Public Art at the Louisiana Bridge over Minnehaha Creek
Perennial Flow
By Artists: Gita Ghei, Lori Greene, and Randy Walker
Perennial Flow is a collaborative public artwork located on the Louisiana Avenue bridge over Minnehaha Creek. The artwork speaks to uplifting transformation and movement, infinite cycle and renewal. It references the reaching across from past to present, from seed to life, and the movement of a butterfly.
artwork elements
Grasses: Uplifting to sky, the painted steel pieces formally echo the theme of seasonal change with dynamic color placements. Attached mirror stainless steel butterfly forms angled to reflect the surroundings and sky.
Bronze: Images of ancient and current water creatures reference the geologic forces that created our chain of lakes, with imagery determined through community engagement. Larger feature tiles, one per pier, will enhance the theme of the perennial—birth, life and the infinite cycle.
Wall mosaic: Circles are seeds and exhibit patterns that are ubiquitous in nature. On one side, the colors move through winter to spring, and the other side colors move from summer to autumn, embedded with mirror to reflect light and create movement like light on the creek.
Lighting: On top of the bridge, artwork is lit from below, with fixtures incorporated into the cement piers. Below the bridge, the mosaic walls are illuminated with a light that creates a gradient across the mosaic, expressing the theme of transformation.
Durability & Safety and Maintenance
Lighting: LED lighting provides safety and enhances the concept of transformation.
Mosaic: A highly durable art form capable of lasting thousands of years.
Painted steel: The grass elements use industrial paint, which is rated for outdoors.
Bronze: The cast elements are patinated in a durable blue-green patina, and is left to weather naturally.
Work in Progress
Artists
Gita Ghei
Gita is a multiethnic sculptor specializing in public art and teaching. She is self-taught, with a degree in ancient studies and archaeology, and learned her trade of lost wax casting in an art foundry. With her art, she celebrates the forces of nature as primary creation and sustenance, and inspires reverence and responsibility for public space and resources.
Instagram: @stareyeart
www.stareyeart.com
Lori Greene
Mosaic artist and sculptor, Lori Greene, identifies as a community and public artist. She works with and for the community, and has over twenty years of experience making outdoor public art mosaics. Lori is well-known for creating pieces about healing and recovering from trauma. She
believes the process of making art is healing, and she believes there is power in working together to create a work of art and see it through to the finished piece. She works with intention, with an open heart, and with love. Her process involves listening, feeling, researching, and of course the building of the mosaic. It is a long process, but it is a labor of love.
As a multiracial (African American, Native American- Mississippi band of Choctaw, and Caucasian) woman, Lori brings a unique voice and perspective to public art that has not always been represented. Her identity as a woman of color is very visible in her work, as demonstrated through the narratives of her pieces and the people who are represented in them. Lori's work is bold, colorful, and unapologetic. Patterns, symbols, and motifs reflecting her intersecting cultural identities interweave themselves throughout her works like a visual language. Within them lies stories of survival, interconnection, resilience, and a deep connection to the ancestors. Through Lori's artistic process she works to honor the legacies of BIPOC people and decolonize our relationship to mother nature. Made with love, her works serve as prayers for a future of justice, perseverance, and intergenerational healing.
Instagram: @lorigreeneartist
Website
Patreon
Randy Walker
Educated as an architect, Randy Walker is a professional public artist based in Minneapolis. For the past sixteen years he has created large-scale permanent and temporary works that engage sites, contexts, histories, and communities. Walker has completed commissions in California, North Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and New Mexico. He has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Forecast Public Art, McKnight Foundation, and five Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Walker’s public work has been recognized nationally by the Americans for the Arts Public Art Year in Review in 2005 and 2012.