Valley Metro Public Art >The Shadow of A Memory

 . . . with a monumental blast of color in a new pocket park/sculpture garden on Main Street along the path of the Central Mesa Light Rail Extension
CREATIVE PLACE MAKING
This time with a repeated sense of Mesa history and the strong memory of an artisan harkening back when the city was an Agritopia or urban farm before that word became a registered trademark for the166-acre mixed-use planned development in Gilbert.

This new place in the New Urban Downtown Mesa is sited on the north side of Main Street between fast-food/casual Taco Bell and full-service Il Vinaio close to the Country Club Drive & Main Street Light Rail Station.
As you can see by reading the sign for Valley Metro's Public Art Program, orchards of pecan trees were once located adjacent to Main Street. Originally they served as crop trees and later as shade trees for the neighborhoods that replaced the groves.
For station artist Mary Shindell growing up nearby the images of these beautiful trees became a part of her memory producing these expressions of art recently installed at the Traction Power Substation.
Grapes flourished in this surrounding area in the 1880's and 1890's. The name of the restaurant is a reminder of those times.

Brushed acrylic/Plexiglas abstract-free form sculptures and benches are getting unwrapped and installed on the side. At the time yours truly was here today, two guys doing some electrical work didn't have much to say, but Cindy Ornstein - Arts & Culture Director for the City of Mesa - certainly had plenty of information at her fingertips about the interactive Twilight Garden @ Morris Park sending images via email at the same time.


Twilight Garden – A new public art project called Twilight Garden is located at Morris Plaza on the north side of Main Street, adjacent to Il Vinaio.  The City collaborated with a Tucson artist, Joe O’Connell (Creative Machines), to develop a concept that would be in harmony with the other public art features in close proximity such as Mesa Flora figure at the Country Club Light Rail Station and the Memory of a Tree pecan tree-themed screen wall at the Traction Power Substation.  With consultation from the Arts and Culture Department, Joe developed, fabricated, and installed four acrylic sculptures that are internally illuminated at twilight and are human scaled to encourage interaction.  The sculptures automatically cycle through all colors in the spectrum, but can be manually adjusted to a specific color by visitors pressing a button.  Since the installation of the piece, people of all ages in Morris Plaza are seen interacting with the artwork daily (changing the colors, sitting in them, taking pictures with them)!