Building community in Bowden
through art, gardening, events, pizza delivery, performances.....
Inspiration mainly comes from walking and observing, occasionally from riding but never from driving through our narrow streets to home.
When you walk, you meet people and at the very least say hello.
You notice birds, dogs on their daily walks, cats and sometimes lizards.
The smells, the clouds...It takes time. Builds incrementally.
Opportunities arise and you’re ready to grab them because you are already fomenting an idea.
The first idea came from walking to my boyfriend’s house.
He lived on the other side of the train tracks from my house and in the park I walked through I noticed the old folks leaving ice-cream containers of water out for the birds.
IDEA: we need a bird bath in our little park.
OPPORTUNITY: Community Art grant from City of Charles Sturt.
The many hours spent making the bird bath mosaics, hearing stories and telling many was the important time needed to build trust and friendships.
Intersection Repair
on Drayton Street
Inspired by the work of the ‘City Repair’ organisation in Portland, Oregon, intersection repair paintings are all about community building, improving the aesthetics of where you live and traffic calming.
Our community, including the Immaculate Heart of Mary School students, worked with Helen Crawford, artist, colleague and friend, to design the road murals, with support from the City of Charles Sturt and SA Dept. Planning, Infrastructure and Transport.
'Exploding flower' - our first Intersection Repair in 2011
Jacqui and Estelle adding sparkle to the road
Intensive painting of the 'Exploding Elemental Egg Flower" mural
Re-painting the original 'Exploding Flower'
The Rainbow – 2015
I can’t remember the inspo for this, but I now love walking along Drayton Street in the late afternoon or morning and seeing how the sun projects rainbows onto the road or into the school yard.
I designed a basic rainbow to be constructed by City Plastics.
City of Charles Sturt and Dept for Transport funded it and our local community attached it to the fence.
Rainbow corner!
The Lizard 2017
The desire to do some ‘city repair’ on the little corner patch I regularly walked past on the way to the Aquatic Centre came as I realised how depressing it was to walk past this wasteland – usually full of rubbish, a dead tree and graffiti, with razor wire on the grey ugly fence – it reminded me of a prison yard.
Working with local artist Will Powrie and students from IHM, with a small Place-making grant from City of Charles Sturt, this project evolved from an idea of using coloured plastic bottle tops attached to core-flute – to a more substantial steel lizard inspired by the Tjakura lizard from the Western desert in SA and the trains that travel through the desert and past our houses.
Ollie painting the lizard
Lizard install team
Mark Hutchinson, Senior Research Scientist in Herpetology from the SA Museum officially launches the Lizard with students from Immaculate Heart of Mary School
Local neighbourhood Christmas decoration party with grass stars and corn dolly angels!
Life in our streets and parks!
Local theatre in our local park - we raised $1000 for the KI Bushfire Appeal.
