Wandering the Pike

NPS Wandering the Pike

NPS Wandering the Pike

Wandering the Pike

September 11 & 18, 2016
11am-12:30pm

Columbia Pike Farmers Market
2820 Columbia Pike, Arlington, VA 22204

Join public artist Graham Coreil-Allen to explore and reimagine the urban and suburban spaces of Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia on this alternative walking tour beginning at the Columbia Pike Farmers Market. All are invited to participate as we take turns sharing our insights into the history, design and uses of everyday public spaces. The former rural toll road served as an early economic lifeline connecting Washington DC to Virginia. Columbia Pike quickly grew into a booming stretch of motorist amenities at the expense of pedestrian safety and accessibility. Wander the Pike to experience firsthand how residents and leaders are helping to transform the suburban drag into an walkable main street for all. Click here for more details on the tours.

Free and open to the public. RSVP to Paul Shortt at: pshortt@arlingtonva.us.

Wandering the Pike is presented by Arlington Arts of Arlington Cultural Affairs, a division of the Arlington County Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources, uses the power of the arts to transform lives and build community, and provides programs and services to create an environment that encourages excellence in the Arlington arts community.

48 Hours of Five Points Engagement

NPS Five Points Denver - Graham speaking

NPS Five Points Denver - Graham speaking

Taking place within and around RedLine‘s 48 Hours of Socially Engaged Art and Conversation, the New Public Sites – Five Points Denver walking tours and immersive gallery map installation provided a range of opportunities for learning about and activating the power of public space within a truly beautiful, challenging and inspirational neighborhood. New Public Sites is indebted to RedLine, participants, and all of the guest speakers who through their time, space and energies made our roving spaces of radical pedestrian action possible.

Click here to see photos of the tours and gallery installation!

The project was informed by a range of interviewees and guest speakers. Interviewees included Tyrone Beverly, Beverly Grant, Lyz Riley, PJ DAmico, George Perez, Hadiya Evans, Julie Rubsam, Nikki Pike, and Celia Herrera. Guest speakers who generously donated time and energy sharing their Five Points experiences and projects included Centro Humanitario organizers Nancy Rosas and Judith Marquez, Blair-Caldwell Librarian Terry Nelson, long-term resident and RTD Title-VI Specialist Shontel Lewis, Five Points Fermentation owner Asia Dorsey, and The Temple Director Adam Gordon. I would also like to thank the entire RedLine staff for their hard work making these space of collective participation possible; including Louise Martorano, Libby Barbee, Whit Sibley, Geoffrey Shamos, Robin Gallite, and Misha Fraser.

– Graham

NPS Five Points Denver

NPS Five Points Denver

NPS Five Points Denver

New Public Sites – Five Points Denver

Walking tours and map installation

Welton Wander: Wednesday, August 10, 11am-12:30pm

RiNo Drift: Thursday, August 11, 6-7:30pm

Meet at RedLine contemporary art center, 2350 Arapahoe St, Denver, CO 80205

Denver’s Five Points neighborhood is a hotbed of creativity and construction taking place among powerful sites of heritage. Learn how regular people have helped shape the history, design and current uses of public spaces around Five Points during two New Public Sites walking tours led by public artist Graham Coreil-Allen.

The New Public Sites (NPS) tours are free and open to the public as part of RedLine’s 48 Hours of Socially Engaged Art and Conversation summit. The first tour will take place on Wednesday, August 10 from 11am-12:30pm, and focus on sites of heritage and change around Welton Street. Stops will include Lawson Park, Cousins Plaza, speculative/construction sites, and the Five Points intersection itself. The second tour will take place on Thursday, August 11 from 6-7:30pm, and will investigate the positive and negative impacts of urban planning and development around the RiNo arts district. Sites will include Broadway’s triangular spaces, Sustainability Park, and The Temple.

During the tours, Coreil-Allen will recite poetic terms and definitions identifying specific types of public sites and experiences unique to Five Points. Along the way, he will also invite neighborhood experts, such as residents, workers and other stakeholders, to help identify, interpret, and activate their own public spaces. The tours will culminate with participants contributing found objects, wax rubbings and poetic writings to an immersive map installation at RedLine.

RedLine is a non-profit contemporary art center in Denver, Colorado. RedLine’s vision is to empower every person to create social change through art. Each year RedLine hosts “48 Hours of Socially Engaged Art & Conversation,” a creative summit addressing socially engaged art through talks, films, performances and participatory art. For more information about RedLine, please visit www.redlineart.org.

Click here to download the full press release.

Five Points Denver

Harbor Hopscotch

Harbor Hopscotch southeast

Harbor Hopscotch southeast

Harbor Hopscotch

All are invited to jump the Harbor Hopscotch from now through the end of summer!  Harbor Hopscotch is a 103’ long, colorful hopscotch court playfully activating a ramp entrance to West Shore Park at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The temporary installation of teal, electric blue, and fuchsia colored spray chalk was commissioned by the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore to bring more people into the south end of this prominent public space. Pedestrians strolling on the Inner Harbor Promenade are met with a large project ground graphic inviting them to hop up the ramp leading into West Shore Park. The graphic also encourages participants to share pictures of each other jumping using the hashtag #HarborHopscotch and @waterfrontpartnership.

Click here for more pictures of this epic court of pedestrian hopscotch play!

Inner Harbor Baltimore Drift

Inner Harbor Baltimore Drift

Inner Harbor Baltimore Drift

After years of research, dozens of interviews, and months of planning, I’m excited to announce my latest New Public Sites walking tour: Inner Harbor Baltimore Drift. The general public is invited to explore invisible public spaces hidden in plain sight on this alternative walking tour of Baltimore’s most recognizable public space.

Baltimore’s Inner Harbor is a celebrated success of waterfront redevelopment, but its spectacular looks disguise a contested past and challenging present. During the Inner Harbor Baltimore Drift tour, we uncover the real stories of how powerful people, visionary plans, and community movements are still transforming the former industrial wharf into a premiere public space for all. Through poetic interpretation and participatory activities, I show how secret loading docks, coded brick patterns, environmental engineering, and forgotten monuments all reveal Baltimore’s hidden truths.

More info at newpublicsites.org. Tickets for the walking tour are $15 each. Click here to purchase tickets!

Public Art for Central Avenue!

FGLA Central Ave Announcement-1920px

FGLA Central Ave Announcement-1920px

Great news! Falon Mihalic and I won the permanent public art commission for the Baltimore Central Ave Streetscape project. We are excited to meet with the project team and neighborhood stakeholders in Baltimore starting next week. Read our full announcement below!

Public Artists Graham Coreil-Allen and Falon Mihalic won the Baltimore Central Avenue Streetscape Percent for Art commission to create a permanent work of public art on Central Avenue.

Baltimore City’s Central Avenue Streetscape project encompasses major improvements running from Baltimore to Lancaster Streets. Falon-Graham-Land-Art (FGLA) will work with the Department of Transportation, Floura Teeter Landscape Architects, and the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts to incorporate a public art project into the Central Avenue corridor.

To the Central Avenue Streetscape project, FGLA brings creative vision and public space experience, an ability to listen to and work with constituents, and local sensitivity to history, the environment and public space potential. Falon designs landscapes and public artwork rooted in local ecology and culture. Graham Coreil-Allen works on numerous socially-engaged projects that activate public spaces. Together, Mihalic and Coreil-Allen will develop a project that will be inclusive of local communities and their deep historical heritages, contribute to ecological awareness, and foster a strong visual and spatial experience for Central Avenue participants.

Previously, FGLA were national finalists in the Baltimore Red Line Art-in-Transit Public Art competition to integrate public art into the Poppleton Station transit plaza. Combining our local insight with international experience, FGLA is committed to improving Baltimore through public art placemaking, built environment know-how, green-practice expertise, and playful pedestrian design.

Follow our public art process on instagram and twitter: @falonland @grahamprojects #publicart4centralave #FGLA

Graham Coreil-Allen, Graham Projects, grahamprojects.com
Falon Mihalic, Falon Land Studio, falonland.com

Citizen Artist Baltimore

CitizenArtist-logo-horizontal

I’m honored and excited to acknowledge my role helping to co-organize the art voting initiative Citizen Artist Baltimore along with my friend and fellow arts and equity advocate Rebecca Chan. Citizen Artist Baltimore is a non-partisan advocacy effort that is helping to mobilize the creative community in Baltimore City, by providing the opportunity for mayoral candidates to outline their positions and goals related to arts, culture and humanities. The effort serves as a call to action for individuals, organizations, and institutions to work together to advance inclusion of these issues in the April 2016 Primary Mayoral Election and beyond. The initiative also encourages voter registration and long-term engagement in the democratic process. We are collecting the top priorities of people who care about the arts through a citywide series of six facilitated listening sessions in January 2016. Input gathered from these listening sessions will be used to inform a questionnaire that will be sent to mayoral candidates in February. All candidate responses will be made public, and will culminate in a March candidate forum leading up to the April 26, 2016 Primary Election.

As all of my public art projects, I’m operating in a few different ways to to amplify our message and mobilize participants. As the initiative’s Creative Director, I designed the the #CitizenArtistBmore visual identity above, built the website, assisted with co-writing all of the copy featured, am designing all of the print collateral (such as these fun buttons), and am documenting events and pushing a multimedia story out across our facebook and twitter pages. As a co-organizer, I’ve been working closely with Rebecca, GBCA, MCA and our diverse steering committee members to host our series of six listening sessions across the city. We talking with anyone who benefits from arts and culture about their top priorities with it come to the arts, Baltimore City, and our next mayor. From block parties and creative upstarts to public art and marching band performances, the arts have for decades been making a tremendous social and economic impact in Baltimore. We all know this and want to make sure that the next mayor includes arts and culture in their vision for healing and strengthening an already vibrant and unparalleled cultural epicenter: Baltimore, the Greatest City in America.

– Graham

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New Public Docu of 2015

As the future of 2016 grows from burgeoning horizon, I wanted share a few updates on recent current projects. Last year proved exceptional for my public art mission to interpret, critique, activate and improve the public space of our everyday lives.

SiteLines Current Install - 01

SiteLines Exhibit

I had the great privilege of staging my first true solo show with ICA Baltimore at Current Space last spring. With the support of a Rubys Grant, my show SiteLines was the culmination of a series of radical walking tours I organized in 2014 seeking to understand overlooked public spaces in and around some of Baltimore’s highway foleys and pedestrian malls. It so happened that the show opened just as the Baltimore Uprising began to take shape in the streets.

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SiteLines Tours

The day of the first major Freddie Gray march, I led 44 participants on my Crossing the Highway to Nowhere tour. As I talked about West Side struggles against top-down planning, a helicopter hovering over the nearby protest split off and followed us as we gathered at the edge of Route 40. After crossing the highway our group began to head back to the gallery, only to run directly into the Freddie Gray march. To join was urgently appropo. On that day a modest crowd of Radical Pedestrians merged with a much larger force of walking movement in our city.

Here is what a few others had to say: ArtFCity, Bret McCabeGBCALandscape Architecture Magazine, and BmoreArt.

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The Ragged Edge of Rockville

After SiteLines, I  was invited to develop a New Public Sites project exploring the invisible sites, contradictory features and historical spirits embedded in downtown Rockville for Come Back to Rockville, a two person show with Naoko Wowsugi at VisArts curated by Laura Roulet. Naming my project, “The Ragged Edge of Rockville”, I created a gallery installation, shot new videos and staged a series of tours in and around VisArts, the Rockville Library, the Beall Dawson House and a special gravesite. Along the way we learned that Rockville twice entirely razed its downtown. What’s since emerged is an uncanny image of pedestrian urbanism embedded with the beginnings of civic spaces while hiding parking garages for car-bound shoppers. Thankfully the various redevelopment schemes spared the town’s historic Catholic cemetery – final resting place for literary icons F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, Mark Jenkins at the Washington Post took a stroll through the gallery and wrote this review.

nps-mw-map-banner-preview

New Public Sites – McDaniel / Westminster

Immediately following my Rockville drift, I began work on another New Public Sites tour and installation, this time in collaboration with McDaniel College students and residents of Union Street in Westminster, Maryland. I was honored to have “New Public Sites – McDaniel / Westminster” commissioned by curator Izabel Galliera for her group show Alternative Cartographies. Through a new map, bulletin boards and Shards of Site, we investigated the overlooked yet meaningful public spaces between an idyllic hilltop and historic neighboring streets. New Public Sites are not just in big cities, but also among rural towns and suburbs alike. Rebecca Juliette from BmoreArt still made it up and posted this on the group show.

Infinite Thanks for all the support. Let’s keep on projecting thoughts from radical walks through 2016 and beyond. Check back for updates on my forthcoming tour shattering Baltimore’s Inner Harbor Spectacle, and other delightful spring walks.

Cheers,

Graham signature teal

 

 

 

PS: Many thanks also to Baltimore Clayworks and School 33 for the opportunities to lead wanders through Mount Washington and of Baltimore City’s amazing murals.

McDaniel / Westminster Wandering Awaits!

NPS-McDaniel-Westminster-banner

From Rockville to Westminster, I’ve been keeping busy this fall orchestrating back-to-back tours of Maryland’s sub/urban ambiguity. For those of you living in the reaches north of Baltimore, this next tour is for you! Explore the invisible sites, commanding vistas, and meaningful connections between McDaniel College and Union Street in Westminster, Maryland through New Public Sites – McDaniel / Westminster. Developed in collaboration with students and residents for the exhibition Alternative Cartographies, this walking tour and multimedia gallery installation investigates the overlooked yet meaningful public spaces between an idyllic hilltop and historic neighboring streets. Featuring sites such as the Epic Embankment, VistaBowl, Sidewalk Signatures, and Boys & Girls Club, New Public Sites – McDaniel / Westminster discovers how pedestrians activate intriguing moments between learning and leisure.

New Public Sites – McDaniel / Westminster is presented in conjunction with Alternative Cartographies: Artists Claiming Public Space, curated by Izabel Galliera and soon to be on display in the Rice Gallery at McDaniel College. Galliera states: “This exhibition brings together six contemporary international artists, Matei Bejenaru, Graham Coreil-Allen, Jason Hoylman, Daniela Kostova, Olivia Robinson, and Miryana Todorova, who are concerned with the subversive potential of cartography.”

New Public Sites – McDaniel / Westminster

Presented with Alternative Cartographies: Artists Claiming Public Space
Rice Gallery, Peterson Hall, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD
Curated by Izabel Galliera

Thursday, November 5 – Friday, December 18
Opening reception Thursday, November 5, 5:30-7:30pm

NPS – McDaniel / Westminster Wandering Shards Tour

Due to rain, the tour has been rescheduled to Monday, 11/23, 11:30am, Rice Gallery. – Graham, 11/18/15 10pm.

November 19, 2015, 11:30am – 12:30pm
Meets at Rice Gallery, Peterson Hall, McDaniel College
Northeast of W Main Street and Hersh Avenue
Westminster, Maryland

Pickup a free map in the gallery or download your own copy here:
https://newpublicsites.org/mcdanielwestminster
Be a part of the conversation on facebook.