image ©2019 Mike Belleme
While site specific art has always played a role in landscape architecture, the parameters of public art are expanding; ephemeral, temporal and performance-based art is now regularly integrated into sites. Until recently, art has largely served to cultivate a sense of identity within a public space or to highlight the unique stories, histories and culture of a place. Communal and accessible outdoor art is generally embraced by the profession and revered by the community, but the reality is, public space is not always welcoming for all.
In many ways, acknowledging the emotional potency of public art, and it’s ability to create transformational change within communities, has opened our eyes to the potential for artists to collaborate on landscape projects—not just as creators but as innovators, communicators, instigators and liaisons. Early on in the Chouteau Greenway Competition (2016), the project team realized the power that artists could play in thinking creatively, pushing the boundaries if you will, but also in engaging and facilitating sensitive dialogue with communities.
Early on, the competition team worked with renowned artist and architect, Amanda Williams, to help shape the submission. Her project, Color(ed) Theory, was acclaimed for its confrontational look at race and space in the South Side of Chicago. As an artist, she is not just interested in art for arts’ sake, but as means to shift the narrative and explore ways that art can impact the landscape as a whole, transforming it, educating people, bringing them together and starting a dialog. Ms. Williams describes her intent as a way to, “spark conversations, that lead to ideas, that lead to solutions… to set the table, or the canvas if you will… for what the future could be.”
At the inception of the Chouteau Greenway project (now the Brickline Greenway), the team advocated for the inclusion of local St. Louis artists of color to actively inform, craft, and participate in the planning and design process. Artists; Mallory Nezam, an entrepreneurial civic artist, cultural producer, writer, and communications strategist; De Nichols, a social activist focused on addressing civic and social challenges within communities; and Damon Davis, who uses his art to empower the disenfranchised and powerless, became integral members of the 13 member project team helping to shape both the process and outcome. Their unique perspectives and insight helped to frame the explicit goals for the project—a 22 mile greenway through 17 St. Louis neighborhoods—which ultimately became unearth, connect, heal, provoke, cultivate and envision.
The Brickline Greenway framework plan, released in late 2019, crucially addressed how to equitably reinvest in the city, to increase walkability and vibrancy through neighborhoods, to bridge geographical and cultural divides, to incentivize greater social and economic equity, and to deeply engage, reflect and connect the diversity of cultures that exist in the city. Art became embedded in every aspect of the project, solidified by the formation of the ‘Artists of Color Council’. Embedding art in catalyst sites such as the Griot Museum of Black History and the historic Mill Creek Valley, a vibrant African American community erased in the creation of a freeway overpass, as well as under the 601 freeway, became explicit opportunities to bring public art into marginalized communities.
Under trestle art park.
Kings highway art park.
Ideas like the “stoop”, an architectural element that celebrates the residential stoop where generations have gathered to share stories, and temporary art installations on vacant lots, became grounding elements that emerged from community dialogue facilitated by the artists. And, when the Council described the dire need for a welcoming, large-scale, public sculpture park accessible for all within the inner city, the idea for the Kings highway overpass was born—a cloverleaf design that winds through a new art park, then launches across the roadway to connect with Forest Park.
Griot Museum vacant lot activation.
The boundary pushing, creative thinking, community dialogue, and social activism that the art community brought to the vision, was key to the vibrant and inclusive plan that emerged. This project is a prime example of how the role of art and the artist can be expanded, by embedding people like Ms. Nezam in the discovery and design process. She highlights the team’s contribution as, “forefronting the experiential components of the greenway (how do we want people to feel when they are on it?), integrating cultural nuance into the framework plan, and leaning into the storytelling of forgotten histories.” Their understanding that, “the greenway is more than a linear path, that has to be built from the history of a place, react to and reflect its inhabitants' lived experiences, and nod towards a better shared future,” provided a strong foundation from which to build.
St. Louis Improv Anywhere pop-up performance, 2011, St. Louis, MO - Mallory Nezam
With that being said, different artists will have different ways that they approach working in the public realm. Nezam suggests, “artists with a community or collaborative practice can be incredibly integral to helping forefront community culture, needs & wants. Yet, there are other artists who bring the strength of creative problem solving, dreaming outside of the traditional ways of operating and pushing teams to take risks. I'm also personally really interested in how artists can collaborate to reimagine the systems themselves of design, construction, implementation and governance of public projects. How we, as inherently creative and imaginative practitioners, re-conjure and build new systems in which the folks we are designing for can become the folks we are designing with.”