People can learn more about the public art plan on the Aspen Community Voice website and at other outreach events throughout the summer.
A new public art project aims to foster community and keep pedestrians safe on a busy street corner outside the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen.
The pavement mural by Chris Erickson is part of a collaboration between the city of Aspen, the Red Brick Center for the Arts and the Aspen Ideas Festival.
The concept came from Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Arts Initiative, which aims to improve pedestrian safety through public art projects.
“It's kind of like public art with a purpose,” Red Brick Executive Director Sarah Roy said in an interview onsite Sunday. “But what's also really great about this piece is that we have invited the community to help us paint it, and by asking the community to help us paint it, we're really hoping that instills a greater sense of ownership or pride with the mural and a deeper connection with place.”
The street was bustling with creativity on Sunday morning as volunteers helped fill in the mural with bright, vibrant colors. Erickson set up the design to “paint by numbers,” so anyone could pick up a brush and help fulfill his vision.
“That's part of the experiment, it's part of the beauty of it,” Erickson said while setting up to paint on Sunday.
Erickson’s design was inspired in part by Herbert Bayer, the 20th-century designer who helped shape the look of modern Aspen, and he conducted some research for the mural at the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies on the Aspen Institute campus.
But the painting also includes Erickson’s own artistic language about community, and “the conduits that bring us all together.”
The medium — paint on asphalt, rather than canvas — helps foster connection with the work, Erickson said.
“A painting, we're typically used to seeing on a wall and we stand back from it,” Erickson said. “This is more of an experience, so you can walk, actually, through the painting, and it's beneath your feet.”
Erickson’s mural in Aspen is a pilot project, part of a larger initiative to launch the city’s first-ever public art plan. Representatives from the city and the Red Brick were onsite on Sunday to spread the word about the initiative.
“We know we needed the community’s help to write this plan,” Roy said. “We wanted to hear from the community what kind of public art they want to see. Where do they want to see this public art? What kind of ideas do they want to see expressed by public art?”
