Marginal Space

I have no updates at this time.

I have not been working on this project for a while, but my regular work as a painter downtown in Pueblo gives me pause as we watch the Interstate highway overpass get replaced. Dozens of little nooks and crannies are being smoothed out and contoured. The overpass is now gone. The contractor has built up earth to reach the road instead. It has less curves and dips, and though it has taken a bit of time I still don't know how to feel about it yet. How does one feel when you seem to have known a stretch of road and assimilative paths over many bumps and cracks, both visual and landscaped, and then after forty years is gone? It's like losing a limb. It's like being fitted for a low-maintenance prosthetic.

Yesterday I took an impromptu look at Belmont Park in Pueblo for purposes of siting public sculpture. It has quite a collection of trees and the grass is very well very attended for what seems like a uniquely reclaimed storm drainage. The challenge here would seem to be finding a relatively level spot along with places to park. I hiked the sometimes steep slopes mostly free of a utility implied path.

Aerial top to bottom of the intersection of Jones and East Abriendo where a rather large vacant lot sits. The Bessemer Canal runs alongside.

Today I scouted a marginal space south of the old CF&I office and thought it sad that no steel sculpture sat there in what once was a parking lot to accomodate thousands of workers. After over a century of steel production there is nothing artistically reflective of the material in and of itself, just tall tufts of dry, wiry grass pushing up between the cracks. Neither the business nor municipality has sought to monumentally commemorate nor honor our forebearers and the heavy centralized industry for which the city was once known.

What stands instead are curiosity objects of a museum narrative, and ruins instead, nothing worthy of what steel can do in and of itself pushing the limits of the material.

What I perceive as being truly successful at this in a more generous outgrowth of art from material association and place was the work of Eduardo Chilida in northern Spain.
https://youtu.be/wQkLn_xoqpY

Several people have suggested to me that the way to avoid vandalism of a work of art situated in a public setting such as a small park is to involve the community most local to it, up to and including a very local artist. It is this, or the act of involving extreme civic pride or involvement in a piece. What do others visiting Marginal Space say?

Spent a little time yesterday trying to see about creating a video, or virtual tour of the sites I have begun studying. Perhaps I confused which application this was. It must be Google Earth, not Google Maps.

Over a lunch hour I somehow managed to catalogue 18 different sites in Pueblo via Google Maps. Keep thinking about them wherever I drive. Hopefully soon I will have some kind of animated tour or overflight of them.

Nothing going on right now in Marginal Space for Pueblo. Have assessed existing small parks, and especially one large parcel west of City Park.

The next step is to approach government agencies maintaining them.

I have even envisioned site one of my works along I-25 at the Verde Road offramp. The real challege there being to not disturb the soil much in creating concrete anchoring base.

A research trip to Pueblo's Main Library yielded some analog pictures (digitals of digitals) taken off a large computer screen. I could not figure out how to transfer them from Google Maps. The satellite images are quite impressive to view as they somehow synthesized fall foliage that covers buildings and give a three dimensional feeling.

These marginal spaces in order of my working on them there are:

1. Carlisle and Prairie
2. Washington/Routt/Fairview
3. Cleveland and Carlisle
4. Cleveland and Melrose
5. The Abriendo Onramp Loop to I-25 Northbound
6. 2nd and Bradford
7. Granada and Farabaugh.