Applying New Techniques

With the two visiting artist weekends behind me, I've been thinking about how I can apply what I've learned to my own work at Mark Making. Though Bukue One and Portraits of Hope work in different community contexts and have different missions than Mark Making, we confront similar challenges in the preparation, education, and promotion stages of public art creation.

One of the most useful lessons I learned is to incorporate input from professional artists and creative thinkers on the front end of a project. The Massey workshop at the Camp House was such a success that I decided to make workshops part of Mark Making's routine planning process.

This creates opportunities for more people to participate in Mark Making projects, helps me approach property owners with a compelling design proposal already mapped out, and streamlines the project scheduling and execution.

I planned Mark Making's first design brainstorming workshop for two weeks after the Masseys left town (see photo above). The priority for the workshop was a new design for the H*art Gallery wall on Main Street, and we considered other future sites as well. The photo below shows some ideas that came out of the workshop.

The workshop was a success, though the set-up needs some fine-tuning that will come with more experience. In the future, I will encourage people to familiarize themselves with Mark Making's mission and past projects in advance. That way participants will be on the same page and ready to collaborate when they walk in the door.

I have scheduled another workshop for this weekend to consider future mural sites on ML King Blvd. I've had a great response so far and am looking forward to another productive session! If any readers are interested in more information, please contact me at frances@markmaking.org.