BURLINGTON — Art and politics often go together, and this year the South End Art Hop has more real estate than ever devoted to art pieces that probe local Burlington issues.
Now in its 23rd year, the South End Art Hop brings together the creative works of hundreds of artists and businesses across the city. The three-day event, which starts Friday, draws about 30,000 visitors and residents to the city’s Pine Street corridor.
This year, at least six of the Art Hop exhibitions will focus on controversial city projects. The topics range from the city’s Public Works and Parks and Recreation departments to private developers working to generate funds for the Moran Plant’s rehabilitation into a concert venue and indoor craft market.
“Art Hop has always had some political action involved with the art,” said Diane Gayer, a community architect who’s coordinating some of the works that interpret Burlington developments and local reactions to the city’s master plan, called planBTV South End. “This year, it’s specific to the city but other years it’s been specific to other things,” she said.
A cardboard shanty mimicking the Hooverville of the Great Depression era was set in front of the Maltex Building at 431 Pine St. by artists under the names “Penny Monger” and “Nomar Greenspace.”
Next to it a placard reading “Miroville!” in vintage-looking script advertised, in 1960s magazine-ad layout, “Luxury living wedged into green spaces you never knew existed. Designer units created in spaces were real artists formerly worked. Walking distance to South End Village and Shoppes and the Super Fund Site Natural Area,” riffing on promises made for planBTV South End.
“Everybody’s sort of engaged in the artist community, and it seemed obvious (that) this year became the theme of planBTV commentary,” said Gayer, who noted that 10 exhibit sites would have petitions to urge city leaders to preserve industrial zoning in the district.
Friday, developers of the Moran Plant at 475 Lake St. play host to a show of work created by artists inside the long-defunct coal-burning electric plant more than 29 years since it was shut down.
The vacant 1950s-era waterfront building made a great canvas for a number of artists, and the developers are sharing the artwork as part of a larger visibility and fundraising effort to launch the latest incarnation of the center, called New Moran. The exhibit opens at 5 p.m. Friday at Maglianero Cafe, 47 Maple Street, and visitors can make their own screen print of the plant to put on display, featuring their own words and ideas for what it would mean to reopen the space. The work will be on display through Oct. 10.
The defunct power plant has seen many ideas for redevelopment, and the latest version evolved from a public planning process that began in 2013.
A community roundtable will run from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, next to A+O Glass at 416 Pine Street unit E-2. Visitors will be prompted to help come up with visions for the Enterprise District, one of the more contentious parts of planBTV South End. The discussion will be facilitated by Gayer.
At 9:20 p.m., participants will be lining up in the enterprise zone – a hotly contested area after becoming the subject of scrutiny when planBTV South End highlighted some areas as prime for rezoning as residential – for a tug of war. The battle isn’t the industrial district though, it’s the planned Champlain Parkway, which is set for development in 2018 and would connect I-189 with Pine Street by way of a new overpass and output on Lakeside Avenue. Spectators can witness the tug of war outside Speaking Volumes, a record store at 377 Pine Street.
PlanBTV is critiqued in the sculpture competition, “Crumbs for Artists” at the 8 Space studios just off Pine at Howard Street. The contest features “Miro’s Famous Lopsided Sugarcoated PlanBTV Cake with Housing Infill,” and will be ongoing through the weekend, according to a news release from the South End Alliance.
The city will also have pop-up demonstrations that night of pedestrian infrastructure improvements, as VTDigger reported, set up at the intersection of Kilburn Street.
The city will set up an area for pedestrians to sit and socialize in a parking lot, officials said this week. The site will stay up through the weekend’s events, and also feature curb extensions into the road, to show how it could induce drivers to move slower in the pedestrian-heavy area.
The city does not close streets to traffic during the Art Hop.
Finally, on Saturday, Greg Delanty, a professor of English at Saint Michael’s College, will present readings on “community, gentrification, development and preservation,” from 4-6 p.m. in the alley at Green Door studios at 420 Pine St., the Alliance release said.
