13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present our third annual Outside|In event highlighting public art around Arlington. In collaboration with the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture and Arlington Public Art, this year we are excited to host artists Freedom Baird, Michelle Lougee and Katherine Shozawa. Please join us on Friday, October 18 from 6-8 pm for a reception and discussion with the artists. The reception will start at 6 pm, the talk at 6:15 pm.
Freedom Baird's installation Room to Grow was set just off the Minuteman Bikeway near Spy Pond during the summer, and was part of the PATHWAYS project to bring contemporary art to the bike path. Room to Grow featured reclaimed furniture that Baird arranged like a bedroom. She filled the room with native plants that grew over time and took over the space she created, encouraging the viewer to think about the relationship between man-made and natural habitats.
Michelle Lougee has been appointed to a year-long residency for the town of Arlington. Lougee will work with the community through the Crochet Collaborative to create a large-scale outdoor sculpture that will be placed along the Minuteman Bikeway as a part of PATHWAYS. Lougee crochets colorful, organic-looking structures out of recycled single use plastic bags to call attention to the deadly impact that plastic waste has on the health of the environment.
Katherine Shozawa heads up the Vita Project, a participatory public artwork that explores cultural vitality as a form of physical fitness. Through interactive sculpture and performative prompts, the Vita Project invites the public to experience an inventive reinterpretation of the existing Vita Course — a series of Swiss exercise stations, also known as “parcours,” dating from 1968. These fitness courses were once adapted for parks throughout the United States; the remains of Arlington’s Vita Course winds along walking trails in historic Menotomy Rocks Park.