Bright Orange
- Posted by: Eva Steele-Saccio , Object Orange
- on November 22, 2006 at 11:59 am
It began with a sign: a bright orange traffic detour sign standing next to one of Detroit’s thousands of abandoned houses. Four local artists, a group who call themselves Object Orange, realized they could use the shocking color of the sign to draw attention to the city’s pervasive urban decay. With up to 15 volunteers they staged clandestine predawn painting expeditions, covering blighted houses in buckets of “Tiggerific” orange paint. “People become blind,” says OO’s Mike, who, like other members of the group, prefers anonymity for legal reasons. “We want to make them take note.” Out of Detroit’s more than 7,000 abandoned buildings, fewer than 2,000 are slated for destruction, leaving a long waiting list of properties that have become drug dens, prostitution hubs, and dangerous neighborhood playgrounds.Commuters have begun to notice the orange houses, as have unhappy city officials. “They may believe they are making artistic statements,” says James Canning, communications coordinator for the Mayor’s office, “but they are just trespassing and adding to the blight of the buildings.” Eyesore or not, the orange is noticeable. Four of OO’s first 11 orange houses were almost immediately demolished. Canning attributes this to coincidence and careful calculation (demolition plans are public record); the artists see it as a critical step toward re-invigorating their deteriorating city. “Our part is starting conversations,” says OO member Jacques. “Some people do outreach. We paint houses orange.”
SEE VIDEO Bright Orange
A. To buy your own “Tiggerific” paint, or other fun colors like “Pooh’s Favorite Things” and “Tink Pink,” visit the Disney Paints website at disney.go.com/disneyhome/disneypaints.html
DISCUSSION: 4 Comments
I work on a website documenting houses slated for demolition in New Orleans post-K. We are more involved in the process than these artists are, our mission is different. I have been very interested in visiting Detroit to get some insight to what the future of New Orleans may look like architecturally. I would love to meet these artists so that they might give me a tour. My contact information is on the site. Thank, you for this great report. Laureen http://www.squanderedheritage.com
wow. what a way to draw attention to something usually ignored. as the ugly things usually are. i think its a great way to cause action. maybe the bright orange will force city officials to move quickly and demolish these old dangers.
Interesting. I like the angle. Cool way to bring the ugly to light that much quicker.
As a resident of Detroit and one who knows who the artists are, I have a lot to be critical about it. The biggest thing is that there is a cluster of houses that were painted in Highland Park, which is a suburb of Detroit that is poorer than Detroit–it can’t even afford its own police, really. The city literally cannot afford to knock down these buildings. So they are still sitting there, and now they just make an impoverished community more ashamed by the commuters who see it. This cluster of houses is right at the freeway, so that all the suburbanites who already think that Detroit is a pile of crap are just more attentive to it; it is thrown in their faces as they drive into the city to work. The project is more the product of a suburban graduate student collaboration than one of involved Detroit residents; for many of their projects, they never dealt with the area residents, not even asking for their input or permission. It is a project much more removed from the community than it really should be, especially considering how much the area is suffering already.They had good intentions, but the project is a failure in many senses, having brought attention to a blight that emphasizes tragedy and shame but does ignores the monetary problem. I just say this because a lot of other Detroiters feel the same way and since it has gained national fame, the locality (in its rawest sense) of this project has been dissolved. I only ask people to consider more than just the “artiness” of the project. There are a lot of issues going on in Detroit, and they cannot be forced or pressured into being magically solved with a radical paint job.