For the 16th anniversary of the Public Art Network Year in Review, we offered the selected applicants and artists the opportunity to tell us the stories behind their works. This week's blog salon features the stories behind some of the most compelling public art projects completed in 2015.

Tysons, Virginia, is littered with parking lots and trafficked highways, and not what I used to think of as a place to seek out culture. When Arts Council of Fairfax County commissioned me to make a pedestrian-friendly, community-fostering, place-making work of art as a catalyst to bring more culture to the area, I knew I was undertaking a tall order; but they had a vision, and I like a challenge. 

With no obvious space for people to congregate besides the shopping mall, Tysons is mostly known as a commuter thoroughfare. Although the area seemingly had no community, when I developed Imagine Art Here: Tysons Tiles, masses of people came out of the woodwork, hungry to connect.

Using the language of color and pattern, I focused on transforming the normally ignored ground into an exciting Italian piazza-like space. My patterns and colors coded conversations I had with people in the area about culture, community, humor, and finance.

I spoke to 1,000 individuals from the high school, the senior home, the mall, the salsa club, the corporate offices, at rush hour on the Metro, at the happy hours, outside the movie theater, at the public library, the farmers market, and so many other locations where I thought we would find individuals who made up Tysons. I used their information, through art engagement, to convert a parking lot into a walkable, colorful destination. Imagine Art Here: Tysons Tiles was celebrating individuals’ thoughts and illustrating analytics about future communal potentials.

Tysons Tiles as an artwork became...

... ultimately, a beautiful place to come and connect.

It proved community does exist in Tysons, and as it becomes a Future City, it will only move forward with them as part of the conversation.

My brief was to make something temporary, to create a colorful distraction to the development and inspire people—but it accomplished so much more: it confirmed that culture is an essential amenity to the growth of a city. Tysons Tiles changed peoples’ perspective of the place, it informed individuals of the collective they were a part of through data visualizations, it gave opportunities for people to connect, and it created an experience—a lived experience, not a virtual one—that created memories. These shared experiences and memories build a legacy for the community, hopefully ensuring future advocacy for culture. It was a complicated process, layered in various forms of engagement, but it was an honor to be part of the journey!