The Exquisite Mile, Collaboration w/ curator Susannah Majors, + TLP, Rochester Art Center, MN. 2016
In partnership with curator Susannah Majors and Rochester Art Center’s teen art group Tastes Like Paint (TLP) I conducted a community art-making event inspired by ideas of pollination and artistic research within a one-mile radius of downtown Rochester. It took form as postcards, a public painting event, and a waterfront mural.
The Exquisite Mile is guided by the goal to connect the Rochester community with a participatory activity within downtown Rochester. After exploring specific areas that could use reactivation or re-contextualization, we chose to highlight Rochester’s human and natural migratory relationships. Rochester’s main industry revolves around the Mayo Clinic and is marked by millions of people constantly coming and going, whether employed there or receiving care. This relationship can be read symbolically as one of pollen and pollinators, and led us to consider a central question: how do the migrating pollinators of a place experience it?
THE EXQUISITE MILE POSTCARD SERIES
The Exquisite Mile evokes the art historical concept of The Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative game associated with the Surrealist art movement in the 1920s. Incorporating these ideas of chance, the combination of disparate visual elements and group collaboration, the members of TLP acted as artist-researchers, collecting data and information over two months to inform the content and colors of the cards. The research was conducted within a one-mile radius of downtown Rochester, and focused on observations of pathways, systems, and sites –monumental and banal alike– unique to their experience of the city.
Translated onto cards, with representative color on one side and information about what the color represents on the other, the information is shared, pollinating the minds and public of Rochester.
THE EXQUISITE MILE MURAL WALL: COLLABORATIVE PAINTING EVENT
Departing from the traditional paint-by-numbers framework—one anchored by pre-determined form, shape, or pattern—but still emphasizing color and form in relationship to space, the process for The Exquisite Mile allowed for the final product –a collaborative mural painted in the park outside of the museum– to evolve and be shaped by public participation. The structure of the painting relies on individual preference as participants selected their own color and it’s placement on the wall, and engages with the idea of the city of downtown Rochester as a still-wild civic space, changing, and shaped by those who move through it. The project also emphasizes that natural and civic spaces aren’t as separate as they appear to be.
