The idea for this project came to me while thinking about how to publicly present works from an ongoing atlas of picture relationships that Matti Allison and I have been working on. Wheat-pasting the works on a wall would leave them a little too vulnerable; the flyer brigade would bury them under posters for upcoming movies and concerts. Artists have competed with corporate visual culture before by using their language of billboards, full color posters, and bus and subway ads but it is an expensive proposition. The sandwich board is cheap, portable, and can support a fairly large amount of visual information. They can be fast and bold or slow and intimate. They can sit in an empty lot, or insert themselves into the physical space of pedestrians on a sidewalk. Importantly, sandwich boards are already recognized and understood by the public which makes them a perfect form for artists to co-opt and manipulate. A creative shift of intent, design, content, or placement in a medium normally used solely for commercial endeavors can potentially produce a lasting experience of wonder, ambiguity, confusion, and mystery in public space. 

 It didn’t take long to realize that this form would serve other people very nicely as well. The artists participating in this project work in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance, sound, collage, book-making, and writing. Our individual conceptual and thematic concerns are highly diverse and not always even remotely related. What we share is the desire to reach the larger part of the public that doesn’t seek out art in galleries or museums. We have worked outside of established art spaces and can adapt our ideas to new forms when an appealing proposal presents itself. There is a sensitivity to the fact that our ideas will play out very differently in public than in a gallery. New situations require new considerations and turns of thought. One cannot fairly assume that a person walking down the street and a person looking at art in a gallery have the same expectations and background knowledge. 

For much of its audience public art is like an uninvited guest at a party - no one knew it was coming. Some people will be glad it showed up, enjoy its company, and want it to stay as long as it likes. Some people will ignore it or hardly notice its presence. Others will find the guest annoying, disrespectful, and will quietly pray that it’ll leave before a physical confrontation becomes necessary. When these signs leave Temporary Services and go out into the city, they will be that uninvited guest. Some will try to be polite - positioning themselves in front of empty lots and closed down stores. Others may ask for permission to stay a while as long as they don’t get in the way. Some will camouflage themselves into the environment so successfully that people may assume that they belong there. And others might be a little more audacious, showing up uninvited and unwelcome - challenging the host to kick it out. 

Frank says he’s been wearing signs every day for eight years. His sandwich board is laminated poster board held together with binder clips that is hung around his neck with string. The messages are political (“The people must clamor for the resignation of the Clinton Gore Administration!!”) and he changes them daily. 

Frank stands out. He doesn’t stand out for wearing slogans; the majority of shoppers and workers on lunch hour sport shirts advertising The Gap or The Bulls, or clutch Marshall Fields bags and Prada purses Political statements can be seen on buttons (“Free Tibet”) and the size of Frank’s sandwich board and the political content would be common in the context of a group march or protest. Frank stands out because prefers to address the public on his own. He uses his body to present statements that are large, idiosyncratic, and apart from an organized rally with a singular focus. 

Frank is out of the closet. The concept of being ‘out’ is a great contribution of the gay community. Being out affirms your pride in your individuality - publicly acceptable or not. Some days I feel like wearing a sign that says “I can recite a hundred poems from memory” or “I have great lips.” For those with the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ mentality, being out is too much information. In junior high school, too much information provided others with useful insults. You were squeamish about any personal information or intimate detail that might reveal too much about yourself. A fat girl in a bikini is too much information. Frank is definitely too much information. 

My desire for too much information is why I live in a city. I want to live around people like Frank who are out. I need to have my own beliefs and experiences challenged. I also prefer to know someone’s agenda up front. If they’re dangerous I can be wary of it. In small Midwestern towns, an extreme politeness and need to believe that everyone agrees, inhibits any dissent or unique opinion. I imagine that for some people this fosters a feeling of safety and community. I have my doubts about the reality of that safety and community. Michigan is the militia capital of the US, but growing up there I didn’t notice anyone standing curbside on dirt roads wearing a sandwich board saying we need to arm ourselves against the government. 

Allocations: Art for a Natural and Artificial Environment; Foundation World Horticulture, Exhibition Floriade, Den Haag-Zoetermeer, 1992.

America’s Finest? (Xerox documentation of controversial bus bench art project); Deborah Small, Elizabeth Sisco, Scott Kessler, Louis Hock, (self-published), 1990.

Art and the Public Sphere; Ed. by W.J.T. Mitchell, Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Art Can See; Les Levine, Germany, Cantz, 1997.

The Art of Light and Space; Jan Butterfield, New York, NY, Abbeville, 1993.

Artists Handbooks: Art in Public: What, Why and How; Ed. by Susan Jones, Sunderland (UK), AN Publications, 1992.

Art, Space and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures; Malcolm Miles, London, Routledge, 1997

Scott Burton; Brenda Richardson, Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1986.

Culture in Action; Sculpture Chicago, M.J. Jacobs, Seattle, Bay Press, 1995.

Democracy: A Project by Group Material; Ed. by Brian Wallis, Dia Foundation, Seattle, WA, Bay Press, 1990.

Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics; Rosalyn Deutsche, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1996.

Get the Message? A Decade of Art For Social Change; Lucy R. Lippard, New York, NY, E.P. Dutton, 1984.

Gordon Matta-Clark: A Retrospective; Mary Jane Jacob, Chicago, IL, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985.

Dan Graham: Buildings and Signs; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1981.

Grand Street #53, “Fetishes”, Summer 1995, New York, NY, Grand Street Press.

“Icons and Interventions in Chicago and the Potential of Public Art”, Kathryn Hixson, Sculpture, May/June 1998, PP 46- 51.

In and Out of Place: Contemporary Art and the American Social Landscape; Trevor Fairbrother and Kathryn Potts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1993.

inSITE94: A Binational Exhibition of Installation and Site-Specific Art; Ed. by Sally Yard, San Diego, CA, Installation Gallery, 1995.

Jamming the Media; Gareth Branwyn, San Francisco, CA, Chronicle Books, 1997.

Land and Environmental Art; Ed. by Jeffrey Kastner, Survey by Brian Wallis, London, Phaidon Press, 1998.

Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art; Ed. by Suzanne Lacy, Seattle, Bay Press, 1995

The Open Public Library; Clegg & Guttmann, Germany, Cantz, 1994.

Place Makers; Ronald Lee Fleming and Renata von Tscharner, Boston, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.

Points of Entry: Three Rivers Arts Festival; Pittsburgh, PA, Three Rivers Arts Festival, 1997.

Processed World #26/27, “The Good Job”, Summer 1991, San Francisco, CA.

Re/Search #11: Pranks!; San Francisco, Re/Search, 1987.

Sign Language - Street Signs as Folk Art; John Baeder, New York, NY, Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object; Lucy R. Lippard, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1973.

The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, & Social Responsibility; Ed. by Carol Becker, New York, NY, Routledge, 1994.

Theory of the Dérive and Other Situationist Writings on the City; eds. Libero Andreotti & Xavier Costa, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona ACTAR, Barcelona, 1996.

Time and Space Concepts in Art; Edited by Marilyn Belford and Jerry Herman, Pleiades Gallery, New York, 1980.

Tiny Tiny Houses; Lester Walker, Woodstock, NY, The Overlook Press, 1987.

Welcome to America’s Finest Tourist Plantation (Xerox documentation of bus ad project and controversy); Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock, David Avalos, self-published, 1989.

Whitewalls #36, “Local Options”, Winter 1996, “Local Options”; Chicago, IL.

Whose Art Is It?; Jane Kramer, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 1994.