diner’s Focus,” Departures, December 7, 2011, http://www.departures.com/art-culture/art-design/bestrestaurant-art-collections Kisner, “Eateries Where Brilliant Art.” Charles Perry, “Before There Was Hard Rock …,” Los Angeles Times, January 7, 20040, http:// articles.latimes.com/2004/jan/07/food/fo-theme7 Nate Barksdale, “Fries with That? A Brief History of Drive-Thru Dining,” History.com, August 22, 2018, https://www.history.com/news/fries-with-that-a-brief-history-of-drive-thru-dining La Colombe d’Or, July 19, 2020, www.la-colombe-dor.com. “Terrace Plaza Hotel,” Som, January 12, 2020, http://www.som.com/projects/terrace_plaza_hotel “Saul Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati makes Cincinnati Art Museum’s Schmidlapp Gallery debut in February,” Cincinnati Art Museum, January 17, 2018, https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/ about/press-room/steinberg/ “Terrace Plaza Hotel.” Melanie Abrams, “Art & Agrave; La Carte: How Restaurants Are Becoming the New Art Galleries,” Independent, August 28, 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-anddrink/features/art-agrave-la-carte-how-restaurants-are-becoming-the-new-art-galleries-900446. html “Home,” Zagreus Projekt, July 19, 2020, https://www.zagreus.net/de/ Abrams, “Art & Agrave.” Moira Hodgson, “No Trendies at Hirst’s Pharmacy, Just Nice, Rather English Food,” The Observer, April 27, 1998, http://observer.com/1998/04/no-trendies-at-hirsts-pharmacy-just-nice-ratherenglish-food/#ixzz3DOpGNoUT

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16 17 18 19

Sissons, “When Art and Food Unite.” Sissons, “When Art and Food Unite.” https://www.sushisamba.com/ Clara Lindh, “Hong Kong Restaurants Blur the Boundary Between Dining and Art,” CNN, September 12, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/11/foodanddrink/hong-kong-art-food-pairing/

Chapter 4 John Leland, “This City Is an Overcrowded, Illogical, Inhospitable Marvel,” The New York Times, April 25, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/berenice-abbott-portraits-ofmodernity-new-york.html 2 Alan Pert, “Build Me Up: How Architecture Can Affect Emotions,” The Conversation, March 6, 2014, http://theconversation.com/build-me-up-how-architecture-can-affect-emotions-22950 3 Ann Parks, “How an Adolescent Montessori Program Prepares Students for High School,” Montessori Rocks, June 29, 2020, https://montessorirocks.org/how-a-montessori-adolescentprogram-prepares-students-for-high-school/ 4 Edwin Heathcote, “Manhole Covers as Markers of History, Society—and Space Travel?” Financial Times, March 31, 2017, https://www.ft.com/manhole 5 “These Artists are Guerrilla Printing Manhole Covers onto Shirts and Bags,” Twisted Sifter, February 5, 2020, https://twistedsifter.com/2016/08/guerilla-printing-with-manhole-covers/ Corey Kilgannon, “Manhole Impressionists,” New York Times, June 27, 2018, https://www. nytimes.com/2018/06/27/nyregion/manhole-impressionist.html 6 Terri Altherr (pandas4me), “Manhole & Storm Drain Cover Art,” Pinterest, Board, February 5, 2020, https://www.pinterest.com/pandas4me/manhole-storm-drain-cover-art/?lp=true 7 Mockery, “The Cincinnati Subway,” Atlas Obscura, February 5, 2020, https://www.atlasobscura. com/places/the-cincinnati-subway-cincinnati-ohio 8 Vanessa Yurkevich, “Louisville Mega Cavern Holds More Than Its Share of Secrets,” CNN, June 2017, https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/kentucky-cavern/index.html 9 Anika Robertson, “ATL Leaders Dedicate Art Installation ‘Flight Paths,’” Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, November 14, 2017, https://www.atl.com/city-atl-leaders-dedicateart-installation-flight-paths/ 10 Christopher Jobson, “80-Year-Old Wooden Escalators Are Repurposed as a Sculptural Ribbon by Artist Chris Fox,” This is Colossal, December 5, 2017, https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/12/ interloop-escalator-sculpture/ 11 Sara Barnes, “19 Stunning Staircases Transformed by Artists Around the World,” My Modern Met, January 6, 2017, https://mymodernmet.com/stunning-stair-art/ 12 Harriet Baskas, 2020. A Short History Of Airport Moving Walkways. [online] USA Today, June 28, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2016/09/28/airport-moving-walkwayshistory/91187032/ 13 Christo and Werner Spies, The Running Fence Project–Christo, (New York: Abrams, 1980), https:// archive.org/details/runningfenceproj00chri 14 Christo, Running Fence Project for Sonoma & Marin, California, 1976- (Los Angeles: Independents New Work, 1970). 1

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Chapter 5 Kristin Conrad, “World’s Most Beautiful City Parks,” Travel + Leisure, Meredith Corporation, May 02, 2013, https://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/worlds-most-beautiful-city-parks? 2 “Town Branch Commons,” Town Branch Park, LFUCG, June 20, 2020, https://www. townbranchpark.org/commons-index 3 Emma Coleman, “The Rise of Pop-Up Parks,” We Are Commons, April 8, 2019, https:// wearecommons.us/2019/04/08/the-rise-of-pop-up-parks/ 4 Grace Cammarn, “The Lasting Benefits of Pop-Up Parks,” CEOs for Cities, July 6, 2016, https:// ceosforcities.org/the-lasting-benefits-of-pop-up-parks/ 5 Andrea Chin, “ParkCycle Swarm is a Mobile Greenspace by Rebar Group + N55,” Design Boom, August 21, 2013, https://www.designboom.com/design/parkcycle-swarm-is-a-mobile-greenspace-by-rebar-group-n55/ 6 “Celebrate Park(ing) Day with ASLA,” American Society for Landscape Architects, July 27, 2020, https://www.asla.org/contentdetail.aspx?id=46872 7 Coleman, “The Rise of Pop-Up Parks.” 8 Jack Becker, “Public Art: An Essential Component of Creating Communities,” Monograph, March 2004, https://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/PublicArtMonograph_JBecker.pdf 9 “Millennium Park,” City of Chicago, July 27, 2020, https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/ supp_info/millennium_park.html 10 “Arts + Ecology Residency Programs,” Alliance of Artists Communities, July 27, 2020, https:// www.artistcommunities.org/residencies 1

Chapter 6 Susan G. Solomon, American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space (Hanover, CT: University Press of New England, 2005), 8. 2 Solomon, American Playgrounds, 8. 3 Juliet Kinchin, Aidan O’Connor, Tanya Harrod, Medea Hoch, Pablo Helguera, Francis Luca, Maria Paola Maino, Amy Fumiko Ogata, David Senior, and Sarah Suzuki, Century of the Child: Growing by Design 1900–2000 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012). 4 Solomon, American Playgrounds, 7. 5 Solomon, American Playgrounds, 52. 6 Lia Sutton, “Adventure Playground: A Children’s World in the City,” Adventure Playgrounds, November 10, 2012, http://adventureplaygrounds.hampshire.edu/adventureplay.pdf. 7 Francis Wardle, “Outdoor Play: Designing, Building, and Remodeling Playgrounds for Young Children,” Early Childhood News 9, no. 2 (2017): 36–42. 8 Laurel Graeber, “Science and Secrets in New York City Playground,” The New York Times, April 14, 2011. 9 Peter Heseltine and John Holborn, Playgrounds: The Planning, Design and Construction of Play Environments (New York: Nichols Pub. Co., 1987), 11. 10 Gilles A. Tiberghien, Land Art (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995). 11 https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/149 1

Notes

12 Brian Ashcraft, “The Best Japanese Snow Sculptures of 2019,” Kotaku, February 4, 2019, https:// kotaku.com/the-best-japanese-snow-sculptures-of-2019-1832319267. 13 “Visitor Info,” High Line, City of New York, June 29, 2020, https://www.thehighline.org/visit/. 14 Joshua Bright, “The High Line: A Place to See and Be Seen,” The New York Times, December 12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/realestate/the-high-line-a-place-to-see-and-be-seen.html. 15 Editor, “Along the High Line, Window Installations by Spencer Finch Depicts [sic] Hudson River,” Arts Observer, January 12, 2012, http://www.artsobserver.com/2012/01/05/along-the-high-linecolorful-window-installation-by-spencer-finch-depicts-hudson-river/. 16 “Art in Public Transit Project FAQs,” Federal Transit Authority, United States Department of Transportation, June 29, 2020, https://www.transit.dot.gov/art-public-transit-projects/faq. 17 Scott Ball, “Local Students Think Outside the Bus Stop for Design Challenge,” Rivard Report, Institute for Nonprofit News, December 14, 2015, https://therivardreport.com/bus-stops-createdat-kids-annual-design-challenge/ 18 Marta Bausells and Guardian readers, “Books About Town: Find London’s Literary Benches And Share Your Photos,” The Guardian, July 2, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/books/ booksblog/2014/jul/02/books-about-town-find-londons-literary-benches-and-share-your-photos 19 Carla Ward, “Giant Books Are Coming to the Streets of Lexington. Who’s Behind This Plot Twist?” Lexington Herald Leader, December 3, 2017, https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/ counties/fayette-county/article187824224.html. 20 “ABC Promise Partnership,” Green Tree Plastics, February 7, 2020, https://www.greentreeplastics. com/abc-program/ 21 Milica Miletic Serbedzija, “Trends in Public Seating,” Design Communication, April 14, 2018, https://www.designcommunication.net/design/trends-in-public-seating-design 22 Andrius, “15 Most Creative Public Benches,” deMilked, February 7, 2020, https://www.demilked. com/creative-public-benches-seats/ 23 Peretz, Hanan. “The History of Urban Street Lighting,” peretzarc, November 24, 2017. https:// www.peretzarc.com/post/2017/11/24/the-history-of-urban-street-lighting 24 53 West 53 Above MoMA, April 26, 2020, https://www.53w53.com/ 25 125 Greenwich St, April 26, 2020, https://www.125greenwich.com/building/ 26 “TINKERTOY,” K’nex, April 26, 2020, https://www.knex.com/tinkertoy 27 “Visitor Info,” High Line, City of New York, June 29, 2020, https://www.thehighline.org/visit/ 28 Joshua Bright, “The High Line: A Place to See and Be Seen,” The New York Times, December 12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/realestate/the-high-line-a-place-to-see-and-be-seen.html 29 Editor, “Along the High Line, Window Installations by Spencer Finch Depicts [sic] Hudson River,” Arts Observer, January 12, 2012, http://www.artsobserver.com/2012/01/05/along-the-high-linecolorful-window-installation-by-spencer-finch-depicts-hudson-river/ 30 “About this Project,” Creative Art of Structural and Civil Engineering, Princeton University, June 29, 2020, http://casce.princeton.edu/ 31 “Wrapped Bridges,” Christo and Jeanne-Claude, June 29, 2020, https://christojeanneclaude.net/ projects/wrapped-bridges 32 David Baqais, “Pedestrians to Take Over Budapest’s Liberty Bridge Again in the Summer,” Daily News Hungary, May 25, 2018, https://dailynewshungary.com/pedestrians-to-take-over-libertybridge-again-in-the-summer/ 33 Kistefos, June 29, 2020, https://kistefos.museum.no/ 34 “Walkway Over the Hudson,” Empire State Development, June 29, 2020, https://walkway.org/

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35 Illuminated River, The Illuminated River Project, Mayor of London, June 29 2020, https:// illuminatedriver.london/ 36 Helena Horton, “Paris Bans Lovers from Putting Locks on its Bridges and is Set to Remove all the Current Ones from Le Pont des Arts,” The Telegraph, May 30, 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/worldnews/europe/france/11640595/Paris-bans-lovers-from-putting-locks-on-its-bridgesand-is-set-to-remove-all-the-current-ones-from-Le-Pont-des-Arts.html 37 Oksana Tunikova, “A Brief History of Advertising: From Art To Nuisance,” Stop Ad Blog, April 30, 2018, https://stopad.io/blog/brief-history-of-advertising 38 “Lucian Bernhard,” Design is History, July 19, 2020, http://www.designishistory.com/1920/lucianbernhard/ 39 Laura Steward Heon, Peggy Diggs, and Joseph Thompson, Billboard Art on the Road: A Retrospective Exhibition of Artists’ Billboards of the Last 30 Years (North Adams, MA: Mass MoCA Publications, 1999. 40 “History of OOH,” Out of Home Advertising Association of America, June 29, 2020, https://oaaa. org/AboutOOH/OOHBasics/HistoryofOOH.aspx 41 Heon, Peggy Diggs, and Thompson, Billboard Art on the Road. 42 “About,” The Billboard Creative, https://www.thebillboardcreative.com/ 43 American Sign Museum, June 29, 2020, https://www.americansignmuseum.org/ 44 The Neon Museum, June 29, 2020, https://www.neonmuseum.org/ 45 Simon Doonan, Simon Doonan, June 29, 2020, http://www.simondoonan.com/windows/ 46 Sammy Maine and Ruth Hamilton, “18 Wonderful Window Display Designs,” Creative Bloq, December 3, 2018, https://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/window-display–1012920 47 Jonathan Glancey, “A History of the Department Store,” BBC, March 26, 2015, http://www.bbc. com/culture/bespoke/story/20150326-a-history-of-the-department-store/index.html 48 Kunle Campbell, “The Genesis of Holiday Window Displays,” Big Commerce, June 29, 2020, https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/holiday-window-retail-displays/ 49 Jane Audas, “Window Displays,” Love to Know, June 15, 2020, https://fashion-history.lovetoknow. com/fashion-clothing-industry/window-displays 50 “How a NYC Department Store Launched Warhol and Friends,” The Art Story Blog, June 15, 2020, https://www.theartstory.org/blog/how-a-nyc-department-store-launched-the-art-careers-ofwarhol-and-friends/ 51 Jane Audas, “Window Displays,” Love to Know. 52 Claes Oldenburg, The Store, MoMA, 2008, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/61054 53 Maine and Hamilton, “18 Wonderful Window Display Designs.”

Chapter 7 1

2 3

“Statue Depicts Black Men on Horseback ‘Speaking Back’ to People Looking at Confederate Monuments,” CBS, December 11, 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kehinde-wiley-rumorsof-war-statue-goes-up-in-richmond-virginia-blocks-from-confederate-monuments/ Suzanne Gerber, “Why Building Arts-Based Communities Is So Important,” Next Avenue, May 11, 2016, https://www.nextavenue.org/arts-based-communities/ https://roswellartsfund.org/initiatives/roswells-public-art-for-people-and-places/

Notes

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5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Jack Becker, Public Art: An Essential Component of Creating Communities, Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts, 2004, https://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/ PublicArtMonograph_JBecker.pdf Ray Elf and Jackson Mann, “Architecture’s Role in Erasing the Guggenheim’s Ongoing Legacy of Violent Extraction,” Failed Architecture, December 12, 2019, https://failedarchitecture.com/ architectures-role-in-erasing-the-guggenheims-ongoing-legacy-of-violent-extraction/?fbclid=Iw AR1FtX9VtBTa0R0lc0nfQUF49WKolu1Fld6jsfxB7EXNkut_LEEc6je8N00 “What Is Public Art?” Americans for the Arts, January 15, 2020, https://www.americansforthearts. org/by-topic/public-art Stephen Kinzer, “Art on Streets till the Cows Come Home,” The New York Times, August 20, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/20/arts/art-on-streets-till-the-cows-come-home.html “Our Story,” Cow Parade, July 18, 2020, http://www.cowparade.com/ “Art Education,” Mural Arts Philadelphia, July 18, 2020, https://www.muralarts.org/program/arteducation/ “Restorative Justice,” Mural Arts Philadelphia, July 18, 2020, https://www.muralarts.org/program/ restorative-justice/ “Santa Fe,” Creative Cities Network, June 15, 2020, https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/santa-fe “Santa Fe,” Creative Cities Network, June 15, 2020, https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities/santa-fe Kaid Benfield, “The Role of the Arts in Thriving Communities,” Smart Cities Dive, June 1, 2020, https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/role-arts-thrivingcommunities/27684/ Rain Barrel Art Projects, July 18, 2020, https://www.savelocalwaters.org/2020project.html Jessica Bingham, “Boxes, Kitchens, & Garages: Alternative Art Spaces,” Expose, July 18, 2020, http://exposeartmagazine.com/alternative-art-spaces-expose-art-house/ Peter Mastrosimone, “Museum Chief Explores New Breed of Art,” Queens Chronicle, January 24, 2013, http://www.qchron.com/qboro/stories/museum-chief-explores-new-breed-of-art/ article_9e42c746-b0f4-5ba0-8659-d4ff5349b1a1.html Mastrosimone, “Museum Chief.” Erin Wooters Yip, EW/Kce, “What Is Street Art? Vandalism, Graffiti or Public Art—Part I,” Art Radar, January 21, 2010, http://artradarjournal.com/2010/01/21/what-is-street-art-vandalismgraffiti-or-public-art-part-i/ Yip, “What Is Street Art?” “Everything You Need to Know about Pop-Up Galleries,” Artsy, February 12, 2020, https:// partners.artsy.net/resource/pop-up-galleries/ Howard Lee Reingold, “Virtual Community,” Britannica, February 20, 2020, https://www. britannica.com/topic/virtual-community Alex Williams, “How the Selfie Conquered the World,” The New York Times, March 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/style/how-the-selfie-conquered-the-world.html “About,” Museum of Selfies, January 15, 2020, https://museumofselfies.com/ “About,” Blink, Arts Wave, January 15, 2020, https://blink2019.com/about/ Mark Peterson, “How Cincinnati Salvaged the Nation’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood,” Politico, June 16, 2016, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/what-works-cincinnati-ohioover-the-rhine-crime-neighborhood-turnaround-city-urban-revitalization-213969

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INDEX

adventure playground 104–5 advertisement 44–5, 47–9, 132–5, 161 advocacy 52 airports 50–7 Albany International Airport 51–7 alternative museum sites 76–8 architecture 12 airport 55 banks 31–2 landscape 110 library 30–1 New York 37 subway 48–50 Artbreak Hotel 21 Art Cards 13 Arte Louise 20 Art in the Parks 99 art museums 12–13 Art’otel house 20 arts festivals 157–8 baby carriage 44 Balboa Park 93 banks 32–4 community landmarks 31–2 Becker, Jack 98–9 Beihai Park 94 benches 120, 121 bicycle racks 119 bikes 42–5 billboards 134–5 Billington, David 130 Blink event 163–7 Boboli gardens 94 Bourdieu, Pierre 147 brain research 23–4 bridges 129–32

Brooklyn Bridge 126, 129, 130 houses 114–15 Museum 13 Budapest Hungary 131 bus stops 117–19 cameras 161–2 Camus, Albert 56 Carlton Arms Hotel 21 Carmichael, Suzanne 52, 53 Central Park 94 Chicago Airport System 51 Christo and Jeanne-Claude 84, 106, 131, 165 Cincinnati Public Schools 11–12 cinema design 34–5 city hall 35–8 Cloud Gate 99 coffee 68–9 Color Factory 160 common land 94 community art 6–15, 51–3, 56, 145–6, 172, 173 defined 146 and design 75 museums vs. 146–7 projects 147–8 community murals 156–7 community spaces 9–10, 171 Corinthia Hotel 21 Cracker Barrel 62 Creative Cities Network 149 Creative Class, The (Florida) 7 Creative Placemaking 41, 145 Creative Playthings 102–3 Cubism 68 Cultures of Care: A Study of Arts Programs in U.S. Hospitals (Wikoff) 23

194

INDEX Dali, Salvador 137 Deutsche Bank 32 Dewey, John 101–2 Doonan, Simone 136 downtown 150–1 Dowton, David 20 drive-through culture 63–4 drones 162–4 Duncan, Carol 53–5 Duray, Henri 48 Earthworks and land 109–10 playgrounds and 107 Eastern Kentucky University 28 eating out 61 elementary students 76 elite restaurants 67–8 Epcot 63 facades 116 fall/spring 111 Fashion Institute of Technology 137 Federal Transportation Agency 118 fences 84–5 Fine Arts Fund 164 flashlight 81, 122 Flavin, Dan 163, 165 Florida, Richard 7 Flying Grass Carpets 97 food and art 59–60 carts and stands 64 classroom 70 coffee 68–9 drive-through 63–4 eating out 61 fast food 63 gallery 67–8 hotels and restaurants 64–5 murals 66 playing restaurant 60–1 restaurant art 61–2 themed restaurant 62–3 food vendors 44 Free Library Book boxes 116 Froebel, Fredrick 105

gallery openings 151–3 Gaudí, Antoni 99 Gerhard, Pat 68 Golden Gate Park 93 Google Earth 85 graffiti 47–8 Greenwood, John 118 Hadid, Zaha 82 Happy City, The 14, 15 Hard Rock Café 62 Haring, Keith 47 Heseltine, Peter 108 High Line 111–14, 127–9 facades 116 houses 114–15 lawn decoration 116 walkways 116 highways 85–6 Hirst, Damien 62, 67 historic park 95–6 Hohmann, Tina 29 Holborn, John 108 holiday light shows 167 hospital 22–4 art teaching experience 24–5 Hostile Architecture 121 hotels 19–20, 64–5. see also food and art art-in-residence 20–1 identity 21–2 museums 20 houses 114–15 Ibirapuera Park 94 Illuminated River 131 imagination playground 105–6 indoor playgrounds 107 installations 155, 156 interactive art 154 Irwin-Union Bank 31 Jacobs Medical Center 24 Jeffri, Joan 32 Jeron, Karl Heinz 67 Jetsons, The 126 JFK 52

INDEX Johns, Jasper 137 Junk Playground 104 Kahn, Eve 33 Kahn, Louis 103 Keukenhof park 94 Kids Initiating Design Solutions (K.I.D.S) 119 Knapp, Walter 148 Kouwenhoven, John Atlee 73

murals 145, 147–9, 156–7 community 156–7 restaurant 65, 66 Murdock, William 122 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 102–3 museums 53–4, 56–7 art 12–13 vs. community art 146–7 sites 76–8

La Goulue 132 Land Art/Earth Art 109–10 Landro, Laura 23–4 landscape architecture 110 large city parks 92–5 lawn decoration 116 lemonade stands 64 library 28–9 architecture 30–1 art in 29–30 mobile 29 soft services 29 light rail 118 Lippard, Lucy 54, 55 logo 133–4 looking down 78, 79

Nagel, Catherine 93 nature reserves 98 neighborhood 171, 172 neighborhood park 92–5 neon 163–5 New York City Public Schools 12 New York Public Library 28 Noguchi, Isamu 103

McConnel Springs 98 manhole cover 80 Marriott Hotel 22 Matisse, Henri 37, 67, 95 Meat Packing District 112, 128 metro 46–9 Metropolitan Museum of Art 53 Michigan State University 29 Millennium Park 99 Minder, Raphael 42 Mitchel, Jamie 31 mobile libraries 29 Monet, Claude 20 Montessori method 77–8 More O’Ferrall and Provincial 118 motorcycles 43 Mount Royal Park 94 movie theater 34–5 Mural Programs 149

Pan Am Building 55 parade 166–7 Park Cycle 96 Park Güell 99 Park(ing) Day 97 parks 91–2 historic 95–6 neighborhood 92–5 pop-up 96–8 sculpture 98–9 Partners for Sacred Places 37 Peoples Bank 31 Pfister Hotel 20 Pharmacy (Hirst) 67 Picture Study Movement 11 Pinterest 159, 163 playgrounds 101–4, 108 adventure 104–5 and earthworks 107

Off the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place (Lippard) 54 O’Hare Airport 51 Ohio Hotel 22 Olmsted, Frederick Law 94 outdoor art 89–99 outdoor seating 121

195

196

INDEX experiences 106–7 imagination 105–6 indoor 107 Play Sculptures 103 Play Workers 104, 105 Pompidou Center 82 pop-up galleries 157 pop-up parks 96–8 Poster Boy 47 Post it Note Therapy 48 public art 22, 41, 99, 145, 146, 148 puddles 80 Rauschenberg, Robert 137 Recreational Vehicles (RV) 29 restaurants art 61–2 elite 67–8 gallery 67–8 hotels and 64–5 murals 66 playing 60–1 themed 62–3 roads 85–6 Robson, Julien 12 Rockwell, David 105 Rothko, Mark 37, 65, 165 school 26–8 installations 155, 156 Schrager, Ian 21 scooters 43, 44 sculpture parks 98–9 Seagram Murals 65 seasonal art 110–11 secondary students 76–8 seeing process 109 Segways 44 selfie culture 160–1 Selfridge, Henry Gordon 137 sidewalk 79 signage 132 advertising 132–4 billboard 134–5 collectors 135–6 skateboard 43 skylines 123–4

hands-on 126–7 and skyscrapers 124, 125 viewer 126 skyscrapers 124, 125 social media 160 soft services 29 Sorel, Edward 66 Sornsen, C. Th. 104 Speed Art Museum 13 stairs 81–3 Stanley Park 93 Stark, Philippe 65 store window 136–9 storm drain 80 street lights 122–3 stroller 44 Structural Economics 130 students elementary 76 secondary 76–8 suburban parks 92, 93 subways 46–50 SushiSamba 67–8 Swatch Art Peace Hotel 20 Taylor, Bruno 118 teachers 27–8 Terrance Plaza 65 themed restaurant 62–3 Third Street Café 68–9 Tinkertoy skyline 126–7 Toulouse Lautrec, Henri de 132 Town Branch Park 94 traffic lights 122 transportation 39–41 airports 50–7 bikes 42–5 subways 46–50 wheels 41–2 treasure hunt 81 Truck Art Project 42 Tunnelbana (Metro) 49 21C 20, 22 underground 81–2 UNESCO 149 University of Kentucky Hospital 22–3

INDEX van Eyck, Aldo 102–3 Vinh, Dan 21 virtual community 158–9 walkways 116 Walmart 3, 4 Wardle, Francis 104 Warhol, Andy 137 wheels 41–2 Wikoff, Naj 23

Wiley, Kehindy 144 windows 136–9 Woodhull Hospital 23 Wright, Frank Lloyd 65 Wynyard Station 83 Yazdani, Mehrdad 24 Youth Art Month 36 Zagreus Project 67

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200