Category: Citizenship | Artistic Citizenship

Doors and More

Posted on October 15, 2018October 15, 2018 by Marissa Silverman

What do “doors” do? On one hand, a door might, especially if it’s locked, keep people outside an “insider’s” domain. On the other hand, a door invites people to enter. One knock on a closed door, and two reactions are possible: An inviting voice from the other side might say, “Come in; it’s open.” Or, after being knocked upon, and within moments of waiting, the door may open and a person on the other side potentially could ask: “Can I help you?”

Meet the public art project, #TinydoorsATL.

In 2014, Karen Anderson and Sarah Meng started to introduce these “entrances” in public spaces. Notably, the doors provide access to an imaginary world. Moreover, and provided an onlooker doesn’t miss a potential voyage into the unknown – indeed, it is easy not to notice the doorways given their locations, and sometimes hidden positions – the people of Atlanta can dream-through a portal beyond the here and now.

As stated on the project’s website:

Tiny Doors ATL is an Atlanta-based art project bringing big wonder to tiny spaces. Our constantly evolving installation pieces are an interactive part of their community. With the installation of a door, what was once a wall or the column of a bridge becomes an entrance to collective creativity and an invitation to whimsy. Tiny Doors ATL is dedicated to free and accessible art.

The doors, themselves, are about 7-inches tall, and are located in places in and around Atlanta, Georgia.

According to the principal artist and director, Karen Anderson:

Much of what I’d hoped to see from this project is happening organically. For instance, I’d hoped that our doors would be tiny gathering places, landmarks for people to leave free art for #FAFATL, take creative photos, and get to know other areas of town by encouraging exploration to new neighborhoods. My big goals for the project include tying together communities, and eventually creating a full-time position with Tiny Doors ATL so that I can do the outreach to schools and camps that we’re being asked to provide. I’m also doing some consulting with other cities on their tiny public art movements.

A door can provide us with a sense of possibility. Such optimism and hope is a gift not to be taken lightly.

#iamFOR

Posted on August 8, 2018August 8, 2018 by Marissa Silverman

According to artist Paula Crown, the #iamFOR exhibition on display at the For Freedoms headquarters incorporates, examines, and explores themes of environmentalism, racial awareness, and identity politics.

Located in the heart of the Meatpacking District in NYC, onlookers are provocatively greeted by and confronted with Crown’s environmentally probing piece, Humble Hubris: Don’t know what you got (till its gone) bench (2018), outside Fort Gansevoort, at 51 Gansevoort Street, NYC: “If you think you’re hot now, just wait.”

*Humble Hubris: Don’t know what you got (till its gone)*, Paula Crown, 2018

This statement, especially given its location—which is surrounded by all kinds of NYC construction—makes obvious the tangled mess of urbanization, commercialization, and industrialization. Notice, too, how Crown’s piece is juxtaposed with the seemingly dead vines clinging to the lattice work outside the edifice and the winding coils of cables adjoined to the outlet in back of the artwork. What does all this mean?

Crown repurposes a historical and picturesque photograph of a mountain-scape used in an advertising campaign for Humble Oil in 1962…Here, the photograph in the advertisement is translated directly into painting, channeling new evidence that oil executives knew of the link between their industry and the consequences of CO2 in the 1970s. The work references the language of posters and sign-painting to reroute this image from advertisement to activism.

Additionally, situated in the window just around the corner from Humble Hurbis are Not banners (2018). As stated by the exhibit:

In the 18^thcentury, anthropologists and cartographers created hierarchies and vocabularies that continue to haunt us, labeling the world with colonial perceptions of human difference. Classification of human beings by color is a social construct dismantled by scientific truth. Artist Paula Crown’s NOT paintings prompt viewers to compare themselves with the subjective taxonomies of the past, to invalidate prior modes of categorization and to demand nuance and agency.

Moreover, it is worth noting that one of the construction signs posted next to Fort Gansevoort, and catty-corner to the Not banners, is a call for vehicles to “use alternate” means of maneuvering through the area. Of course, neither the For Freedoms group, nor Crown, would have expected this kind of coincidence. That is, it is provocative that NYC is asking motorists for “caution” and to take alternative traffic routes when Crown invites her artwork visitors to reconsider the routes they use to move through the world!

There’s much more to the #iamFOR exhibition. If you happen to be in NYC, be sure to experience it for yourself.