In Cielito Park, along 35th Avenue in central Phoenix, a crowd gathered last weekend to cut the ribbon on a new, temporary art installation. This structure is hard to miss — it’s an awning 20 feet square and 8 feet high in the middle of a grassy field. And the big panels holding it up are busy with vibrant colors.
Artist Joe Ray said he wanted to create something that would catch park visitors’ attention right away.
“Hopefully it makes them feel good because of the colors — it’s a very optimistic, upbeat-looking structure,” Ray said.
Ray is usually a studio artist who makes paintings and prints. On this project for Phoenix, he teamed up with fellow Arizona artist Jose Benavides, who specializes in big, three-dimensional sculptures made from upcycled materials.
They took inspiration from Mexican folk art, painting fantastical beasts known as alebrijes with horns and wings on each of the structure’s four corner panels.
“It’s a very heavily Latino-populated neighborhood, so they would get it, they would totally understand it,” Ray said.
UV-blocking mesh fabric is stretched over the top, which creates shade while also allowing for air flow. And the structure has a solar-powered, motion-activated system that turns on cooling mist when someone walks under it.
“You can create shade, but if you can cool the air, it upgrades the shade,” Benavides said.
The new installation is one of nine that will be displayed at public parks across Phoenix over the next five months. Each of the installations is made from different materials and is created by different artists. But they have one thing in common — they’ll give park visitors a little relief from the heat.
Phoenix’s intense climate can be dangerous, or even deadly. The city allocates millions of dollars each summer to conduct heat safety outreach and to run cooling centers. Phoenix has also committed $60 million over the next five years to plant thousands of trees and create more shade throughout the city.
But Carrie Brown, deputy director of Phoenix’s Office of Arts and Culture, said in this first-time project, the idea was to address the issue of heat in a new way.
“We wanted to bring artists to that conversation,” Brown said. “They are coming from a different perspective, a different background, and bringing to the table some really amazing ideas and adding a little flair along the way.”
The project is called ¡Sombra! Experiments in Shade. (Sombra is the Spanish word for shade.) It’s paid for with a $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Phoenix was one of eight cities awarded the Public Art Challenge grant out of more than 150 nationwide that applied. Each winning project was meant to use art to address an important local issue — in Phoenix’s case, extreme heat.
Brown said her office looked for locations across Phoenix where these art pieces could make the most impact.
“We actually worked really closely with the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation and we were able to determine from their own data where there were parks that maybe didn’t have as much shade or were actually physically hotter than some of the other parks in town,” Brown said.
More than 80 artists applied to participate in the ¡Sombra! project. A panel, including members of Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, the Office of Innovation, the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture as well as local artists, selected the artists to create the installations.
Concepts vary widely. Visitors to Sereno Park will be able to cool off under the shade of 200 quilts made from recycled clothing. In Roseley Park, a 20-foot sculpture in the shape of a desert tortoise will block the sun. And the fabric and metal installation in Eastlake Park will draw inspiration from ancient Chinese shadow puppets.
“We were wanting things that were innovative, experimental, really kind of pushing the envelope with materials, and then of course something that was providing shade and some sort of cooling element,” Brown said.
The cooling effects of the installations are measurable. According to the Phoenix Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, the shade created by the installation at Cielito Park lowers the temperature about 23 to 27 degrees, even without its mist system activated.
In addition to considering each project’s shade potential, Brown said panelists were also looking for proposals that would engage the community. For example, at Cielito Park, artists Ray and Benavides came up with the designs for their alebrijes, but worked with students from Alhambra High School, just a few blocks away, to paint the colorful creatures.
Keili Rosita Lopez Pastor, who is in 11th grade at Alhambra High School, said she was excited to contribute to a project right in her own neighborhood.
“Since I live right in front of the park, I was able to see the construction, and be like, ‘Wow, we were able to do this, we produced this, and it’s probably going to help a lot of us here, and a lot of people at the park,’” Lopez Pastor said.
The Cielito Park installation kicked off with music, food and dancing. Eight more public unveiling events are scheduled on weekends through June for the other new installations. Artists involved in the ¡Sombra! project will also host other workshops and lectures throughout the spring.
The installations will be on display through September. But Brown said the Office of Arts and Culture is open to working with the artists to potentially make some of the shade structures permanent.
“We’re really excited to potentially see some of these live lives after ¡Sombra! somewhere in our community,” Brown said.
The installations may be temporary, she said, but the need for shade is here to stay.
¡Sombra! art pieces
RINCÓN DE COLOR by Jose Benavides and Joe Ray
Cielito Park, 3402 W. Campbell Ave.
THE BURROW by Josie Davis and Jenny Boehme
Roesley Park, 4205 S. 15th Ave. Unveiling event on April 26.
CHINESE CHORIZO by Feng-Feng Yeh
Eastlake Park, 1549 E. Jefferson St. Unveiling event on May 3.
BOTANICAL CANOPY by Bobby Zokaites
Cortez Park, 3434 W. Dunlap Ave. Unveiling event on May 3.
STANDING WAVE by Shomit Barua
Los Olivos Park, 2802 E. Devonshire Ave. Unveiling event on May 10.
SHADES OF RESILIENCE by AZ(LAND)
Steele Indian School Park, 300 E. Indian School Rd. Unveiling event on May 10.
REFLECTIONS ON SUNNYSLOPE by Jessica Arias
Sunnyslope Park, 802 E. Vogel Ave. Unveiling event on May 17.
QUILT ARCHITECTURE by Luke Haynes
Sereno Park, 5720 E. Sweetwater Ave. Unveiling event on June 7.
NANA'S GARDEN by Kira Dominguez-Hultgren
Maryvale Park, 4420 N. 51st Ave. Unveiling event on June 8.
