A new proposal from Cat Pena for the Tenessee Department of Transportation

One Person, One Choice, Our Planet

General Concept:

One Person, One Choice, Our Planet is a multifaceted temporary public art mural that challenges a commonly misunderstood notion about vehicular idling while asking people to make simple choices that positively affect our planet. To further connect this piece with TDOT’s air quality campaign and the other living installations in the state, a small link to the Clear the Air Tennessee website will accompany the piece to direct viewers to further information about improving air quality.

During the 2011 Memphis in May festival (April 29^th — May 28^th), One Person, One Choice, Our Planet will be installed within the Memphis Riverfront district on the west wall of the parking garage located at 35 Monroe Avenue. This festival showcases the Beale Street Music Festival, The World Barbeque Championship Cooking Contest, and the Sunset Symphony, and brings in more than 100,000 visitors and generates $40 million in economic impact to the area.

While most of the festival is held on the riverfront, just south of the parking garage at Tom Lee Park, the locations are connected by Riverside Drive, a main throughway connecting the parking garages located in the area and the festivities.

As festival attendees walk along Riverside Drive, their attention will be drawn to the back wall of the parking garage where a mural comprised of two, vertically suspended, 8ft by 12ft living grass trucks will hang. Each truck will consist of several vertical garden planters made by Bright Green USA fixed to plywood cut to the appropriate shape (please see attached imagery). Directly below the trucks, a 24ft by 100ft reverse graffiti mural will depict a huge plume of exhaust. The mural is important to not only visually unite the trucks but to conceptually connect how each vehicle’s exhaust is linked to a larger problem. To further address this issue, text within the plume will read:

Myth or Fact? Shutting off and restarting your vehicle uses more gas than if you leave it running. Myth

Additional text in the lower left and right corners of the plume will read:

One Person, One Choice, Our Planet www.cleartheairtn.org

The text and the plume of smoke will be applied to the wall using a reverse graffiti method. This technique is a temporary application of imagery and text that will fade over several months. It is a method that was developed by green graffiti artists to selectively clean areas of a wall to yield a graphic design. With stencils, a cleaning agent, and a pressure washer, my imagery will speak to our message while being an environmentally conscious application in itself.

It is my intent that thousands of people attracted to the area will start to challenge their preconceived notions of idling and air quality to alter learned behaviors on behalf of the health of ourselves and the planet.