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Snail's Crossing
How was the park created? Over fifteen hundred children, students, artists and adults helped create this community earth art site. Here is the story (pdf). What is a geoglyph? A geoglyph is a man made etching or shape that must be envisioned from above, way above in the sky. If you want to understand more, click here. When is the next community event for the park? Spring 2008 10:00am - 1:00pm 3000 n. Bremen St in Milwaukee. We will clean up the bark areas and add more bark. Rake up the winter debris and maybe plant some bushes. How can you contribute to this living earth art project? Help us at community events Send your donation to: Make your check attention Snail's Crossing For any donation over $ 25.00, your name will be made into a ceramic tile set in concrete and added to the park. |
Pierce Students
Description: Students from Riverwest's Pierce Elementary School are busy designing the caterpillar social play structure and banners for the park. |
Banners for the Park
Description: Pierce students painting their designs on the banners. |
Creating the Caterpillar
Description: Pierce students are forming the caterpillar's parts. |
Process
Description: The caterpillar before the steel work and fiberglass coating. |
Social Play for Little Ones
Description: A play structure allows very small children to play as well as allowing interaction and accessability for children in wheelchairs to interact with other children. Braille is also on this piece for children to learn and for those with sight impairment to be included. |
Inside / Outside
Description: Imagine is encouraged amongst children with a creature such as this. The caterpillar comes before the butterfly. |
La Escuela Fratney
Description: Students from Fratney School are designing the snail's antennae and banners for the park. |
More Banners
Description: La Escuela Fratney children are creating their set of banners for the park. |
The Snail's Antennae
Description: While the antennae look like abstract sculptures in the park--they are the only element of the snail that is above ground. The rest of the snail's body and head is implied by drawing via the sidewalks and boulders. |
Earth and Art
Description: Here you can see the snail's antennae. The large boulders are drawing the snail's head. The smaller boulders are enclosing the circular garden which represents the snail's eye. River birch were planted on the outskirts of the large boulders to create a resting place or a passive play area for children, teens and adults. Many neighbors have planted various bulbs and flowers over the years to create a full season garden. |
UWM Ceramic Students
Description: Janeen Shavers lead a group of her fellow classmates to design and create the 'Sun' mosaic around the red oak tree. Beautifully designed and very appropriate for the placement. |
Design for Mosaic
Description: A big task to layout the tiles to get the appropriate color feel and spacial sense for the sun. |
The Sun
Description: Always positive...even in the shade. |
Glazing Workshops
Description: Lots of tiles. It was almost overwhelming. But many workshops were held and the adult neighbors, some teens, many artists, came to help glaze hundreds of pounds of tiles. |
Student Foot Tiles
Description: 2 Elementary Schools participated. Each student has there name as part of their class on a foot. The students created the foot tiles, from their feet. Tim Vertz submitted via email: 'Pitter patter, your little feet matter.' There are many sayings throughout the park that were submitted by adults and children from the neighborhood. |
Tic Tac Toe
Description: Games in the sidewalk. |
Hopscotch
Description: Polish, Spanish and English are portrayed in the numbers. This piece was created in memory of Marvin Hill--a long time Riverwest artist. |
Wisconsin Animals
Description: Glenda Puhek, a Rivest Artists, drew in clay the wisconsin animal tiles. Several Riverwest Artists made oversize paw prints of WI animals. The shape of the mosaic is that of snail's tails--a quilter's design, symbolic of the patchwork of mosaic and a community. The snail's tails motif i used several times in the walkways. |
100 Bushes and Trees
Description: Another 3 or 4 workshops were held just to plant the bushes and trees added to the park to help create the relationship between earth, art and people. Mostly all native plants were chosen, unless we received unkown donations, which we gladly gave a place for those plants, bushes and trees to live. |
Special Benches
Description: Another Riverwest artist, Heather Eiden, worked with some neighborhood children to create this special bench. Many people helped to make the mold and to date we have cast and installed two benches. |
The Special Bench
Description: Dyed concrete and stained cedar. |
Unique fence
Description: A local business, La Lune and the owner, Mario Constantini, created this fence to help prevent children from running into the street. |
Another Style Bench
Description: Mario Constantini also made these two wonderful benches for the park. They seat many people and one bench has morning shade and the other bench has afternoon shade. |
A project of Community Involvement
Description: While we received many neighborhood donations and a grant from Milwaukee Arts Board--the money covered the materials and a few small stipends for several artists. No money left--we asked for old garbage cans and painted them! We soon realized that the expensive new style garbage can does not have a cover and the bees would be unbearable. Things happen for reasons. |
A big investment from our neighborhood gardeners
Description: It seemed as though everyone added their specialty to the project--all developed around this gigantic geoglyph of a snail. A place to slow down. A place to breath. |
Snail's Crossing Urban Earth Art Site
Description: Every year more new people and lots of the same old people help to keep the park a place of community pride. These new people also have their name in tile somewhere in the park. So, this park is an on going living entity--as is the earth. |
Plan of the Snail
Description: This is how the snail can be seen. The overall plan of the park is a snail. The walkways are it's body and the garden and boulders are the snail's head and eyes. |
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Beginning Dreams Forever • 833 East Burleigh Street • Milwaukee, WI 53212-2210 • Email: marina@marinalee.com • Phone: (414) 562-3037