After posting “Green Art for the Green Line” last Sunday, (streets.mn, October 5, 2014) I followed up with Sara Udvig, artist and Executive Director of the Summit-University, to find out more about the images I had shared. She steered me to several websites with a treasure trove of information about graffiti and art interwoven with the natural environment, and featuring work by artists around the world.
Street Art News — http://www.streetartnews.net/ — yielded fascinating details about one of my favorite images — the oversized painting of a little girl watering a tree, which was painted by a Polish street artist named Natalia Rak for the 2013 Folk on the Street Festival in the city of Bialystok. According to Street Art News, “Playing with ideas of scale, the clever piece features a girl watering a small plant or tree depending on your perspective and can be found on the side of the Institute of Chemistry building at the University of Bialystok.”
On the Street Art Utopia website — http://www.streetartutopia.com/?p=12684 — I found additional photos of this image at different scales — showing the mural in the context of the surrounding buildings and neighborhood, a close-up with fine details of the girl’s face and watering can, and a picture of the artist at work on the mural. Here are the photos, along with the original.
For me, these help to clarify what it is that intrigues me about this artist and the possibilities she offers for us to view the world around us from different perspectives. I’m looking forward to exploring the work of other artists who combine natural and constructed, or painted elements in surprising, amusing and interesting ways. I’m also beginning to look for locations along University Avenue (and other St Paul streets) that could lend themselves to Green Art creations by local artists.
Meanwhile, the richness of resources on the internet is drawing me in and turning this into a series of posts that will feature the work and ideas of different Green artists, hopefully providing fodder for a growing collection of Green Art along the Green Line. Stay tuned.