Make and install public art - PEP BB community.straw.art

I made this Pride Flag blanket for a queer art show in my community in summer 2020. It’s machine knitted in four sections, which were joined on the machine, for a total of about 3000 rows, and includes 29 pride flag designs. Materials are all repurposed, coming from:
Thrift store yarn
Thrift store sweaters, unraveled
Donated yarn from other knitters
Partial cones of Yarn that came along for the ride when I bought a knitting machine
Scrap yarn from my own knitted-accessory business
Hanging bar at the top is a repurposed wood broomstick
Weight bar at the bottom is Leftover plumbing pipe

Time to make… about 40 hours over several months, including research, design, prototyping, knitting, assembly. I had been machine knitting professionally for more than a year when I started the project, so I doubt if someone else could have made it faster unless they had a motorized machine, and then not by much. It’s not the actual carriage-pushing that takes the time!

This is an actual usable blanket as well as an art piece. It’s double thickness, being fully lined, and fits a twin size bed.

Pics show it on the machine (the first section), completed, on display at the art show, then hanging in the foyer of our local library in summer 2021. It’s also spent several months on display at our local MLA (elected representative) office. It’s now been purchased by LIFT community services, a local charity, and pic shows it on display in their public office as background to one of their instagram posts.

Thank you! It definitely was a labor of love, and there were times I thought it would never end 😀

How many oddball points does this qualify for, please?

I wish to submit this handmade "Chalk and Talk Table" which I designed and built, power-tool free, thanks to the support of my community.  

It serves as an outdoor functional art centerpiece in a newly launched urban garden I've been designing since last fall to serve six deserving families.

There's a whole bunch of community built into this table:

The table is permanently located on a former playground, and is visible via public sidewalk and road.

The table top was a former industrial spool gifted to me from a church friend.  (My best man has a similar spool top.)

The legs are one of many art pieces derived from Christmas trees hauled from outside of my neighbors' apartments, and processed in our community garden.  They were held together by resting on one another, and then kept secure with 60, 120, and 140mm T30 torx-head screws purchased with community grant funding.

The needles of the Christmas tree trunks became mulch for a small guerilla garden and the limbs fodder for our compost bin.

The tree was transported with a borrowed truck from a neighbor.

There is a globe-motif pot resting on the tripod-legs, painted by neighborhood kids during a work party I recently led.  The pot was one of many items found discarded near the side of a road I was walking along one day.

There is a spider plant in the pot, propagated from a plant gifted to me by a neighbor a year or two ago.  Those baby spider plants are now dotted throughout the new urban garden, too.

There is also a single sunflower seed, which itself holds significance given global events.  This seed was one of hundreds saved from a Mammoth variety sunflower head, grown in our Kindergarden.  You can actually see the mother plants here in this post.  It is my hope that the sunflower will some day reach up through the darkness, and grow up into the light out of the center of the table.

George, is your BB submission for just the table of the whole space in the photo? (Did you add the benches and garden beds as well?)

Ashley Cottonwood wrote:George, is your BB submission for just the table of the whole space in the photo? (Did you add the benches and garden beds as well?)

BB submission was (originally) just going to be for the table with globe pots and plants.  But since you mention it...

In this photo I also designed, and either personally installed, or directly lead work parties for:

The two big instructional / art blackboards

The three colorfully painted benches

The two foldable colorful raised beds, planted with male and female hardy-kiwi vines in newly delivered earth and compost

The colorful hanging art frames (green on the right, blue and tan on the left)

The hanging spider plants in pots, suspended in the middle of the frames via repurposed, salvaged tomato cages

There's a ton more for this design site, but and I'm going to have to make using a dedicated project wiki to organize (or rather showcase) it all.  And the project will continue to grow and fill in, so I don't know what is best as far as BB submissions go.

Hi George, your project is great and you are doing a wonderful thing for your community!  Many of us certifiers want to approve your submission but we're stuck on some things:

1.  All PEP BBs (that I can think of) are for things you do, not things you have help with.  So it's hard to tell how much of that you did yourself since there are extra hands shown in one picture and you mention having help.
2.  This BB requires re-purposed or natural materials.  Were the paints re-purposed in some way?
3.  It requires 8 oddball points worth of effort.  That's based on the working speed of a professional "chalk table maker" who makes dozens of these for art fairs or their etsy shop.  This isn't really a question but providing context for the amount of work needed.  Often 3-5x the hours are required for a normal person to equal an oddball hour.
4.  Regarding the additional post, PEP points/effort only counts for things you physically do, not planning, research, design or thinking time.  So it's hard to tell how many minutes/hours of that work should count.  Plus we need before, during and after pics of things to be able to count them.

So that's why we're struggling to approve or reject this one.  If you could add some clarity to these points it would help.  Not every project fits a BB in the system.  Another possibility is that this one might be a candidate for the Nest BB for setting up a Semi-permanent seating area

Hi Mike, I just sent you a nice long Purple Mooseage addressing your items.  

I'm not sure what else you would like for me to upload.  Some more of the tools I used are over here, and here is a separate picture depicting just one of the dozen trees I've processed into community art.  

If my original post isn't enough to earn the minimum of 2 BB for Straw, then I can toss in this second table into the pot:





Speaking of which, first I should have called broader attention to differences between this wiki page over here:
https://permies.com/wiki/pep-badge-community

Where it says under the Straw section:

Community art - 2 to 4 oddball points
 - needs to be in view of the community

Up to 8 oddball points of community art allowed

Along with this Badge Bit Calculator v1.5 which also says 2-4 oddball points.

In contrast to our current thread we're on right now, which says "get at least 8 points according to oddball rules".

For that first table, I posted my art in progress photo (basement collage) and the art's permanent location (former playground area in view of public).  For my submitted table project, natural or salvaged items included the 6 Christmas tree table legs, made from natural Christmas trees, the salvaged industrial wire spool, and the large planting pot.  

The second table uses smaller Christmas tree pieces.  They are joined together using a scotch eye, plus more of the same screws.  Salvaged materials also include that IKEA cutting board I found on the side of the road, which became the table top.

W.r.t paint, I recommend that if petroleum-based paint in any form is prohibited, then that become explicit.  If only natural or re-purposed materials are allowed, I recommend using the term "shall" instead of "should".  Cheers!

Question about paints: What about all natural paints, like milk paint or even oil paint made with just linseed oil and pigment?

I'm going to be making a big sign for our neighborhood, and just purchased Real Milk Paint to use for the project, and will be sealing it with Tung Oil. There's a BB for making natural paint and someone was certified for making milk paint, so I'm hoping that milk paint counts as natural, even if I don't spend the time to make it myself.

The ingredients in the paint I bought are:

Casein (milk protein)
Calcium Lime
Natural Pigment colors
Plant-based filler (edible)

Paint is allowed for this BB but it seems to want to discourage it.  So you're good to proceed with it, not sure how the points will play out.  That milk paint sounds much better than a can of spray paint.

Five years ago, I made these signs for our road after there was some dumping of trash on it. When we moved in, there used to be a big "Trespasers will be shot on site" (spelling error included), so I thought I'd go along with the theme...without the spelling errors!

I only have progress pictures for one of them, but I'll post all three for fun.

First, I made a digital mock-up of the signs, to ask my neighbors if they liked them and if there was anything they wanted to see on the signs:

sign design in photoshop

 

Another version of the sign

I sketched the designs out on paper, and then asked my neighbors for more input. They liked them, so I sketched the designs on the pieces
44 of wood:

Paper sketch of design

Sketched on wood

Then I woodburned them:

Woodburned sign--still needs to be trimmed

Another sign

another sign

Then I installed them under trees along the road. Sadly, I never took pictures of them after I installed them. It's been 5 years, so the "Keep it Beautiful" sign is all washed out. The other two signs are in better shape. Both of them, I need to take down and reburn. But, I never happen to have a screwdriver or ladder when I'm walking down the road!

Our road is 3/4 miles long. The first bit, that leads up to a housing development with 30+ houses is paved. Then the road turns to gravel and goes for another 1/2 mile to our house. There's another dozen or so houses down the gravel road.

Sign #1 Still legible, but needs a reburn!

Sign #2. It rains lot here...

Nicole Alderman wrote:
In this Badge Bit, you will make a piece of art that will be displayed publicly (accessible from off of your property, and for the benefit of those off of your property).  It should be made with natural or re-purposed materials.  Paint is allowed but discouraged.  Time spent painting won't be counted towards the hours so a mural may count for 0 points.  This project will be scored based on standard Oddball points of professional work time.  It can be one giant project, or a series of smaller ones.  

Here are some ideas:

They could be welded, like these (from this thread):

Minimum requirements:
- get 2 to 4 points according to oddball rules
- you did the work by yourself
- in clear view of the public and for the benefit of the public
- paint and unnatural materials are discouraged

Provide the following proof as pics or video (>2 min):
- location where the art will go
- your art in progress
- art completed and installed in its permanent location

I began this experiment with low expectations that my dragon would look like a dragon. I figured I’d need to add a plaque to clarify “you’re looking at an interpretive dragon”.

As it turns out, I think I arted pretty well!! No plaque needed.

My first rocket was built in a community barn cafe… as they call it. I wanted to add dragon art to it to symbolize the message that Uncle Mud told me: treat every rocket like a temperamental pet dragon. You need to get to know it and befriend it for it to perform well for you” well… maybe I shouldn’t use exact quotes since that’s my version/paraphrase.

Right, back to the BB, I spent approximately 24 hrs on this metal dragon. I collected scrap metal for months and didn’t use anything new. I used a MIG welder to build the dragon and mount it to a barrel.

Oh! The last thing to say about this is that I’ll never forget the reactions from people who saw it; glee, amazement, awe- maybe. I mounted the dragon with magnets into a proposed spot for a week and the community approved and supported the installation at their land meeting. This was a fun project!