Resilience Proposal for Boston Street Underpass

2022

Resilience Proposal for the Boston Street Underpass

For the Boston Street underpass, I proposed a reflective metallic installation based native Oklahoma plants that will refract sunlight into an iridescent spectrum of patterns. Golden flowers will enliven a sky-blue ground, interwoven with the names of the living Descendants of Tulsa’s Race Massacre Survivors. Each Descendant’s ancestor who survived the massacre would be honored with a flower of their choice. Metal signage designating the dedication will be installed with the project. Local Black poets and the Descendants will be invited to contribute, their words incorporated into the metal forms on the walls. A large-scale Resilience, written explicitly to connect the deep roots of native flora with the extraordinary spirit of Greenwood’s people. From an educational perspective, this offers myriad avenues: from local Black history to contemporary literary culture, to biological study of native ecologies.

Polished metals, dichroic, colored acrylic and metals in silver, gold, copper hues will ensure maximum longevity, brilliant and iridescent colors, and ease of installation. Long-lasting LED light may enliven the space at night with minimum maintenance needs. Finally, Resilience would be made with a new and unique technique that fuses intricate hand-made drawings with laser-cut and etched forms.

Like my Cosmic Veils (2020), RESILIENCE will sculpt space and engage the light with dichroic surfaces. Organic forms climb the walls of the underpass varying scale from extremely large to relatively small, rendering RESILIENCE legible to both car traffic & pedestrians. I have chosen Oklahoma’s native plants and wildflowers to demonstrate the resilience of nature in the face of extraordinarily barren conditions. With root systems of up to fifteen feet deep, prairie plants persevere, stabilizing our fragile ecosystem, providing food and shelter for native fauna. In this way, their roots enable them to survive, in much the same way that Greenwood residents rely on their ancestral roots. Like The American Dream, Cosmic Veils, and my earlier public art projects, RESILIENCE invokes nature’s continual change and renewal. In the context of Greenwood’s history, this message of regeneration is especially potent as the Pathway to Hope is itself a project that aims to rebuild.

A key element of creating RESILIENCE will engage the community. In Tulsa’s Black community and the Greenwood Art Project, I met the collective spirit of hope, resilience. With my installation at Oxley Nature Center, The American Dream (2021) I fulfilled my vision of creating public art that meaningfully speaks to the community in my adopted home. For Resilience, I turn to these luminaries, in particular Tulsa teacher L. Joi McCondichie, a Descendant of Tulsa Massacre Survivors. The luminous flowers pay tribute to their resilience and hope for a blooming future for the community.