What a dazzling, marvelous event. On Saturday, September 26, we did a street painting on the intersection of Faith and Wine. It was a stellar occasion, with lots of neighbors, friends and their relatives of all ages from small children to nonagenarians (at least one). The painters and spectators made a sea of happy faces and the syreet hummed with excitement and enthusiasm. It was such a great occasion for the neighborhood I had to chronicle it. So this is a very rather a long text accompanied by lots of photos.
It all began when Kat Smith and Rachel Gibbs, who live on opposite corners of the Faith and Wine intersection, were chatting one day last summer about how to make our neighborhood more of a community. Rachel came up with the idea of an intersection street painting. In Portland there is a city project that has created over 30 pieces of this kind of public art in the past two decades, and Rachel had done the design for one of the 2016 paintings. So she was familiar with the concept although she had not attended the actual event. The idea seemed a natural for Ashland. Kat contacted me to see if I was interested (I certainly was). Sarah Kreisman, who lives next door to me, joined as soon as she heard about it. So there we were – a team of four enthusiasts consisting of two artists and two organizers clustered around the intersection. We became a smooth-running and effective group in the months that followed.
Kat got in touch with Ridhi D’Cruz in Portland who is with the Portland Street Intersection Project. She gave Kat lots of information about what was entailed and put her in touch with several others who were informative about street painting projects. Between traffic and weather, street paintings paintings take a beating and Portland has an annual week dedicated to refurbishing its street paintings and making new ones. We plan to follow their lead.
The first step was to seek approval of the plan from the Asland Transportation Commission, which we did at their September agenda. It was a gratifying meeting as the commission was very enthusiastic and made all kinds of helpful suggestions. Scott Fleury, Ashland’s Engineering Services Manager, also serves as liaison between the city and the commission, and he undertook the responsibility for all the OKs necessary from various other city commissions before the project could be presented to the City Council. He really became a fifth member of our team.
In early January Rachel and I got to work on a design. We came up with one we really liked, an amalgam of local flowers (sunflowers, California poppies and cultivated scarlet poppies), birds (Cedar Waxwings , Robins and Lesser Goldfinches), honey bees and stone paths. It was complex and challenging as well as smile-making and spirit-lifting and when Kat and Sarah approved we were ready to go with it. Jim Chamberlain took a great photo which was sent to Scott and to the Transportation commission and it met with universal approval.
Scott Fleury lined out the requirements for City Council approval which included getting approval from the Ashland Arts Commission and City Council, and signatures from 80% of the home owners on Wine Street and on Faith Avenue between Siskiyou Blvd. and Mae Street.
Rachel set up a GoFundMe drive and we got the funds for paint and materials from generous relatives and friends. All labor was volunteered. Miller Paint Co. in Ashland was wonderfully cooperative. We selected paint colors and ordered buckets, brushes, etc. And manager Larry Allen gave us half-off on paint.
The City Council approved the project at their July meeting. It was the briefest agenda item I have ever witnessed. We came prepared to talk, listen and discuss but before we even gathered our papers together a question was asked, answered by Scott, and the council approved the project and moved on to the next item!
Then came the effort of collecting agreements (signatures) on a petition from the home-owners, and ordering traffic cones and tape, and all the other re-tape chores. Kat and Sarah handled these, with Rachel’s help. In fact, Rachel was busy with every aspect of the project; unlike me, who steered clear of everything but art.
In mid-July Rachel and I began making stencils of the flowers, birds and bees and created over 20, which were stored under the bed in my guest room. Our design was a 28 X 28″ square, and was gridded in 2 inch squares. The intersection is 28 X 28′ which meant that some of the flower and bird stencils were as large as 4 X 5′. It was quite a pile and is now stored in my studio. Our plan was to lay down the stencils and paint all the design elements, doing the green background last.
The Ashland Daily Tidings sent John Darling and a photographer to interview us and the resulting article was very rewarding, as were the photos. There was another article in the weekly Messenger by Josh Gross. The word was spreading.
After finishing the stencils there was a lull in activity for the first two weeks of August. It was welcome for me as the Britt Classical Festival was on and I had family and friends visiting. I took a short family trip to Bandon and we returned a week before the scheduled August 26 painting date. As we approached my driveway I saw with shock a series of red and green paint markings all around the intersection. That could only mean that street work was scheduled on the exact site of the painting!!! Sure enough, a gas leak had been found in the line to Rachel’s house, and a gas leak takes priority over everything.
On Tuesday morning with 4 days left before the event, a work crew arrived and began ripping a big hole in the street. I went out to talk with them and found they had been told nothing about the street painting. They were very responsive but said they wouldn’t know what needed doing until they made a 3 x 6′ trench and exposed the pipe. We suffered a lot of anxiety as we couldn’t even begin notifying people until we knew the event whether or not the event would have be cancelled, and how on earth would we would go about it. But luck was with us and it turned out to be easily fixable and the crew worked hard and it was all done in 3 days. It was dry by the time we started painting the next morning. In retrospect we realized how lucky we were that the leak was found before, and not after, the painting was done. And so grateful to the crew that made sure it was repaired in time for our big event.
We could not find a local person with hands-on experience in this kind of art, so Rachel had the bright idea that we should do a trial run a few days before the event. I had already thought of doing something in my driveway if there was paint left over, and jumped at this chance. With two days to go and still not knowing whether we were going to paint or not, we power-hosed the driveway and I picked stencils of two California Poppies. Rachel chalked them, mixed paints and put two entwined poppies in place. It was straightforward and not difficult and we felt much more at ease about the actual execution of the project.
On Friday morning new asphalt was poured into the big hole in the street and was dry by next day – very close timing. The weather was unusually awful for the entire month of August, with a heavy smoke pall blanketing our lovely valley every day and spurts of 3-digit temperatures. This scenario was predicted for Saturday and was indeed fulfilled. Stu O’neill, Kat’s partner, was out at 6AM to power-hose the intersection. We set up 5 canopies and a paint station.
Our design was on an easel for reference, 
and we hadanother stand with a sketch of the design on which all the stencils were numbered so we could more easily figure out where they were to be placed.
Volunteers began to arrive and everything began moving fast. As soon as the street was dry the stencils were laid and painting began.
Two neighbors who are artists showed up early – Laurie Gadbois and Judy Bryant. I had also asked several local artist friends to participate and Ann Di Salvo and Karen Rycheck both did. Ann painted all the birds. Neither came with the intention of staying all day but they got so enthralled they couldn’t stop!
Karen did the cluster of California poppies
The momentum picked up so fast I couldn’t follow so settled on a chair on the edge and watched, answered questions, dabbled a bit with paint, and delighted in the spectacle.
A neighborhood pair of musicians, 
Wendy and Gary Adler, provided
provided a very pleasant background to the
event.
Here are some photos of the ongoing event.
Masks were not in evidence, except for Sarah’s, 
as she was pregnant. (A few days later almost everyone outside was wearing one.) But it was the kind of experience participants couldn’t detach from as long as there was another still something to be done. I was the oldest painter and the least productive, as my ability to work on my knees is long past; the youngest were probably Ila and Sadie, 5-year olds who live on the intersection and whose moms were half of the team that made it all happen. But my 10-year old next door neighbor Nuna was truly amazing. She got hooked early and hardly left the scene all day. She was really fun to watch, moving with dexterity from flower to bee to background and hardly stopping to eat.
After most everyone left on Saturday some of neighbors gathered in Rachel and Drew’s driveway and contemplated what we had created, and with total satisfaction. It was hard to believe it had actually happened, and without a hitch. We had mixed feelings, though, knowing that after another day it would be expose to traffic and its pristine splendor ended.
On Sunday morning there was a lot of touching up and then it was time to prepare for our 4th annual block party. Kat Smith was the originator of this event 4 years ago and it is very popular. This year, with the street painting added, it was a double whammy. When the traffic cones were removed in the evening we watched with delight the reactions of people driving by. Some stopped to gaze, some slowed to a creep to look and a few just sped through.
Here are drone photos taken before, during and after the event.
We have so many people to thank I am afraid I will miss a few. I have acknowledged a lot of participants already but if I neglect anyone, blame it on my flagging memory. Nick Viani and Derek Severson for great photos of the painting in progress, Darren Campbell and Alex Georgevitch for the drone photos both before and after the event, Larry Allen of Miller Paint, and the multitude of helpers and painters who made it such fun to do.
It was truly a happy day.