Rough Concept Sketch For Cheboygan Arts Park Project

A few months ago I designed a fence for a residence in Chicago that seemed perfect for public art opportunities. Based on the idea of advent calendars, the fence featured Mondrian like grids of doors which, when opened, would reveal steel silhouettes.

From a public art standpoint, the design has a lot going for it:

• It's an interactive piece encouraging curiosity and discovery.
• It easily invokes narrative, telling stories or history through sequential imagery (like a comic book)
• The fence design is readily made site-specific by selecting images specific to the community, culture or region
• Great potential for community involvement in the selection of images and ideas to represent
• Low maintenance materials insure longevity of the project and require no maintenance budget

Another thing I love about the design is the interplay between privacy and discovery… The face of the fence blocks the view of what's behind it, but the invitation to open the doors and look within them opens another world of imagination.

I spoke yesterday with Joann Leal at the Cheboygan Area Arts Council about the new Art Park in downtown Cheboygan. She liked the idea of the fence as a possible contender for the park, so I've put together a very quick concept drawing that shows some imagery that might be appropriate to the area. I'd like to find more images of logging, rivers and the lighthouse there… but this is just an initial rough. Ideally, if the fence were chosen as a project to move forward on, I would invite the Cheboygan community to submit images and drawings which I could incorporate into the final design of the project.

Below are drawings of the fence with the doors closed, with the doors open, and a drawing of the landscaping design for the park. The fence would ideally have a zero-maintenance rust finish, the colors used in the drawing are not representative but mere used to provide better contrast when viewing online.