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Fresh Produce Mural

What if art could help make smart food choices more fun, delicious and beautiful for kids?

BACKGROUND:

After receiving an Art Means Business grant from Glass House Collective, General Manager Christina Mack and her Save-A-Lot team knew they wanted to create a project that engaged local kids around their health. They also knew that their Glass Street location made the building a prime spot for a mural. How could the mural work over-time to connect with local kids?

NEED:

Work with mural artist Cristhian Saravia — aka Golden — to create an art installation that drives kids towards healthier food choices and helps the whole neighborhood get excited about the fresh produce available at the area’s newest grocery story.

WHAT WE DID:

We connected our Save-A-Lot partners with the outreach programs Young Ladies of Power and Archway Kids to host a day of taste-testing and fun. To prepare, we chatted with muralist Golden to create coloring pages that the kids could work on and talk about, all with the goal of giving Golden a bit of inspiration for his upcoming mural. The pages featured beautiful fruits and vegetables that the kids could color — but how about taste?

Piggybacking off of a fall-break visit to Booker T. Washington State Park, we brought Asia Wiggins from I Am Fitness and her epic juicing powers to the kids for an afternoon of taste-testing fresh juices. From celery and beets to ginger and apple, the kids had a chance to learn about each piece of produce and taste the juice for themselves. At the end of the day, they were each given a jar to create their own custom juice, putting together the ingredients they’d tried.

And of course, there was coloring. As the kids learned about each fruit and vegetable, they added new layers of color and fun to their coloring pages, which our GHC team scanned and shared with Golden. These sheets, along with quotes, poems and stories from the kids, became the basis for his mural.

In early November 2021, Golden turned all these inputs from the community into a big, bold, beautiful mural along the Save-A-Lot — conveniently just six feet away from the door to the market’s produce section. The mural brings color to the block, but it also shows our kids that their input matters.

VISION:

Ultimately, the goal of this work was two-fold: bring a bright mural to Glass Street, but also help kids see the delicious, wonderful bounty of the fresh produce in their local market. By introducing them to new fruits and vegetables, the project opens up the possibilities for their healthy snacking — and makes a big celebration of their creative work.

PARTNERS:

Young Ladies of Power

Archway Kids

Save-A-Lot

Asia Wiggins, I Am Fitness

J Adams, Photographer

The Pool

What if you could literally light up a neighborhood through a powerful combination of arts and engagement?

April 2017

BACKGROUND:

The Pool is an installation art piece of 40,000 LED bulbs and 106 pucks created by Brooklyn artist Jen Lewin, programmed to light up in clever, colorful ways when visitors step, run or dance across the piece. In 2017, the tech-enabled piece toured neighborhoods in East Chattanooga and brought families together in unexpected ways, in unexpected places. This installation kicked off The Highlight Festival which took place on the former HUD Housing Site called Harriet Tubman. 

NEED:

Activate vacant sites through the power of local collaboration and draw focus on neighborhoods in fun, bright ways. And did we mention dancing?

WHAT WE DID:

Glass House Collective, green|spaces, and our local partners worked with Jen Lewin to engineer a beautiful act of placemaking outside of typical venues to underscore the point that every type of family should have the opportunity to engage with home in a new way. While The Pool had toured major cities and events around the world (and clocked millions of steps), it had never made its way to the Southeast.

First stop: the East Chatt Highlight Festival — itself a feat of local partnership. Greeted by a full gospel showcase, The Pool brought locals and visitors together around a very bright event. The festival was held in the vacant site where 440 housing units of the Harriet Tubman Homes formerly stood. That’s also where kids from nearby Hardy Elementary met with the artist’s team and helped program color patterns and test out the massive installation. From there, the piece moved to a site on the 1900 block of Roanoke Avenue — just down the road from our very own Glass Street. Over the course of one week, The Pool moved around the area three times — from Highland Park, to East Chattanooga to East Lake — making a vibrant and dance-worthy event accessible to the families of Glass Street, all through the hard work of local partners.

VISION:

There are so many things that are so right about our neighborhoods — but sometimes, you’ve got to set the stage to celebrate home. The Pool provided an opportunity for locals to pause, party and come together in an unconventional, highly ‘grammable way. Call it a slow down or a glow up: either way, it’s all about shining a light on our awesome neighborhoods.