Well tickle me pink!
There was a completion to decorate two TV Cable and two Traffic Control Boxes early this year and I made my submissions
and got two jobs awarded.
To do the submissions I went out to the sites and took pictures of the boxes and then came home and using Photoshop, created and wrapped the designs around the images of the boxes.
Lots of learning, frustrations but it all worked out and I can now do things in Photoshop that I could not do before. Thanks to all the folks on Youtube that post Photoshop tutorials.
Here are the pics that submitted.
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| TV cable box seen from the road |
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Traffic Control Box seen from the road
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Dealing with all groups involved with getting permission and engineers was quite involved. The forms and list of materials and rules of how to create the work was also very interesting. I spent more time helping do the applications and dealing with questions than I did doing the work.
I have a new appreciation for those artists that do public work. EVERYONE has to have input. Amazing.
So I started painting the TV cable box first and I spent a couple of hours just cleaning the box and getting all the stickers and grunge off.
Then the painting started.
Then as I got going a photographer for the local paper stopped by and the next thing we know, Colleen and I are in the paper.
Once an eyesore, a few utility boxes along
University Avenue will undergo an extreme makeover.
Three
utility boxes along the 1000 block of the street will soon become
public art, part of a project by the Neighborhood of the Arts
Business Association.
Two local artists have been commissioned by the business association to paint three utility boxes with their own
designs. They were chosen after an open call for artists, said Priscilla Auchincloss, president of the assocation.
“It’s
an absolutely fantastic idea. Most people are stuck with the utility
boxes, and they can get dirty or tagged,” said Doug Steward, one of the
artists and responsible for two utility boxes. “They’ll become something
to look at when you’re at a stoplight.”
Working
outside earlier this week when temperatures were in the mid-90s,
Steward had to stop earlier than planned because the heat was drying
the paint on his palette.
Colleen Virdi is responsible for painting the third utility box. Her
design
is of silent film actress Mary Louise Brooks, who once lived in a small
Goodman Street apartment off University Avenue and is buried in Holy
Sepulchre Cemetery.
Artists
were given a $400 stipend for each utility box in addition to $125 for
supplies, Steward said. Both artists hope to have their utility boxes
painted by the end of June. The project was inspired by other
neighborhoods in Rochester, Auchincloss said. Other neighborhoods have
also painted bus stops.
“The
idea is to create interest and appeal from people driving by,”
Auchincloss said. “What the city wants, and what we want, is for the
public to feel curious and welcome so they will come and explore these
neighborhoods.”
I finished the TV cable box and it looks a lot like the image I created with Photoshop.
Then I moved on to the traffic control box and started to paint. Hotter than blazes out there.
