Recently, we received a heads-up from Sarah Schacht about a proposed neighborhood art installation, described by her as a “web 2.0 art project.”
The site of the proposed project is an I-5 support wall on 8th Ave NE, between NE 66th St and NE 68th St.
Sarah writes:
Photo courtesy Sarah Schacht
Despite some greenery nicely maintained by WSDOT (Washington State Department of Transportation), the wall, and its surrounding small strip of land, attract transients, crime, and gang graffiti. Less than a year ago, a body was found in the brush.
The wall is not exactly a neighborhood jewel.
After living down the block from the wall for 8 years, I’d come up with an idea to transform this little space into something, well, fun. So, I wrote to a friend at WSDOT, this letter below:
“…(I’d like to submit a) proposal & get permission for a small art project on a piece of WSDOT property in my neighborhood… I live almost immediately adjacent to I-5. At the end of my block, there’s a small green space with a large, concrete support wall for I-5 Northbound, next to the 65th street park & ride, in Seattle’s Roosevelt Neighborhood. It attracts graffiti and transients, and is an area that WSDOT employees frequently repaint or clean up.
With a few community volunteers and community dollars, I’d like to install an art project on the wall. It’s pretty simple:
I’d like to use 2/3rds of the large wall, paint a large frame on it, and fill the frame with chalkboard paint. A link to a Flicker page for the “Roosevelt Gallery” would be posted, along with a hashtag #RGallery. Artists, community members, graffiti artists, etc. could use chalk to create whatever message or art within the frame, take a photo of it, and post it to Flickr, tweet it, etc. The art would live on, after the rain comes, after the next artist wipes the art away, online and public. It would add character to the neighborhood and, perhaps with the regular foot traffic, keep transient use at bay, and reduce the amount of paint graffiti that WSDOT has to spend money removing. It seems that our local graffiti artists respect public art, but not blank, public walls. I’m pretty confident they wouldn’t vandalize the wall. And even if they did, community members would just spread some chalkboard paint on it.”
WSDOT has approved my proposal and wants to work with me on the project! I’m waiting to hear back on the permit for it, but should be able to start the project soon.
Thank you, Sarah, for spearheading this neighborhood improvement project!
Do you support this idea? There are a few different ways that you can help Sarah move forward with the project:
1) Sarah needs to demonstrate community support for her idea. One venue that she is using is this blog post. If you support this project, please leave a note in the comments to this post.
2) Contact Sarah if you have ideas about this project or if you would like to be involved in project planning. She can be reached via email.
3) Join Sarah at a community meeting about the project. A meeting is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at Bus Stop Espresso (800 NE 65th St).
