Taking Back the Streets (Visually)

A couple of us helped beautify New York City today. We were part of an effort organized by the Public Ad Campaign to create over 100 installations of art in place of illegal billboards that blight our pedestrian commute.

This piece was installed on the corner of Ludlow & Delancey. It was inspired by Mondrian and was meant to echo the architecture of one of the buildings you can see from that corner. The installation was made of hand cut pieces of Rosco lighting gel and black gaffer tape. There are 64 panels on the left billboard and 4 panels on the right.

The whole thing went up in 17 minutes.

Five hours later, it was gone.

“Poem.
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”

postscript: Bianca’s flickr stream has a great photo of cutting the pattern pieces Saturday night at Resistor. Bianca is with MITERS up in Cambridge. She dropped by for an impromptu tour in the middle of a rainstorm.