The second ten “creative placemaking” projects have been chosen to complete the creative line-up for the Arts on Chicago initiative. The final ten projects will include public art that incorporates motion sensors, sculpture, yarn, live performance, and a stilt-walking club.

These projects will be added to the first round that included range from an Urban Nature Walk, a pedal-powered poetry mobile, artist designed bicycle racks, glowing LED wall murals, and “Art Stops” that transform public gathering places.

All artists selected live or work regularly within the Powderhorn, Central, Bancroft, and Bryant neighborhoods. Artists will receive support ranging from $5,000 to $9,000 to implement their proposed projects.

ARTS ON CHICAGO – 2ND TEN PROJECTS (Just announced!):

• Jenny Schmid, Drew Anderson & Andrea Steudel
Eye Site harnesses the ample network of privately owned motion sensor lighting around the Chicago Avenue corridor to charge glow-in-the dark images for an immersive nighttime tour through the area. This project makes clever use of the infrastructure of motion sensor lights that would not normally inspire art.

• Masa Kawahara
Kawahara will work with community artists and adult volunteers to create the Chicago Avenue Stilting Club, a youth stilting and performance group. Thirty sets of stilts will be maintained by the club and made available to the community through training and stilt walking certification.

• Dylan Fresco
What Grows Here? is a 60-minute storytelling performance/guided walking tour along Chicago Ave between 32nd-38th streets. Dylan Fresco and Michelle Barnes will lead the audience while sharing stories gathered from people who live, work, and go to school here. Stories will also be posted in the neighborhood and archived online.

• StevenBe
StevenBe and the StevenBe Creative Community Foundation are proposing a “living” installation beginning at our location at 3448 Chicago and emanating outward through the corridor. This installation “lives” by evolving with new fiber art additions, yarn graffiti, community activity within our art garden, arts and crafts education, and the spread of creative projects along the corridor in line with our Foundation’s philosophy of giving back through the fiber arts.

• Patricia Anderson
The Collage Collaborative will exhibit collages created by children in the community centers along the corridor. The images will be informed by conversations with adults and seniors about Chicago Avenue’s community. The artwork would be displayed at community centers, as postcards distributed at corridor businesses, and on the artist’s website.

• Peter Haakon Thompson
The Mobile Sign Shop will function as a mobile, municipal sign shop designed to create hand-made name signs for the neighborhood with the goal of increasing residents’ connection to each other while giving people who travel on Chicago a sense of who lives here, adding residents names to our community spaces.

• City Food Studio
A sculptural façade encapsulating the front of 3722 Chicago, using salvaged metal to create a cityscape echoing the art-deco silhouette of the adjacent strip of artist galleries, building an identity for the CityFoodStudio rental kitchen housed in the building, and reinforcing the developing urban/art vibe of the Chicago Avenue corridor. Built into the façade will be a set of “windows” in which local artists will be invited to develop and show their work.

• Upstream Arts
Expanding the the Little Free Library project into the Chicago Avenue Corridor will provide free art and children’s books to pedestrians and neighbors along the 10 block stretch.

• Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association
PPNA will host a Paint the Pavement events at locations and times to be determined.

• Breaking Ice
Breaking Ice is a 16 year old program of Pillsbury House Theatre that uses improvisation and ensemble-based theatre to confront the difficult communication issues that arise from cultural friction. Breaking Ice will customize a performance with input from the neighborhood on the relevant issues of gentrification around Powderhorn, Central, Bryant and Bancroft. What are the opportunities to neighborhood change? What are the fears? How do we work together for positive change that benefits everyone?

ARTS ON CHICAGO – 1st TEN PROJECTS (Announced Sept. 4, 2012) :

• Stephanie Rogers
An urban nature walk that examines the ecology of Chicago Avenue. At least 30 signs combining images and descriptive text will be installed in public spaces, creating serendipitous encounters. Photography will focus on a macro view, encouraging a closer look at our surroundings.

• Wing Young Huie
Photographing the cultural diversity along the corridor using concepts to connect neighbors who don’t know each other well or at all, and traditional documentary techniques, accompanied with explanatory text based on interviews with those photographed. One hundred photos will be exhibited inside ten businesses, with separate openings at each venue.

• Natasha Pestich
A travelling gallery, the “PHAT mobile” (Pillsbury House and Theatre mobile), that will travel through Powderhorn, Bancroft, Bryant and Central neighborhoods, showcasing the work of resident youth primarily, and offering arts-based workshops and public events.

• Loretta Day + TAWU Artist Group
TAWU Artist Group will transform the bus stops between 32nd and 42nd into “Art Stops.” Every trash receptacle and bench will become a work of art. The “Art Stops” will blend into the Chicago Corridor by reflecting the area’s cultural diversity as well as complimenting surrounding businesses.

• Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center
A mural installation for the highly visible north wall of the building on 38th and Chicago. The mural design combines elements of the building’s movie theater history with an homage to the fiery work being produced at CAFAC and incorporates sculptural metal pieces and LED elements, fabricated by youth from the Hennepin County Home School.

• Eric Rieger (HOTTEA) & Forrest Wozniak
This project includes a mural and sculptural elements about “Universal Pleasantry.” It will speak of our human condition to fill the void within our lives and how artwork can be a tool to convey messages like this.

• Molly Van Avery
At the heart of this project is the act of people writing and receiving poetry. The poetry will not be written in isolation but will instead be born out of and inspired by the street it will be written on: Chicago Avenue (through use of the “poetry mobile” a writing desk on wheels that will be a piece of art in and of itself.).

• Kelly Brazil
Welding 5 separate bicycle racks along proposed corridor incorporating themes or flavors of each location and completed in partnership with youth from the Trans Youth Support Network (at 34th and Chicago).

• Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association
PPNA will wrap 6 utility boxes along the Chicago Avenue corridor with collaged photographs from the Powderhorn365 photography project (powderhorn365.com). Images will be voted on and selected by residents and community members.

• Pillsbury House + Theatre
An exterior public gathering space at the corner of 35th and Chicago that transforms a drab area into a vibrant public square. The vision for this project was developed by the PH&T staff and community stakeholders through the Pillsbury House and Theatre Cultural Community Hub Institute sessions.