When a local art student erected a golden chain-link fence around Mount Vernon Place earlier this spring, downtown residents who normally enjoy free access to their favorite neighborhood park reacted with outrage.
Southeast Baltimoreans will encounter another example of "environmental installation art" this weekend -- albeit to very different effect. Nearly 9,000 feet of red burlap will festoon the western edge of Patterson Park, swaths laid out along the ground like a network of fabric paths.
Neighbors, in this case, seem to be welcoming this project, whose organizers hope to entice people to the park.
"This is entirely different than the `gold fence,'" says Marisa Vilardo, president of the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association. "We use the park every day. We'd never support anything that excludes people. This invites everyone in."
At Patterson Park, the 3-foot-wide sashes periodically encase a trunk of an unsuspecting elm or maple as a decorative ribbon might a Christmas gift.
"Our idea is pretty simple," says Rachael Baird, a local designer who helped organize the sprawling exhibit, Park Life/City Movement. "We want people to get out amongst the trees."
Baird and her business partner, Jessica Pegorsch, have long been interested in spotlighting and supporting environmental causes. Since 2003, a nonprofit arm of the Baltimore design firm they co-own, the Tilt Studio Foundation, has developed projects that raise awareness about the environment and suggest ways ordinary people can contribute to its health.
Park Life/City Movement is a bit smaller scale as "environmental installation art" than the works concocted by Christo, the Hungarian-born artist who erected more than 7,500 saffron-colored gates along the paths of Central Park in New York three years ago. But the Patterson Park exhibit is part of a larger enterprise called Baltimore: The Urban Forest Project, also a Tilt brainchild. For the past month, the company has brought together the work of more than 400 local artisans, designers and students, the efforts of city officials, and the planning of architects to spread the message of sustainability.
Baltimore: The Urban Forest Project has created environmentally themed public art, including hanging more than 350 banners along several city streets. The banners, made from recycled plastic materials, suggest the importance of trees.
"It's a symbolic urban forest within the city," says Matt Roberts, a spokesman for the project.
