Two of the Arts Commission’s Inter/Active arts projects
Toledo loves public art. We boast of sculptures, lines of poetry inscribed in sidewalks and color murals on city corners. While we have many hands to thank for these creative efforts, the community can thank The Arts Commission as the impetus for many of these contributions.
Coming to the Third Thursday Art Loop in June, 2017, The Arts Commission will present four interactive, community-driven, collaborative works of art. In June of 2016 when The Arts Commission sought artists to create interactive art for an Art Loop, offering $5,000 stipends for winning submissions. Out of 16 entries, four projects have been selected to be presented at the Art in Public Places Inter/Active Art Loop in July.
Meet two of the winners with a peek at the art they’re creating.
Team SaBa: Diversions
Toledoans Sam Sheffield and Barry Whitaker, known collectively as SaBa, are artists and video game creators, but their interactive pieces aren’t your everyday Nintendo games.
“Many of our projects encourage people to play together in physical ways,” Whitaker explains.
Sharing their work with an international audience helped in the creation of SaBa’s winning game, Diversions.
“This project was initially inspired by a wooden toy that Barry found in the lobby of an inn in Japan,” explains Sheffield. “In that game, a player used a rope connected with pulleys to move a ball through an obstacle course of pegs and holes.”
The SaBa team enjoyed the idea but modified the game for a larger scale, creating Diversions. The two-player game gives each player access to ropes and pulleys to help physically move a 3D character through a 2D environment. Through cooperation, players can maneuver the character to safety, through increasingly difficult situations based around people’s modern technology generated anxieties. When the game is over, the participants’ scores are added to a leaderboard, encouraging people to participate and surpass previous players’ scores, creating an arcade-like atmosphere for their art.
Whittaker is also a member of the University of Toledo’s Department of Art faculty. Team SaBa also includes fellow faculty, Jerod Christy.
Find out more about Team SaBa by visiting barrywhittaker.com/index.html
Erin Peterson: UNITY
Another grant winner is Erin Peterson, a local educator with impeccable timing.
Last year, Peterson was inspired by another artist’s work, “I saw a short online video showcasing Nancy Belmont’s UNITY project in Virginia,” explained Peterson. “I thought, ‘Let’s recreate that in Toledo.’ Shortly thereafter, the Arts Commission posted a call for submissions. The timing was perfect.”
This UNITY project is based around an exhibit of poles and string. 32 poles are placed in a circle, and notes are attached to each pole with personal characteristics, such as “I am an immigrant,” “I love the arts,” or “I live with a disability.”
Participants are then given a long string of yarn that they tie to any number of poles that they identify with. When finished, UNITY ends up looking like a forest of yarn created by the participants.
“We hope that the resulting canopy of intertwined yarn will be a visible reminder of that which makes us unique while also making us stronger, more beautiful, and paradoxically, more unified,” explained Peterson.
Find out more about UNITY by visiting unityproject.net
