A Vibrant City Has Great Public Art

I've been on this soapbox for awhile, so many of you have heard it before....

Think of the last time you went out at night while visiting another city (yes, I know that's awhile back.) Whether it was New York, London, Paris, New Orleans — or even a smaller city like Savannah or Cambridge — if you were out at night I will bet you saw street artists. Maybe they were playing music, or doing some kind of street performance, or simply standing looking like a statue, I would bet you appreciated seeing them and they added to the sense of joy in just being out for you. That's something you remember, that added to the sense of being in a vibrant urban environment.

I've brought this up several times to people connected with the city. Imagine (in the days we could go out), walking through lowertown and seeing street art. I usually got one of three responses: 1) "We do have music, there's a band in Mears Park every week" (yes, and I am saying this is a different sense), 2) "It's too cold" (I'm not advocating for them to have to be out there playing in subzero weather like a gulag), or 3) "Interesting idea, I wonder how they would get permitted and insured." Which is usually when I gave up, because the sense on spontaneity of a street musician is the direct opposite of someone on the corner with a city license who has carefully submitted their playlist in advice like it's MPR or something.

But imagine, for a minute, how much fun that would have been.

Now as a city, I have generally believed that we do better on public visual art than performing art. Public Art Saint Paul has made some big strides, as has Forecast (I wrote about our "Cold World" tour a few weeks ago.) But remember, those are all organizations, who are fighting that good fight WRT permits and insurance and all that.

And then something popped up that gave me hope, on a street I dearly love. An ice gate popped up on Summit at the end of the "lilac tunnel" — a portal that morphed into a heart for Valentine's Day. And it went viral (in the best kind of, non-covid way). Suddenly everyone I knew was posting about it, and flocking to it to take pictures, and stopping to talk to other people while there (from a distance, masked). It's been a long, hard year, and we are at the coldest, darkest part of it, the part where we can make it out of the underworld or, just as likely, we can turn back and see Eurydice and send her back to Hades forever. And in people's pictures and their happiness, I for once had a bet on us making it out.

It was never meant to be permanent. It could have changed again, or likely melted away. It was just some rogue public art that tried hard to make Saint Paul a little better.

But instead, since it was un-permitted and unlicensed and a "public safety hazard" it was unceremoniously removed by the city yesterday, loaded into a city truck by a couple of city workers and tossed on a city trash heap somewhere.

And people are mad.

They are (in my opinion rightfully) wondering why Saint Paul is not instead focusing their energy on other un-permitted, potentially dangerous things, like carjackings or even the crater-sized pothole just a few feet away on Summit. And I don't have an answer for that.

They are pointing out the number of times that people have tried to open performance spaces on Grand, only to face too many hurdles from the city. Or bringing up the time last summer that the city cut down a boulevard tire swing that some kids put up, presumably for the same reason.

All, I know is that, if the city is serious about recovering from the pandemic, from the resulting closures of places where we can gather (from schools to restaurants to theaters, all of which are facing MIGHTY challenges in re-opening), from the insurrections and related lack of trust that has been established, from painful politics that have created huge divides — if Saint Paul is truly interested in helping its residents heal from all of this — than it needs to get ON IT.

And we (because all of us are part of this healing) need to use everything at our disposal to affect this. The more we think out of the box, the more we can incorporate guerrilla art and spontaneous joy and unexpected pleasure into it, the better off we will be. I have long loved Saint Paul for its scrappy, entrepreneurial manner, and if anything is going to save us, it's that.

So Saint Paul, I'll calling on you to quietly come back and put the ice portal back up. Close traffic on Grand Avenue to encourage street dining just as soon as it gets warm. Encourage a few street musicians even.

(also, one of the first, best things I learned from neighborhood pioneer Maryann O'Brien Lannick - "It's always better to ask forgiveness than permission.")