The projects are rolling in and we can’t keep them to ourselves anymore! With excitement to discover what will be at this year’s event, Maggie Kelly Dobson reached out to Mel Fortini for our first Artist Highlight of 2017. Check it out:
FIGMENT friends, it’s time for our first Artist Highlight for the FIGMENT North Adams 2017 event! Our first artist is Mel Fortini, a second semester sophomore at MCLA. With a double major in Art and Arts Management as well as a minor in Leadership, Mel started working with FIGMENT through her Community Arts and Education class, which is where her project ideas first began.
Mel’s inspiration for the project, called “The Art of Going Green”, came from a fallen tree that was in her backyard. With the help of her family, she was able to cut the tree down and create her next new interactive art piece. During the 2016 FIGMENT event, Mel encouraged visitors to fill a water bottle with debris and hang it on to the tree with a note containing comments or concerns for the environment. The experience with these visitors and the event itself was really inspiring to Mel. She notes that:
“The children were the first ones to run up and they wanted to see what it was which of course, made the adults come over to see what was happening. We ended up with a lot of different people.”
For this year’s event, Mel has evolved this project idea. The project, named “The Green House Project”, will take her team of 9 volunteers to build an 8’x12’ water bottle greenhouse. The installation will feature a water runoff and gutter system, and an indoor collaborative community art project. Visitors will be encouraged to enter, participate, discuss, and visit the link provided for tips on sustainability.
“We’re making it so people can see it from the outside as well as the inside. So people can actually go inside. We’re going to have some sort of community art project inside for visitors to participate in! And we are using water bottles, so the same materials as last year just in a different structure.”
Although she is still in midst of creating and expanding, Mel will set up a Facebook page for the specific project as well as host a bottle and can drive in the near future where people can drop off recyclables in order to gather needed project materials. The recyclables drive will be in North Adams, but no actual date is set up yet. Stay tuned on Facebook to see upcoming details about Mel’s project!
#FacesofFIGMENT Written by Maggie Dobson
If you’d like to learn more about submitting a project for FIGMENT North Adams 2017, click here for more information: http://northadams.figmentproject.org/submit_a_project
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