Aesthetics and Community: Key Ingredients to Tactical Urbanism

The primary goal of the West-Wayne tactical urbanism project was to create a safer and slower intersection for pedestrians, neighbors, and bikers who utilize that segment of West Asheville.  The last project Street Tweaks completed was a big overhaul of Coxe Avenue in downtown.  The project was the first of its kind in Asheville.  The Coxe Ave mural, bike lanes, and pedestrian crosswalks transformed that fast street into a slower more people-friendly space.  So when the city asked Street Tweaks to remove the butterfly mural and keep the cross-walks and bike lanes, the feedback seemed to incentivize the multi-modal aspect of the project, instead of the art-based aspects.  So what is the importance of the aesthetic features of a tactical urbanism project?

We all want to live in safe neighborly places that feel walkable and inviting.  But the way we create these spaces is as important as the reason why we create them.  As a community artist, I am interested in how we assign meaning to places and how places engage community.  I think these two ideas are intertwined.  When we feel like a place is special to us, we use it and we create memories there.  The space becomes more meaningful the more time we spend there.  When creating community spaces, I like to think about the collective feelings, memories, history, and vibes of the space.  This shared sense of place is a key ingredient to place-making.  In order for a community to rally behind and integrate a new project, construction, or business, the community’s collective knowing must be harvested. 

I had these concepts in mind when approaching the West-Wayne project.  My own memory of the space centered around meditative walks in Christopher’s Garden.  For years I used to frequent the Shambhala Meditation Center that sat in a big old house next to the intersection.  During retreats we would walk around the neighborhood, explore the garden and engage our senses.  This activity spurred on the community survey I gave to neighbors to inform the aesthetic design.  I wanted to tap into the collective memory of the space by giving people an opportunity to get present and tune into the feeling of the space.  We asked folks to answer questions about how they felt, what they saw, smelled, and heard in that space.  The answers we received recalled the sweet art garden that used to inhabit the corner and the flora and fauna that seemed to spill over into the sidewalks.  The final design features milkweed leaves and buds, goldfinch, and blue bottles from Christopher’s Garden. 

I think this is a powerful way to create public art.  My job, in this project, is to listen and provide space for ideas to emerge and translate those ideas into images and compositions.  My hope is that the space becomes more integrated into the community’s living, breathing and changing environment; and that the intersection not only becomes safer, but also more inviting, engaging and connecting.       

Dismantling the Construction

The world is shifting.

How does that happen?  It happens when each of us decides we want to change.  When each individual does that, a collective turning begins.  We are here, in the midst of it.  And we are here because we can’t stay in one place any longer.  This place we have been is not in our homes waiting for the virus to end.  This place is a construction, a prison of sorts.  We have been here for hundreds of years.  Calling this place the patriarchy is a little too generalized and misleading.  It has more to do with power and privilege and money and greed.  It is a construction which has enslaved humans for personal gain.  It is a construction which has deemed the Poor, the Black and Brown, the non-Christian, the Women, the Queer, lesser-than.  It is also a construction which has taught us the “right” way to live – the “right” way to protest – the “right” way to hold down a job, and make a family.  It is a construction within ourselves that tells us we are not good enough.  It has taught us to believe in it, and its promises. 

We have been building up to this moment.  In fact, this moment may last a long time.  It is an unwinding of the construction.  It happens organically when we each choose to stop believing in it.  This virus has catalyzed our understanding of it.  The construction is weak, and degrading in front of our eyes, as we look towards the ruling powers to give us solace.  That is us believing in the construction.  But the construction is rusty and gummed up and corroded.  It is not working anymore. 

When I look at the news in the mornings and see that the riots in Minneapolis, Brooklyn, LA, and Atlanta are still happening - I am not surprised.  We are hungry for change.  We cannot continue to live in this construction which says white lives are more important than black lives.  One in which racism has never been fully addressed, never been repaired.  All we have ever done in this country is nod and say “yes, that happened”.  We talk about it like it happened way back in the past, like we can’t even remember it anymore- like there has been collective healing and forgiveness and justice around it.  That is also a part of the construction.   That is the antithesis of what has happened.  Instead, while the concept of justice has been written into our rule books, the actual on the ground world we live in is ripe with injustice and inequality. 

So where do we go from here?  If you feel like something has shifted inside of you since the pandemic hit, then you are becoming more aware of the construction.  This structure which we have believed in, does not only exist in a big conceptual way.  It exists in each of us.  All of our centers our shifting.  We are in a time of great potential.  How do we want to be in this world – individually and collectively?  This question does not get answered quickly or easily.  But if you have suddenly become more aware of the shift, then you are on your way to answering it.  I do believe that if we each contemplate these questions and begin to align ourselves with a more trustworthy center, we can tear down that old structure, look around, and decide what we want to build anew.    

How Many People Does It Take to Paint a Mural?

How many people does it take to paint a mural? I’ve had this idea to paint a mural on my house for years and talked myself into believing it was too hard for me to do on my own.

Turns out… it is.

But with the extra time and motivation on my hands I decide a couple of weeks ago to do it. And they say when one commits, providence moves, magic happens. That’s the super short version. Here’s the long one by Goethe:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

So I start with measurements and a template. I come up against my first obstacle trying to learn a new program to create the template and have to ask for help from my boss. She is quick to give me a hand and I complete it and start drawing. A few years ago a friend mentions to me that she saw a mural of poppies on a West Asheville home. When I declare that I am actually getting started on my mural, she says she just saw it again recently. I go back there to gather some inspiration. Thank you, neighbors. I purchase priming materials and my neighbor pressure washes the wall. A friend gives me a hand priming the wall on day one and there is a feeling of movement.

But I remember that one of the reasons I had a lapse in momentum in the past, is that my house is on uneven ground, and I don’t have the money to purchase ladder levelers and scaffolding. I put out a call on Facebook - how do I do this cheaply? Lots of responses come in- I’m amazed honestly! I haven’t had these many likes and comments on a post ever! And then again my boss says I can borrow scaffolding from the studio and friends say I can borrow ladders. So a co-worker helps me load it in my truck and two friends come over to help me set it up. I am on my way. Scaffolding up, ladders in place, primed wall, and then I am on to gridding and then to transferring the design.

But oh, what I am already seeing right in front of me is wondrous. This little personal project I have is not personal at all. I have to reach out and ask for help and people are coming from everywhere wanting to see this thing succeed. And who benefits? Well I do, but so do the neighbors, and my friends, and my community. When we come together like this, its kind of revolutionary. It’s powerful to see people rallying around an art project and me, a singular person with a vision. It’s humbling. It makes me feel alive. I want to say, see? We can cooperate, we can make something beautiful here. We don’t need to rely on capitalism and competition to work together. We can believe in beauty and magic and providence instead.

Getting in to it

This is not my actual basement, but it gets the point across real well!

I’ve got a mold issue in my crawl space and have been ignoring it for like a year or two.

I had been planning to do something about it for a while now and even bought some of the things I needed to take care of it, but alas, I put it off.

Last week I finally went down there and decided to get in to it.  I saw all the mold I’d been ignoring and it gave me a lot of anxiety.  I sprayed it with bleach water and thought about it all night, instead of sleeping.  The next morning, I wake up groggy but ready to get to it.  I go down to the crawlspace and start removing all my shit – including my kayak, which is quite long.  In the process, I brake off my water heater drain and the thing starts draining 55 gallons of hot water into the crawlspace.  Funny, right?!   

Well once I figured out what happened I call a friend and talk to my dad and watch a YouTube video.  We head to Home Depot gloved and masked and buy a hacksaw, a hose bib, and an attachment.  We put it back together about an hour.  Phew.  My friend? A life saver. 

Then I get back to the basement.  I decide I’m going to clear out all the trash that has been sitting there since maybe before the foundation was built (1968) and lay down a plastic barrier.  In the back corners, I find Nehi soda bottles (my mom says they are from the 50’s)  and lots of coal.  I find shoes, rusty tools and car parts, fake pearls, coke bottles, and fabric.  I start pulling it out and making piles.  Here I am -  I’m in it.  I don’t know when I would have done this project.  And if I ignored it, my crawlspace would continue to get moldy and I might have a big issue on my hands. 

A few days later and I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m committed.  It’s a big project and I am taking time to do research and garner the right supplies.  I will need patience for this and a sense of hope, that all this work will help, that I’ll do it well, and that I’ll be able to breath deeply when it is done.  

Is this not an uncanny metaphor?  It is! The underpinnings of our society are in need of serious repair.  We have ignored our foundational systems for so long, and now we are here - the ground laid bare, the smell of mold growing, the trash sitting there.  It’s clear we need to do something different-and it’s clear this will take some time and ingenuity and grit; a clearing out, a cleaning up- some care and attention. 

I don’t know what the aftermath of the Coronavirus will look like.  I want to believe that we will become stronger and more connected because of it.  My hope is not only that we’ll we uncover the inequities in our social systems but we will do something about them. 

Strangely, while our entire world is connected by this pandemic, my life is becoming more and more localized.  I am walking my neighborhood regularly and saying hello to my neighbors.  I am visiting the same grocery store.  I am listening to the local radio station.  I am walking the nearby trail, I am planning my garden.  I am cleaning out my basement. 

My focus has gone from a spotlight to a flashlight.  I am wondering how I can benefit my neighborhood, my city.  I am wondering how I might be a part of the restructuring that can happen as a result of this pandemic.  I am wondering how we might all pay closer attention to the state of our underlying structures; how we might learn to see clearly, dig in and do something different.       

The Mandala Experiment

I have not been physically close to another human in about 5 days. I live alone and sometimes have a roommate, but not at this time. So this Stay Safe Stay Home Order has me getting in a lot of “me time”. I’ve had a few moments of loneliness but I am doing alright. My dog Bodhi is nearby all the time and I’ve been connecting with friends and family on the daily.

It’s got me thinking about how individualized our culture is, and how I’ve made many choices in my life to be independent. Living alone seems fine when I go to work and see friends regularly. But in this more isolating circumstance, my independence-based choices have consequences. I have been pondering this quandary for a while now. A lot of us have prioritized individuality and independence over community and the whole. One could trace this back to the industrial revolution and the nuclear family, capitalism, and the American Dream. David Brooks actually wrote an excellent piece on it called The Nuclear Family was a Mistake.

No matter how we got here, we are definitely in the midst of a conflict between individualism/freedom and the good of the collective. I myself believe we have moved too far in the direction of the individual. The Coronavirus is forcing us to look at this and asking us to work together (separately) to protect each other. The Art of Belonging is also about creating together and re-imagining our collective force. So here’s an experiment to try. I used to do this lesson with the families I worked with in residential treatment.

A Mandala is a sacred circle, a depiction of the universe, a community. In Tibetan Buddhism it’s used in the form of a ritual to spread blessings. Tibetan monks spend days laying out circular and geometric shapes and funneling granules of colored sand into the intricate design while chanting and imbuing the mandala with blessings of all kinds. Many of you have seen these rituals, as Tibetans have been forced out of their corner of the world and shared this beautiful ritual with us.

The experiment: Let’s make mandalas. This mandala can be made out of anything you have on hand. I made mine out of sticks from my backyard (I’ve been doing a lot of yard work-:)). You can make your mandala out of potato chips, chalk on sidewalk, you can draw your mandala, you can find multiple objects in your home and build it out of that. Your mandala can be large or small, symmetrical or asymmetrical. When you build this mandala, you can take a cue from the monks and think about the collective and send us all good wishes. The mandala is our community. In the making of this piece, you are connecting with all of us.

At the end of the sand mandala ritual monks destroy their creation and bring it to a moving body of water. The idea in this, is that the blessings flow to where they are needed. While making my stick mandala, I thought about the people who were really suffering and sent my attention there. This is what I can do right now. My hope is that we can find some solace in creating and building something together, even though we are apart.

If you decide to do this, please post your images in the comments and on Instagram at #mandala_experiments - Let’s see what we can build together.

Be With The Questions

I have been developing Art of Belonging for 9 months now.  It’s been in mind for years.  When I was a post-college AmeriCorps member, it was all I wanted to do – build community through art making.  And I did!  I had the energy, capacity, and drive to make it happen.  It felt good in my bones to do that work.  Then I thought I had to grow up and live differently, get a real job.  I still thought about community but I imagined that area of my life would take care of itself.  I’m not sure that has happened.    

Elizabeth Marttis-Namgyel, a Buddhist teacher writes in The Power of an Open Question, “Our usual modus operandi is to try to rid our lives of suffering through rearranging things.  Rather than admitting suffering into our experience, we tend to manufacture hopeful strategies of avoidance.” P. 51

Here we are, a global community in the thick of it.  We were in the thick of it before, but the stakes are much higher now.  Who can we depend on?  The government is in a sorry state, the world and its systems are under tremendous pressure.  We are here, all forced into this present moment – jolted really.  We might have imagined that we could continue to work in our separate silos, going along in our lives while refugees suffer in camps, families are torn apart at our borders, racism pervades our country, and our precious earth is being quickly stripped of life.  But we can’t anymore.  We have been stopped in our tracks.  We are all stopped in our tracks.

So I sit in my house by myself asking questions.  What happens next?  How can I help?  Will I have enough money to weather this?  Will my friends and family and neighbors be ok?  Can I help?  How can we work together to save this world?  How will we/I be changed by this experience?   I am forced to be with these questions.  They don’t have simple answers and there is little action I can take at this time.  I sit with the questions and that is powerful.  I imagine these are the questions we are all asking.  There is something connecting in the fact that our minds are all in the same place.  Oh, to be together in times of despair!  

Back to Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel.  She writes:

“Fixing differs from healing- it differs in attitude.  Fixing aims at avoiding pain through trying to return to the good old days when we were pain-free.  It has that kind of nostalgia; we just want to get back to the way things were.  Such an attitude doesn’t require us to change or to fully experience our bodies.  We have a goal, but we are absent for the process that leads to the goal – a process that requires us to have a new experience, a new understanding of our physical form and how we inhabit it.  The fixing approach doesn’t get at the causes and condition that gave rise to our ailment.  It simply rearranges our physical confusion in a way that may offer us a little relief-usually temporary-from an undesirable sensation.” P 51-52 

Mattis-Namgyel is writing about the body but I think it applies to the collective body.  We are in the process of having a new experience.  We can’t go back to the old days.  We can’t simply rearrange our systems.  There is fundamental change at work.  And we are being called to be with the questions. 

What questions are you being called to be with? 

In the wake of Wake

I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work on a sculpture by Mel Chin, an artist I studied and admired in graduate school for his social activist art.  He created a sculpture called Wake in 2018 with the help of UNCA’s STEAM Studio, UNCA students, and volunteers.  Back then I was one of those volunteers and though my contribution was small, a bit of carving, a lot of cleaning, and general excitement making, I was enthralled with it.  The sculpture is huge, by the way.  At its highest point, it is 60 feet tall.  The sculpture is of Jenny Lind, a famous opera singer’s figurehead in front of a hybridized version of a sunken ship/whale skeleton.   During the spring of 2018 I would come in once a week to see where things were and felt the undeniable excitement of this larger than life project.  And not only did I feel this kind of momentum and energy, I felt something in my bones, a kind of pull into this world.  I didn’t know what it meant exactly, only that this huge project with its collective making, big name artist, and group effort had me at hello.  I happened to be up in New York for my best friend’s wedding in July and this corresponded with Wake’s Times Square opening.  I lived vicariously through the students and artists who had spent days and nights installing the thing and celebrated with a bunch of alcohol and karaoke afterwards.  The afterglow from that whole experience was with me for a long time.  It still is. 

Fast forward to 2019 and I am applying for a shop technician position at STEAM studio.  I know my work with at-risk youth doing adventure therapy has come to an end.  I am ready for the new.  I get the job!  And I am invited to help install the Wake piece in Asheville in March 2020.  So last week I worked on building the deck for this piece and adding the cladding to the ribs.  It was an absolute joy.  We worked as a small team, the majority of whom had put it up the first time.  In comparison, this was a piece of cake with an extended deadline and the hindsight of having done it once before. 

It’s up right now – behind Burial Brewing at 44 Collier Avenue and will hopefully remain up for the next 6 months.  It was the last thing I worked on collectively before Covid-19 struck and has us all giving each other lots of space.  But there was a lot of power in the collective making.  Even though the project was conceived by Mel Chin, I felt I had a hand in its aesthetic.  I felt close to the folks I was working with.  We were engaged in something larger than ourselves with a larger than life message.  How will we rise to the occasion in the midst of climate change?  A very compelling question which begs us to ask how will we rise in the age of Covid-19?  These questions are essentially the same.  We must work together to find solutions.  The power of Wake is in its questions and sheer size.  It makes us pause and think, like good art should do.  Likewise, the enormity of this global pandemic asks of us the same thing – pause and think.  We must work together to find solutions.    

Street Tweaks- Streets for the People!

Tactical Urbanism is a growing movement of creative place-making. More and more communities are taking back their streets by temporarily changing the environment to make it more biker, pedestrian, and people-friendly. Tactical Urbanism can sometimes entail guerilla tactics, for instance when a group of bikers enlarges a bike lane with cones to make the ride a little safer. It also can be sanctioned by the city, like the awesome projects I have been helping to create with Asheville’s own Streak Tweaks. Street Tweaks is a group made up of folks from the AARP NC Mountain Region, Blue Ridge Bicycle Club, Asheville on Bikes and other concerned citizens. In 2018 Street Tweaks worked on a project on Coxe Avenue to help enhance the safety of the street as well as create a community vibe there. I helped paint larger bike lanes, pedestrian crossings, and a beautiful butterfly mural that ran the length of the wide avenue. While this project, and many tactical urbanism projects are temporary, they give us an idea of what our city would look and feel like if we made our streets safer and more welcoming to the folks who are not driving cars. And cars are slowed down by the design. What emerges is a sense of possibility around community building. We get to experience the essence of a place in a less hurried state. There is more space and opportunity to look around and smell the flowers, say hello to a passing neighbor, and embrace a sense of playfulness.

This year Street Tweaks is working on the Westwood Waynseville intersection in West Asheville, a confusing intersection for both cars, bikers, and pedestrians alike. Street Tweaks is designing this intersection so that cars slow down with the aid of a traffic circle and walkers have more space by painting in cross walks and walk-ways. Again, while this project is temporary it invites conversation around how we move through our city, what we want to emphasize in our environments, and how we value the safety of our citizens.

I’m excited to be apart of this project and will be hosting an Art of Belonging experience on April 22nd at the intersection. At this street event, we will invite neighbors and community members to share their ideas for the aesthetic design of the street. We will have lots of street to paint and this of course gives us the opportunity to collaborate. I’m thrilled to engage folks in this process. How often do we have the opportunity to affect change in our environments in a direct way? And when we see the fruits of our labor, what is the result? Connection, beauty, ownership, empowerment, joy - a reminder that we are mighty when we choose to take action together. I’ll keep you posted on how it all unfolds.

For more information about tactical urbanism, check out http://tacticalurbanismguide.com/about/ and Street Tweaks here.

What makes a house a home?

I’m working on a personal project.  I’ve had it in my mind for some time now to paint a mural on my house.  A few years ago my dear friend, Diane showed me a beautiful house with giant flowers painted on it.  I was inspired and excited to try this myself.  But like many great ideas, they linger for a while and then time goes on, I get busy, I drop it.  But here I am embarking on a community art journey and the idea is back.  It never really went anywhere.  So, in part I am telling the world my idea so I can hold myself accountable to completing it. 

Stage one of any mural project – find a locale and determine the need.  My house is a small ranch- it’s brown and simple and its mine.  I can paint whatever I want on it.  And I would love to get my feet wet and my hands dirty and invite my neighbors and friends to join in on this project.  I moved into my house in 2015 and was shy and unsure about meeting my neighbors.  Today I have some close friends in the neighborhood and some friendly folks I say hi to and talk to once in a while.  I like my neighborhood.  It feels neighborly, but I wouldn’t say I know my direct neighbors as more than acquaintances.  I do think there is a lot of potential here and an opportunity to build stronger connections, so maybe one day I will feel like I know that my neighbors as more than acquaintances, that I belong here, and that I have a network of resources that support me in ways a neighborhood can. 

Next stage – design.  I fell in love with those flowers on that house and decided I would do the same – giant poppies.  Poppies are so lovely and bright and gorgeous.  Then I thought about this idea – What makes a house a home?  I brainstormed ideas – love, warmth, food, laughter, ease, childhood, pajamas, friends, art, softness, joy, family, friends, music, pillows, heirlooms, photographs, furniture, sunshine, parties, holidays, plants, memories.   I found the sweetest picture of me and my sister.  I might be 4 years old and she might be three.  My childhood.  I always want my home to feel like children would love to live here, that as a child, I would love to live here.  I would feel safe here.  Then there’s the muse, an amazing artist named Jetsonorama, a physician and photographer living in Navajo country.   He photographs his patients and with permission makes large scale wall paper prints of them and pastes them on buildings and structures in the countryside.  They are beautiful and impactful.  I will take this photo and try to blow it up to at least double full size and paste it on to my house.  What if I could take photos of the children in the neighborhood and place their images on the house?  What if I could get photographs of my adult neighbors and place them on the house?  Then we would all exist as a testament to home and community beneath the soft cover of the giant poppies. 

Beginning stages complete – next I experiment with this new photographic medium.

What does it Mean to Belong?

September 2, 2019

What does it mean to belong? 

Belonging is considered a basic need by Dr. William Glasser psychotherapist and author of Choice Theory.  He posits that all human beings need love and belonging, freedom, fun, and power.  When we don’t get what we need, we often try to fill that void in less than healthy ways.  Glasser also says that we each need a different amount of those fundamental desires.  I happen to need a lot of love and belonging. 

I grew up in a Jewish household and went to a private Hebrew day school until 7th grade. During that time, I felt apart of something, connected, held by my traditions and ancestors. I went to public school, with maybe 3 Jewish families in 7th grade, and had a lot of trouble integrating there. I had friends and participated in activities but never felt that strong feeling of belonging. This lasted into high school and college. I didn't see religion as my tribe- again I had friends and activities, but I didn't actually know where to find that feeling of belonging. After college I joined AmeriCorps and connected with communities through service. I felt something there! A spark - a coming together of varied backgrounds and traditions, a shared goal, something to work towards. Years go by and I buy a house as a single person in a new-to me neighborhood. I need help with house things, I need to reach out. And there I was looking for that community again.

So this theme of tribe and community has come up in my life over and over again. It's something that I am obviously called to figure out and because it’s so real for me, it’s also something I see our society needing more of – more loving friends and neighbors - stronger bonds between people – a collective mindset rather than individual viewpoints.  Don’t get me wrong, I am quite the individual.  I am strong and independent and like to do things on my own.   And while that furthers a feeling of empowerment, it rarely furthers a feeling of belonging. 

So part of my work is to build community and the tool I find most dynamic and transformative is art, specifically collaborative public art. Art is this abstract instrument anyone can participate in. There is no right or wrong way to express.  We can all lend our individual aesthetic to a larger piece. Through art we can realize the metaphor of how community actually works.  Our individuality informs the whole.  Each person’s contribution is important and valid.   

So this website is kind of a social experiment-  to see how the belonging equation shifts when we come together around art.  How do we feel when we engage in communal projects that allow human expression to be the glue in our communities? 

What happens when people who don’t usually work together come together around a simple idea?

Let’s find out.  On this site, I’ll be posting about art and community– how others do it, how I feel when I do it, and my observations about how it affects our world.