We can make drab gray and beige buildings more colorful without using hundreds or thousands of cans of paint.
We can choose art materials that support bees and birds.
Ones that improve the quality of our air.
Materials that capture the rain, preventing runoff.
Materials that reduce the heat island effect, which means lowered energy costs for those relying less on air conditioning. For people outside of the building, there’s shade from the sun.
We could have artwork that is three-dimensional, multi-textured, and pleasantly scented, or at the least, neutral in its odor.
These photographs show several green rooftops in downtown Hartford, all of which are accessible to the public. There remain many opportunities for this kind of improvement, both as green roofs and as additions to surface parking lots.
Richard
Kerri
What a beautiful post. I love how you used a way of art to send your idea out. Now this is the type of art I can get a hold of and then my mind takes me to other places. Nothing flat about this journey just beauty and all the possibilities we could meet. Your posting has made me determined to get my cane and go and see one of these gardens. So much comes to mind and your ideas certainly have given a push to those who can see beyond the can of paint and brush. So much more is happening up on the roof top way beyond Santa. This work extends gift giving to a new place and purpose. So much better than a tie or shirt. Amazing really when I read your post and think about it. Connections everywhere in beautiful roofs gardens.
I was reminded of the days of Guerilla Gardening and the work of the Diggers in merry old England, (not so merry for the many) to the attempt in Hartford to plant the medians. What a joy it was the other day riding on the Dial-a-ride bus coming down Route 2 and every once in a while, spying Black Eye Susan’s popping up here and there.
Tim received a seed full birthday card that he is going to plant. Flower seeds are imbedded in the paper. Reminding me of the flower seed bombs of yore. Cultivating beauty in places where it is not normally found. On rooftops, on medians, on vacant land, in abandoned lots in the city, by the roadside. Beauty all around. A small revolutionary act of taking care of mother earth. Worth a thousand spray painted murals.
Kerri Ana Provost
Thanks, Richard. You’ve reminded me that I have a card full of seeds to plant. We’re finally getting rain, so this seems like the time.
You might enjoy watching some of the videos here:
https://www.instagram.com/sfinbloom/
Richard Nelson
Hi Kerri
One last thought or more will do?
I was thinking this morning about many years ago, won’t even count them, when I was in an art show. There was a show called Invisible/Visible or something along those lines at the Sky Parlor in New Haven. My work, seeds of the Indian Paint Brush planted in a pot, (They came up). Why would an artist say that is a work of art? Well one because the artist says so and two, Duchamp was our dear grandfather. I love the idea of taking something and doing something with it. We can only hope that your posting gives artists in Hartford a push, exp. the mural painters. There is more to the world and art than oversize painting on the side of buildings. If artists are to live up to all of the accolades heaped on them then its time to move from self into the great big world.
Murals to me just add “more man-made.” How many of us would prefer a flower bed, trees, and bushes? The birds, the bees, and butterflies? I have enough aches and pains without adding a crick in my neck. There is a lot more one could say about the rash of murals being painted and the decorative utility boxes popping up all over the city whereas on the surface it says art, but the surface is as far as it goes. Anytime that art is sanctioned by the man”, as it is in the case of these Hartford murals I would start there and question the validity of it. How much does the artist lose in that process? If he loses too much, does it become just sanctioned propaganda of individual tastes by and of who’s in charge? Plant the seeds away you go, artist has been here once did a job and left. (Please no need to cry, artist, you are still an artist even if everyone doesn’t know you are by your work.)
Thanks for the links. I will look them over. I have a Voodoo Lily planted in one of the gardens, a very strange plant. When I read up on it even though it is pretty it smells, smells really bad. I sort of like that idea of something of beauty smelling so much that enough of them planted somewhere would chase a crowd. Flies love the plant, and everyone knows flies stop off pollinating everywhere as they go. (Even from dog poop to potato salad, I had to get that one in.) Maybe the cops could bottle the smell of the Voodoo Lily and use it instead of pepper spray and tear gas. I went out and planted the seed card. I ripped it into sections and put some here and there all the while thanking the rain for falling and helping to push everything along.