MISSION, Site/Cite/Sight (DC), 2007

MISSION, Site/Cite/Sight (DC), 2007
Washington,DC

Public artwork.
Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, Peter Winant

30 bird houses and signs were installed in/on 30 trees along 14th street NW between P and U, in Washington, DC. The work addresses issues of habitat, attraction, inventory, and migration, specific to the 14th street corridor and a broader social context. Workingman Collective, working with the Migratory Bird Center, National Zoo, identified all songbirds common to the Northeast region that have been decimated by West Nile Virus and urban growth. The 30 bird houses were built specifically for three species of songbirds hardest hit by the virus: The Eastern Bluebird, Black Capped Chickadee, and Downy Woodpecker. The bird houses provide a habitat while the signs refer to "place" and are an awareness signal. Site/Cite/Sight, connotes an active social engagement that has purpose and sustainability, which is also an affirmation of the Central Union Mission, one of America's oldest social service ministries and located in the center of the 14th street site, and it's role in the community, "serving the needs of hurting people throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area."

PINE 2007

PINE, 2007
Public artwork and social space project, Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft and Peter Winant.

Regulation sized ping-pong table with bench seating surround, 30’ x 18’, constructed completely from southern yellow pine, and located on the campus of James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA. After several site visits we proposed to create a social space for activating an area of a barely used campus quad. Our research involved social diagramming, park settings, local vernacular architecture, and historic bridge truss design, which was incorporated into project concept/design. East Coast Sculpture Exchange program, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA

Five Mile Line, 2006 Butte, Montana

Five Mile Line 2006

Temporary, Performance/Site Responsive public work, Silver Bow Arts Foundation, Butte, Montana.
Workingman Collective: Tom Ashcraft, Janis Goodman, and Peter Winant

Workingman Collective used E-bay as a source of community inventory and to generate contact with members of the community. This piece was inspired by a 1914 map, found on E-bay, of mine tunnels and fault lines below the city indicated by red and blue lines. The work focused on the activity of snapping continuous red and blue chalk lines on five miles of main street sidewalks. A primary construction tool, the chalk line represents commitment, delineates territory and marks what’s cut and what’s kept. Documentation in over 1,600 photographs and in video recordings shows the relationship of the line, as an object and gesture, to the existing structures and to the commerce of business and people in Butte’s fragile old city center.