PUBLISHER’S NOTE / EDITOR’S NOTE
Resilience and Ingenuity BY THERESA SWEETLAND DURING PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL TRAVEL,
about creative placemaking. Like my own family, the artists I met in southeastern Kentucky come from generations of workers who’ve provided hard labor to heat or feed our country. Since the coal mines closed up, Appalachians have faced some of the most challenging economic and social conditions in our country. They are rebuilding, though, by connecting to the one asset that binds them to each other: art and culture. It’s no wonder that when we at Forecast ask ourselves what has been at the core of our work for the last 40 years and what is the most compelling story to tell right now—in our work with communities and in the pages of Public Art Review— we look directly to the resilience and ingenuity of artists.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE / EDITOR’S NOTE
THERESA SWEETLAND is executive director of Forecast Public Art.
Where We Can Be Together BY KAREN OLSON
that they love our “Projects We Love” department, which highlights new and inspiring public art and creative placemaking projects from across the country—and around the world. So we began this issue with a simple idea: add more pages and fill them almost entirely with “Projects We Love.” To find as many new projects as we could, we reached out to our networks, searched the web, read the news, listened at conferences. We found so much important work that inspired us. When considering what truly moved us at this time in history, though,
a theme emerged. We were drawn to the work of artists and designers using their unique ability as creative visionaries, problem-solvers, and meaning-makers to create powerful spaces. Today, in a highly divisive time, it’s crucial we find spaces where we can gather, heal, collaborate, play, learn, mourn, and face our challenges together. Our hope is that your experience reading or paging through this issue fills you with inspiration, a connection to meaning, and an infusion of beauty.
READERS OFTEN TELL US
KAREN OLSON
is editor in chief of Public Art Review.
Photos by Dan Marshall.
PUBLIC ART REVIEW | VOL. 30 | ISSUE 58 | FORECASTPUBLICART.ORG
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I search alleys and parks for hidden public art gems. So I feel lucky that I regularly get invited to visit cities to speak, attend conferences, and meet artists. In the spring of 2018, I had two particularly memorable trips. As part of a public art delegation from around the United States, I spent a week in Bahrain. We visited museums, art fairs, and historic monuments, and yet what I remember most are one-on-one conversations with courageous artists. Many artists were at the center of the initial protests during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, some of them living under house arrest and curfews after martial law was in place. Today Bahrainian artists remain active, creating their own spaces to create and collaborate on the island and around the world. My second trip was closer to home: through the mountains into the heart of Appalachia. I was there to learn