Saturday, July 15, 2017

Don't Fence Me In Wichita Falls Art Project Reveal

This Saturday morning of the fifteenth day of July of the year 2017 I made my way an event taking place on the grassy median between Kell West and East, slightly east of downtown Wichita Falls, under the shadow of the giant abandoned towering chunk of concrete known as Attebury

The event to which I made my way was the reveal of the pickets of the Wichita Falls "Don't Fence Me In" art project in which hundreds of Wichita Fallers of all ages, of all sorts, exercised their creative freedom via the fence picket painting medium.

The Don't Fence Me In fence pickets have been being painted for months,  with the creative artistry overseen by a group of about twelve artistic types of various sorts.

Those attending the reveal of the fence pickets were assembled behind a "ribbon" awaiting being cut after multiple speakers speechified about the Don't Fence Me In project, including one of the spearheaders of this hugely successful project, Miss Margie Reese, who you see below speaking to the assembled crowd eagerly awaiting the cutting of the ribbon.


The painted fence pickets have been  assembled in a formation of fences arranged like a maze. Some with windows to allow a peak through. Or a photo op.


Don't Fence Me In attendees on both sides of one of the aforementioned fence "windows", above and below.


And below another attendee looking through a picket fence window. This particular person looks like maybe an attempt to crawl through the window is about to take place.


The fence picket art seemed to be mostly devoid of any political  messaging. I saw nary a Trump mention.

However, the below fence picket message somehow seemed sort of political.


SLA? Symbionese Liberation Army? That notorious group of nutcases who terrorized America, and Patty Hearst, back in the 1970s? I suspect this instance of SLA must mean something else, but what? I have no clue.

The 100s of people who created fence pickets had no clue where their picket was located in the sprawling installation.  And so finding their particular picket was a bit of a treasure hunt.


Above you see a young lady successfully finding her picket, and pointing to it for the assembled photographers.


Some of the artwork on the fence pickets was a bit perplexing to figure out what message, if any, was being conveyed. Above we see a lady in white who appears to be being puzzled by that at which she is looking.

Below is a short video I took this morning whilst walking amongst some of the picket fences and the other attendees...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I suspect this instance of SLA must mean something else, but what? I have no clue.

https://www.facebook.com/SecordLebowArchitectsLlp/

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