About the Project
During
Hands on Miami
Day, on November
6, 2004, more than 3,000 volunteers will participate
in painting, planting trees and cleaning up the neighborhoods
of Greater Miami.
The City of Miami asked Hands on Miami to have its volunteers
paint the blighted areas underneath the I-95 and I-395; that
is, the Interstate's underside as it crosses through Miami's
streets (Biscayne
Boulevard and 2nd Ave, and
8th Street). The city also asked for help in beautifying
the flyover at 17th
Avenue in Allapattah.
Hands on Miami asked
Xavier Cortada
to design artwork for all the underpasses and columns in a way
that would make the entire project a cohesive and uniform art
piece. As he did for his murals in the
Florida
Capitol, Cortada
chose mangroves as the centerpiece of the work.
Using
stencils on the columns and walls they paint, hundreds of
volunteers will reproduce Cortada's designs and transform the
entire area into
Miami's Mangrove Forest (read more below).
To learn more about other ways Cortada has explored Mangroves
in his art, please click
here.
On
November 6, 2004, using 8 foot by 4 foot
stencils designed by the
Miami artist Xavier Cortada, Hands on Miami Volunteers painted three
mangrove seedlings on each column at underpasses in three Miami
neighborhoods. Each column's three seedlings were painted with one of 18 predetermined
colors, the areas surrounding it to look appear as sea and sky.
To see studies of seedlings scroll down or click on:
magenta, red,
orange,
yellow,
green and
violet.
Students will then return to the
site with black paint and reproduce images
uniquely designed
by
Xavier Cortada for each and every seedling.
At the conclusion of Phase 1 the project, the Miami Mangrove Forest will spread across three
communities (Allapattah,
Downtown Miami,
and
Little Havana)
and have a sea of 279 unique mangrove seedlings, each "setting
its roots" in our community
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