The City of Takoma Park has begun the installation of sidewalks featuring poetry from local residents, as part of an interactive public art project organized by the City’s Arts and Humanities Division. The poems were chosen in a contest held earlier this year, with the winners receiving a $100 award in addition to their poetry stamped in sidewalks around Takoma Park.
The Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County has issued a request for qualifications for artists interested in being included in a temporary multimedia public art exhibition titled “Certain Party or Parties Unknown.”
The Kennedy Center has announced the August 1 screening of “Untitled: Dave Chappelle Documentary Film,” a documentary film that follows comedian and Silver Spring native Dave Chappelle to his current home of Yellow Springs, Ohio, as the community reels from the events of 2020.
The City of Takoma Park commissioned new public art by artist Trap Bob, who painted picnic tables last year at the gazebo for a project of Main Street Takoma. Trap Bob has painted three tables along the Takoma Streetery on Laurel Avenue with designs celebrating the power and resilience of Black women, according to the Arts and Humanities Division that commissioned the work to demonstrate the city’s commitment to public art and racial equity.
Blumen Lumen, the kinetic art installation at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road, is now fully operational and the site is open to the public. The installation from the Foldhaus art collective is a 25-foot tall group of “flowers” that changes colors and opens and closes based on weather information from the National Weather Service, which is connected to the art’s controlling software.
In lieu of its regular public art exhibitions delayed by pandemic restrictions, Takoma Park’s Arts and Humanities Division has created a series of posters featuring works by local artists. The seven different posters, designed by Charlotte Mann Lee, include 14 artists and are now on display at 14 bus shelters in Takoma Park in a series called Arts on the Move.
Members of an art collective are working on the installation of Silver Spring’s newest piece of public art at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road. FoldHaus is an all-volunteer, San Francisco-based art collective led by Joerg Student and Jesse Silver, who are managing the work.
A new temporary outdoor art installation memorializing the county’s victims of COVID–19 has gone on display at Brookside Gardens. “Facets of Hope” is a series of crystal strands suspended among wisteria vines, each one honoring a local resident who died of the virus.
The Main Street Takoma district has received an Art in Bloom Sculpture from the National Cherry Blossom Festival to celebrate visual arts and the spirit of spring, according to an email from Laura Barclay of the Old Takoma Business Association.