Choose Your Own Adventure at Artscape!

Choose Your Own Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure

Its July in Baltimore, which means its time for the nation’s largest free art festival – Artscape! Building off of the outrageous success of last year’s Dancing Forest of inflatable trees, I’m now teaming up with with fellow Baltimore public artist Becky Borlan on Choose Your Own Adventure! Choose your own Adventure will transform the Charles Street Bridge at Penn Station into a colorful playscape of pedestrian pathways and hanging beach balls. Spray chalk lines will mark a site-based map converging under a forest of beach balls hanging from an open air structure.

Choose Your Own Adventure at Artscape 2018
Charles Street Bridge at Penn Station, Baltimore, MD, 21201
July 20-22, 2018
Friday: 11am-9pm, Saturday: 11am-9pm, Sunday: 11am-7pm
After hours: Friday and Saturday 9pm-11pm
Free and open to the public

Choose your own Adventure takes inspiration from the natural paths taken by street-crossing pedestrians, the Jones Falls and train tracks below, and the joyful experiences of summer-inspired toys. The kinetic environment will feature hundreds of colorful, translucent beach balls and multiple lounging options for festival goers to find respite from the summer sun. Participants who choose to explore will discover curious signs offering choices for adventures beyond. Through tactical urbanism and creative design, the installation will preview possibilities for completely transforming the Charles Street Bridge into an immersive pedestrian environment and playful visionary experience.

Visionary Crosswalks – MTR

Last week I set up my first public art intervention in Baltimore. “VXW-MTR”is a continuation of the Visionary Crosswalks project I started in Bushwick, Brooklyn last spring. I set up the installation along Mount Royal Ave, between Lafayette and Lanvale, next to the MICA green. After jaywalking across this block on a weekly basis – and seeing many others doing the same -, this became the first public space in Baltimore I felt comfortable working within.

For this crosswalk I enhanced my original singular, neon-orange, over-spray design by drawing three parallel lines connected by corresponding “X” markings. The overall layout is derived from the surrounding architecture of the plazas in front of the MICA Brown and Main buildings. The Brown building’s diagonal layout opens up to Mount Royal Avenue, clearly suggesting a visual and pedestrian connection to the historical Main building. It no surprise then that students, professors, and workers are constantly cutting across Mount Royal Avenue mid-block. VXW-MTR is my attempt to both highlight this casual path to motorists, and “legitimize” the experience as a pedestrian.

In addition to the street markings, I am also bringing an element of performance to my Visionary Crosswalks project through my inclusion of “G-Mack the Construction Guy”. G-Mack is the character which I embodied during the nighttime installation of the crosswalk. As a character he serves three purposes: 1) to convince possible authorities that whatever I am doing in the middle of the night is legitimate, 2) as a personal/social entry point to the project for other pedestrians, and 3) as humorous acknowledgment of my role as the artist in creating this piece of slightly absurd direct-actionist, intervention art. Look out for future appearances from G-Mack, both as a construction worker and soon-to-be crossing guard!

Click here for full documentation.

Visionary Crosswalks Social Saturday @ Pocket Utopia, 4pm

Visionary Crosswalks Promo

Visionary Crosswalks Promo

Social Saturday at Pocket Utopia, May 24th, 4-6pm, come walk a visionary crosswalk

As part of Pocket Utopia’s ongoing “Social Saturday” series, I will screen video documentation of my interactive crosswalks on May 24th from 4:00 to 6:00 pm.

In addition I will also screen video and sound art by a few local artists featuring crosswalks and area street life; as well as entertaining internet clips dealing with crosswalks and pedestrian challenges.

The “Visionary Crosswalks Social Saturday” will be an opportunity to watch videos, hang-out, and foster discourse on the Bushwick pedestrian experience.

Pocket Utopia is an away-from center, off-center, exhibition, salon and social space run by artist Austin Thomas.

Hope to see you there,

Graham

Pocket Utopia
1037 Flushing Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11237

Visionary Crosswalks public art interventions in Bushwick

Visionary Crosswalks Promo front

The installations are up, check em out. PICTURES COMING SOON>>>

Visionary Crosswalks Promo front

Visionary Crosswalks Promo back

POCKET UTOPIA
1037 Flushing Avenue
[Just off the Morgan L, Bushwick]
Open Saturdays and Sundays 12-6 p.m. and by appointment
Call: 917-400-3869
Pocket Utopia is pleased to present it’s second neighborhood public art project: Visionary Crosswalks by artist Graham Coreil-Allen. Presented in-situ, Visionary Crosswalks will be a series of interactive crosswalk installations throughout Bushwick.

Graham Coreil-Allen will create five temporary “crosswalks” demonstrating some of the casual paths that pedestrians take when navigating various intersections in the northwest section of Bushwick. Coreil-Allen will also install interactive posters around the crosswalk sites and other locations. The posters will consist of a neighborhood map with a detail of particular intersections, and will posit this question: “How did you get here?” and “How did you cross the street?”. Each map will also include a marking pen so that passers-by may answer the questions. Coreil-Allen will periodically collect these maps and use the participants responses as plans for installing additional crosswalks.

As part of Pocket Utopia’s ongoing “Social Saturday” series, Coreil-Allen will screen a video documenting the crosswalk footage on May 24th from 4:00 pm. The “Visionary Crosswalks Social Saturday” will be a fun and casual opportunity to watch videos, hang-out, and foster discourse on the pedestrian experience in Bushwick.

Interested participants can find maps and installation locations for Visionary Crosswalks at Pocket Utopia.

Pocket Utopia is an away-from center, off-center, exhibition, salon and social space run by artist Austin Thomas.

Pocket Utopia
1037 Flushing Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11237
www.pocketutopia.com
read the blog at:
http://pocketutopia.blogspot.com/