We decided to undertake not one, but TWO public art opportunities for this task. Physics Girl was the main instigator and Jesse was the task documentarian and loyal sidekick. The neighborhood of Fremont has lots of great statues, two of which form the foundation of this task.

Public Art Opportunity #1: Dress the Statues!

One of my favorite pastimes is dressing up public statues. So that's what we did for our first Public Art Opportunity. We loaded a big plastic bin with clothes from around the house and went to Goodwill to buy a couple Halloween-related supplements. We put the bin next to the "Waiting for the Interurban" sculpture on the corner of Fremont Ave and 34th St then stationed ourselves at the Tully's across the street so we could secretly videotape people dressing the statues.

It was almost an hour before anyone used our stuff to dress the statues, although several people stopped to take a picture with them. In total only three parties participated in this P.A.O. and their work is documented in the video below. We suspect we'd have gotten a better response if it wasn't cold and really windy.


Public Art Opportunity #1: Dress the Statues!

(video on YouTube)

Public Art Opportunity #2: Color the Troll!

Our original idea for P.A.O. was to put out a bucket of sidewalk chalk in a place with lots of sidewalk. Then we decided against it because that's just too easy. But the cement + chalk idea was a good one so we tried to think of different ways to use it...

Then it came to us: under Hwy 99 lives a great big troll. It's a beloved sculpture made of cement and the basis of P.A.O. #2. We put up a simple sign: "Use the chalk to color the troll!" Then we left a bucket of sidewalk chalk and went to do task #1. But the second we walked away, people immediately started in on the troll! When we came back three hours later, the troll was very thoroughly colored and sporting an epic mustache. This task had much better participation (see video below) than task #1.

We decided to leave the chalk with the troll even after we finished documenting. I came back two days later and rain had washed part of the troll's colors off. But the pillars holding up Hwy 99 were very thoroughly chalk-tagged. We were happy to see that the good people of Fremont embraced these P.A.O.

Public Art Opportunity #2: Color the Troll!

(Video on YouTube)

Hooray for Public Art Opportunities!