Public Sculpture

Neighborhood Magic

Commissioned by Beverly Arts Alliance
Image by Jamie Gannon

Neighborhood Magic was a public engagement project created for the Beverly Art Walk in 2015 supported by Beverly Arts Alliance. We put an ad in the local paper and invited people over the age of seventy to participate in the project. All they knew was that their life story would be created into poetry and I would work with a choir to compose the poetry into song. In addition I worked with Dave Barsotti to build eight sculptural post boxes that I designed inspired by the stories. The participants chose locations throughout the neighborhood and the plan was to walk from one location to the other. Fortunately Beverly Alliance allocated a trolley Bus for the performance so we were comfortably transported to the eight locations spanning 18 blocks of the neighborhood.

In 2016 Ridge Historical Society invited me back for an second part of the public engagement project from April 8 to May 8. The public were invited to post their important life moments into the sculptural mail boxes located in the garden of Ridge Historical Society. Carron Little composed poetry inspired by the important moments and mailed the poetry directly to people’s homes. At the opening on April 8, Carron performed several poems she had written for Neighborhood Magic in October 2015. She also exhibited the Painting Backwards Series, had a screening midway through the exhibition and then had a final performance at Ridge on May 8, 2016.