One Wall at a Time

When UrbanArt executive director John Weeden spoke at last month's Urbanexus event, sponsored by Next American City magazine, he talked about how they were going to be "painting the town, literally."

"Visitors to Memphis see a crumbling and ugly landscape. That has to change," Weeden said. "I'm declaring war on ugly landscape."

One battle is well underway at Madison and Third where Chicago artist Jeff Zimmerman and Rhodes College students are constructing a five-story mural next to Redbirds stadium.




Called "A Note of Hope," the project is in collaboration with Rhodes' Center for Outreach in the Development of the Arts (CODA) and the building's owner, Chick Hill.

At the Urbanexus event, Weeden noted that paint was a relatively easy and, especially in this economic climate, cost-effective way to radically transform an area.

I can't wait to see what this looks like when it's finished. Pre-trolley, I used to love driving down Madison to get to work in the mornings: the smell of the WonderBread factory, cresting over Danny Thomas, catching site of the morning sun glinting off of the Gassner building, seeing the city.

This just might have me detouring down Madison.

Horsin' Around

Recently, I was in Saddle Creek shopping center (what recession? Just kidding ... I was there for work) and noticed people standing around, taking pictures of Germantown's painted horses.

The horses — which are in honor of the Germantown Charity Horse Show's 60th Anniversary — will be auctioned off Sunday, October 19th. Artists competed to win the chance to decorate the life-sized horses, and now they are all corralled (the horses, not the artists, sorry) in Saddle Creek.

At any rate, being a complete lemming, I decided to take a few pictures myself. At the very least, I thought some of you Midtowners out there might appreciate it.

There were quite a few decorated with flowers.

This one I call Disco Horsie.

A close-up. See those two bodies behind the head? Yep, they're taking pictures, too.

My fave: Trick-or-treat horsie. (They do have real names; I just didn't write them down.)

The chocolate close-up

My second fave. Recession horsie — decorated all in pennies. (Actually, I did notice this one was called "Horse Sense.")

If you're interested in bidding for the horses online, you can go here.

Made in/of the Mist

Maybe artist Olafur Eliasson never heard TLC's mid-90s hit "Waterfalls" and their advice not to go chasing them.

Or maybe he did.

Four "New York City Waterfalls" — a more than $15 million public art project — opened in the New York harbor this morning. The waterfalls will be turned on most mornings at 7 a.m. and 35,000 gallons of river water flow/gush/pour through them each minute until 10 p.m. At night they'll be lit by light-emitting diodes.

The city is billing the waterfalls as their largest public art commission project since 2005 "Gates" in Central Park and will remain until October 13th.

In a NYT story, Eliasson is quoted as saying that New York has generally considered the center city the "prime part of the city" but in the last few decades has been "turning its face around ... and trying to create different values and recreational ideas."

Photo from the NYT slide show.

Of course, the city is hoping that — like "Gates" — the project will drive tourism. They've even created a bike route around it.

I'm not hoping for anything this grand, but I think our riverfront could really use some interesting water features. Preferably ones that would let little hands actually touch water.

(I know, Mud Island and the Main Street Mall both have water features that kids love. But we're located on the banks of the Mississippi. Do we really need to limit ourselves? And it's just so frustrating to be at Tom Lee and looking at out an incredible vista of flowing water and just feel hot and dry and very removed from the water. But I digress ...)

When "The Gates" opened, I talked to former urbanArt Commission director Carissa Hussong about temporary public art installations in Memphis. Since then, the commission's done a number of cool projects as part of its 10th birthday, but if you're interested in a look back, you can find it here.