Lighting designer Benoit Deseille and artist Benedetto Bufalino transformed this phone booth in Lyon, France, into an aquarium, as part of the city's annual Festival of Light. In an accompanying statement, the artists explain the inspiration behind the piece:

“With the advent of the mobile telephone, telephone booths lie unused. We rediscover this glass cage transformed into an aquarium, full of exotically colored fish; an invitation to escape and travel.”

It's a creative way to transform disused infrastructure into an everyday source of wonder and beauty—or, if you're of a more pessimistic frame of mind, a vision of our climate-changed future.

This is something I stumbled on a few months back, and like all the other pieces of work I find, no one ever includes the artist, just one picture. Well I researched for a very long time and found her. She's Paige Bradley and a lot of her work focuses around the central theme of containment and what would happen if we expanded beyond our barriers:

"From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a container already built for us to fit inside: A social security number, a gender, a race, a profession or an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in, rather than what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies? Would we still be able to exist if we were authentically 'un-contained'?"

This piece makes me think of that moment just as someone in deep meditation finally reaches enlightenment. When they realize that they are apart of something far grander than the self and at that point, their bodies dissolve away and there's nothing left but a pure light.

Once upon a time this was in NY but I believe it has been relocated to some less public garden area of some kind which is kind of disappointing because the pictures with the cityscape as a backdrop are much more compelling than the foliage.

This is another interesting sculpture I came across. Here is some info about it:

"Jason de Caires Taylor, a visionary artist from the UK has filled the ocean floor of Cancun with 100’s of crazy sculptures. His ocean art would be impossible to view on a boat engaged in activities such as freight shipping Durban goods to Europe as his sculptures are located far under the freezing cold waves of the Pacific Ocean. Jason is not only interested in making an artistic statement though, he is interested in creating a new, miniature coral reef of sorts that can accommodate a host of endangered species that are quickly running out of breeding and feeding grounds." from website called Originalbuzz.info

Branching Out by Naoko Ito is something neat and a bit different that I came across. I thought it related to our project in the sense that the artists isn't using traditional art materials (paint, paper, canvas, etc.) Plus, it includes something from nature. The work has an environmental theme trying to convey ideas about "preserving nature and life" while also containing it, as we often do.

Also, this reminds me of the "Manifestations of Nature" piece in Bethany Krull's Meadows Museum exhibition.

July 2001

Location: GE Building (RCA building) Rockefeller Center

30 Rockefeller Plaza, between 49th and 50th Streets

1250 Avenue of Americas
60th tallest building in the world

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was a renowned French-American artist andsculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spider-woman. She is recognized today as the founder of confessional art. Her spider series was devoted to her mother, whom past away when she was 21. She then became obsessed with spiders. Her answer to the question why spiders is "because my best friend was my mother and she was as intelligent, patient, clean and useful, reasonable, indispensable, as a spider. The artist associates her own work with a web of emotions and memories that she weaves and unravels and weaves again.

I found this sculpture by looking up crazy sculptures. Have any of you ever seen Eight Legged Freaks??? Well, if you haven't you should watch it. The reason this movie is relevant to this sculpture is because in the movie the spiders invaded this town, and it looks similar to this sculpture which is awesome. Most people come in contact with this piece often but would not expect this type of piece in the middle of the road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27_nhiYPeA [this is a short video of kids interacting with one of her spider sculptures]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

This is another wall I thought of. I believe it a wall to a food processing, or distribution company located on Market St. just as you enter Downtown from North Market. The Hilton Hotel is next door to it. Its advantages are in its light colored brick wall so it will show out message well and its placement on one of the most traveled roads in the area.

The message that Professor Hawkins suggested we write with the moss and trash is good because it can apply to the general public as well as specific companies, groups, and so on simultaneously. That idea may have some resonance with a food company who relies on agriculture and other natural things to maintain business. Also, the "waste less" idea can apply to their packaging and other materials that consumers may just toss away without thought. That may be our pitch to help get approval from the company. Yet in reality, most, but not all, food industries do not necessarily care about the environmental or health implications their product may cause, so this attempt may be futile. Again, this is specific application of our wider environment message. The logistical problem with having that message at this site is the lack of a fence or similar structure to house the "waste" part of our message. I hope that makes sense. I'm really just rambling.

Ford Park is a popular facility operated by the City of Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish, Louisiana. The 85-acre park is located in N. Shreveport at 5784 South Lakeshore Drive near the municipal pier and boat launch.

Ford Park offers two recreational ballfields, two playgrounds, two tennis courts, A disk golf course, a picnic area, a walking trail, and a fishing pier on Cross Lake. There is space for large family events.

The park is named for John McWilliams Ford, mayor of Shreveport from 1918-1922 and its finance commissioner from 1930 until his death in 1965.

Ac Steere Park

Location: Between Target and Sam's Club

These two pictures are of the spot where my original project was intended to go. It is next to Soundstage (or whatever its called now) on the well traveled Texas Street in downtown Shreveport. The area is apparently called Artisan's Court, according to the name on the wall. There is already that mural type thing on the left wall. Also, there is graffiti type art on the ground and back wall, but some of the left wall and the right wall are still bare! Events like concerts and art shows used to be hosted here too. From all of this I would think that it is pretty open to art events and projects, so we would either need to talk to the owners of the old Soundstage building or the city to figure out who owns it. I have photos of 3 other potential wall sites and 2 fence sites, but Blogger is being difficult and won't let me post them, so I will just show them in class. Though, I can give a bit of info about them here:

• Wall at a business called Nall's Auto Glass (which is potentially abandoned. I never see anyone there) located on the Corner of Common and Crockett in downtown. It is near the old fire station, which is the new SRAC.
• Wall at an abandoned tire store on Common St. just before the Viaduct that Bruce Allen and others spoke of in class.
• A wooden wall directly across from the Robinson Film Center on Texas street. It already has some art on it.
• The fence that surrounds South Highlands Elementary on Line Ave. If we used this, we could get those children involved somehow.
• The fence on Youree Drive that surrounds a park or playground just before Preston Avenue (I believe Hope already posted about this one).

I feel bad because looking at all these other posts downtown looks like it has some pretty fantastic sites for this project, but something about driving around downtown makes me feel a bit claustrophobic so I may have steered clear of it and scouted out locations elsewhere. Hopefully I'm not the only one with that irrational fear. Here's what I got though.

This wall is part of the Broadmoor Baptist Church. It seems like a good place to me mostly because even though it doesn't get nearly as much foot traffic as downtown would, the church is on Youree and clearly visible from the road as cars pass by.







For this second site, I thought we could work off of the attention that another structure already brings in and place the moss graffiti project on the middle row. This way more attention is called to it because of the metal globe, which might also tie in nicely to the idea of environmental awareness. The fact that the moss is raised higher in the air may also help preserve it from the wear and tear of passersby.

So I didn't have time to actually get out and scout places so I tried to remember some great walls for us to utilize that I've passed by downtown.

I think the walls I'm remembering are the ones that Avia has already posted about on Texas Ave, at least the second one anyway.

And if I'm not mistaken, this little area is on Texas Avenue, near the giant rooster? If this isn't it I know there is some sort of wall there that we may consider.

If we are really going through with the moss idea, I think the red bricks would be an excellent contrast. And I somehow connected the abandoned building to our abandonment of nature. And it reminded me of that comment that Prof. Hawkins made last Thursday about our project succeeding whether or not the public let the moss die (if we do allow them to keep it alive themselves). It's calling attention to Shreveport's plethora of abandoned buildings as well as our abandoned environment.

My proposal idea is mainly involved around preventing trash pollution in our economy and our environment. Many people in the economy today don’t realize that throwing their canned sodas or plastic water bottles on the ground when nobody is looking is harming our environment every day. What most people don’t know is that it’s not just he or she causing trash pollution, it’s the majority of the world. My idea would consist of putting posters of the photos shown below so the community could see and hopefully comprehend with the message these posters are trying to send out. The message of the posters is to persuade people to throw away or recycle their trash instead of simply tossing it out their car window or dropping it on the ground. There can be numerous sites for the putting up of these posters such as downtown Shreveport in and along the local bus station or in public parks such as John M. Ford Park, where pollution is very common. Another possible site is along the docks of the Red River and Cross Lake to help prevent pollution in these waters from people tossing their trash in the water. The expenses for this idea are very low, at the most twenty dollars. I think many people will find it easier to recycle and throw away their trash when they see these posters and realize that pollution is obviously bad for the environment.

This is a wall on 1054 Texas Ave that is owned by the Holy Mission Church of God. They would like to have an environmentally conscious piece on the wall

This is a wall of a public parking loot on the 500 block of Texas and MacNeil right across the Southern University Shreveport Building. The college would be the right people to talk to about putting something on the wall.

This is a wall downtown I thought would be a good place for the moss. the building is called Tipitinasand someone to get in touch with would be Chris Alexander. I've heard they would possibly be open to letting us do something there.

This is a fence on Youree drive. I think it would be a good place to put the recycled bottle letters. This place gets a lot of traffic going past it, and there are lights near it so people would see it.

My proposal is to take old unwanted computer keyboards and turn either the keyboards themselves into art or take the keys off and cover objects that could convey a message. many people in class suggested that we could use a chalk board and use the keys instead of chalk. Placement for this was originally going to be on the deck by bynum commons but i would like for it to be in downtown but i have no clue as to where we could place it. Cost wise is low most of the keyboards keys would be donated. only real expensies would be the glue/thumb-pins and or magnets and spray paint should we decide some need color.

ORIGINAL IDEA:

Not to take the picture too seriously, originally I planned on making basically a 'web' of keys hanging from wire. This does not only pretain to street posts or what not. I meant for the key strings to be hung anywhere and everywhere. Trees, building, mailboxes, it really has no specific location qualification.

CLASS INPUT:

Listening to the class exchange ideas, I found the idea of using locks as well to be particularly exciting. Sure, keys are great, but a purpose to them too?!

WHY KEYS???

To my surprise, I found an image to sum up my personal thoughts on what it counld represent. See how that arrow is made out of several different pawn pieces? One piece could never point out the right direction. The only way to ever acheive and find what it is we're missing in this world, is to very simply unite. We all only have a small portion of a solution, a 'key' if you will.

CONVINIENCE:

This whole idea was actually founded on the focus of trying ot find a 'median' of sorts that would be cheap of plentiful. Oh. And CONVINENT. I see random keys lying about all the time. I'm sure I myself could offer more the one, two, three, ah I dont even want to count.

ANY KEY WILL DO. I KNOW YOU GOT'EM

<-----THIS IS THE GOAL.

JK.

My project proposal involves painting tiles and piecing them together to form a large-scale image. These pieces of tile will be painted by the class or community should they wish to volunteer. The underlying message of it all seems to be that we can all come together to create something greater than ourselves. As for location, I'd enjoy embedding the piece in the walkway between the Magale Library and Hamilton Hall, but anywhere on campus will suffice so long as members of the community will be able to come across it without having expectations of it being there. Depending on how quickly we can dole out assigned pieces to be painted and how many volunteers we find, an estimated four to five weeks will be taken to complete this project. This project will be fairly cheap considering that it uses common materials. Tile being less than a dollar and all the adhesive we need for about twenty, the most expensive piece of this project would be the paint. I imagine that all of these materials combined would be no more than $200 total.

For my public art project proposal I have decided to depict the school emblum and the school motto underneath it on the back wall of the shell. The message of the mural is to show how we are all united by being in this one place where everyone reaches for academic excellent and how we are one student body. The emblum represents the history of our school and it’s time that the shell is redone so it will enhance our school spirit.  The C is going to be maroon outlined in black and the rest of the circle is white with also outlined in black. To make it more temporary I was also considering using some paint so that people can write on the wall, but it can also come off. It is a way for the shell to become more interactive. Time wise, it would take 2 weeks at the most. One week we could go down to the shell and trace out the mural, and the next week we could paint it. For the mural, it would take paint and a stencil. The most that would need to purchase the material is $200.

My project is basically an effort to fool with people's consciences about their contributions and ignorance to pollution, littering, and the other critical environmental problems our world is experiencing. To avoid it appearing as a public service announcement, I wanted to present it in a ironic/slightly funny way, so I though of playing with the idea of a snow globe. Overall, I want to replace these pristine, ideal spots in snow globes with the scenes reality of our environmental ordeals, but on a large scale. They can vary in size and dome shape, but I would like some of them to be rather large, maybe 3 or 4 feet tall. To further their effect, I want to place them in locations that may be very untidy, abused by trash and other litter, or somewhat near companies and other locations that may contribute to the environmental crisis. The bases of the globes can be adorned with sarcastic and funny message that reveal the more serious truth about the situation depicted. Thomas Doyle does something like this with slightly different method with different intentions and messages, but the look is similar. Here are some examples, but if this project is too expensive, I think the same message can be conveyed with street art like we saw with Bansky and others. Scenes such as this can be drawn or designed, placed on thin paper, and pasted on walls.