PUBLIC ARTS
2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016
Focusing on water this year, we brought the technique of marbleizing to our public workshops and invited people to make water prints. The ink that you add to the water allows you to see the incredibly beautiful movement of the water when you activate it by simply dragging a stick, paintbrush, or finger through it. Adding drops of oil to the tray of inked water showed how oil pushes away the colored water, adding clear curvilinear shapes to the final prints. This clearly demonstrated how oil and water don’t mix and was an opportunity to explain that this is what happens when stormwater picks up oil from cars and carries it into our ponds. The magic captivated children and adults alike at J.T. Owens Park, Roger Williams Park, and the annual Southside Community Land Trust Urban Agriculture Spring Kickoff.
UPP Arts also worked with the community on the West Elmwood Orchard, an the outgrowth of UPP Art’s 2014 focus on raising awareness about the displacement of over 500 families from an area on the northwest shore of Mashapaug Pond by the construction of the Huntington Industrial Park in 1962. Lucy Boltz, a student in UPP founder Holly Ewald and Annie Valk’s Oral History and Community Memory class at Brown University, spearheaded the research on the history of this lost neighborhood. Through her interviews and subsequent students’ interviews of former West Elmwood residents, a familiar phrase was repeated: “You could eat your way through the neighborhood because there were so many fruit trees.” This phrase reverberated for Holly as she learned from a heat map of Providence that the Huntington Industrial Park is one of the hottest spots in the city; in fact, the Environmental Justice League of RI was already busy helping Park businesses plant trees to increase shade.
With initial funding from a Pop-Up grant from the Providence Planning Department in 2014, UPP Arts partnered with the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program to secure four cherry, three pear and two plum trees for a small orchard in J.T. Owens Park, located in the southern part of what used to be the West Elmwood neighborhood. UPP volunteers and former residents planted the trees in early June and additional volunteers of all ages including the Elmwood Little League organization gathered at a painting party to decoratively paint the protective fencing around the trees. Joe Wojtanowski Sr. who oversees the Park has been a key steward of these trees. He assists the weekly volunteers who come by to water the trees and fills in if someone can’t make it.
Artist Kristina Brown worked with former residents Dennis Maynard and Michael Freeman to create the text for the hand-painted sign which identifies the Orchard.
The trees should bear fruit by summer of 2018. We look forward to activities and events that will be inspired by this.
With initial funding from a Pop-Up grant from the Providence Planning Department in 2014, UPP Arts partnered with the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program to secure four cherry, three pear and two plum trees for a small orchard in J.T. Owens Park, located in the southern part of what used to be the West Elmwood neighborhood. UPP volunteers and former residents planted the trees in early June and additional volunteers of all ages including the Elmwood Little League organization gathered at a painting party to decoratively paint the protective fencing around the trees. Joe Wojtanowski Sr. who oversees the Park has been a key steward of these trees. He assists the weekly volunteers who come by to water the trees and fills in if someone can’t make it.
Artist Kristina Brown worked with former residents Dennis Maynard and Michael Freeman to create the text for the hand-painted sign which identifies the Orchard.
The trees should bear fruit by summer of 2018. We look forward to activities and events that will be inspired by this.
