Car grows grass for city’s first Park(ing) Day

A fuzzy, green SUV that was parallel-parked along South Craig Street attracted perplexed stares… A fuzzy, green SUV that was parallel-parked along South Craig Street attracted perplexed stares from passing students, shoppers and pedestrians on Friday afternoon. Impossible to miss, the green all over it was not paint. It was grass. People circled the car, touching the living grass and snapping photographs with their camera cellphones. The creation was part of the larger National Park(ing) Day, which took place in public parking spots all over Pittsburgh and other cities across the nation on Friday. National Park(ing) Day originated in 2005 with Rebar, a San Francisco-based organization of artists, designers and activists. Rebar collaborated with the Trust for Public Land to make Park(ing) Day a global event in 2006. However, this event marked the first Park(ing) Day event in Pittsburgh. Citizens paid the meters for the afternoon, but instead of using each space to park their cars, they transformed the rented space into temporary miniature parks. Jason Vrabel of the Design Center came by to see the park on Craig Street. He was documenting the different Pittsburgh parking spots around the city and said that the turf-mobile on South Craig Street was something of an anomaly. ‘Most people design things that are occupiable,’ said Vrabel. ‘Our site Downtown had probably 100 visitors. We have a dog at ours and lawn chairs. People have come by to eat lunch or read the newspaper.’ ‘Really, if you put money in a parking space, you can do whatever you want for the day,’ said Vrabel. Some did it to promote green living, while others did it to demonstrate the importance of nature in cities. ‘It was about creating an organic texture that was pleasurable in a hard sight,’ said Sean Derry, an artist and Pitt studio arts teacher. Derry created the park on Craig Street for conceptual art. On Nov. 16, 2005, Rebar paid for a metered parking zone on a street in San Francisco and set up a temporary oasis, complete with tree, bench and turf. The project was intended to challenge the ways in which society uses public land, according to the Web site. ‘It’s been a great success. It exceeded my expectations,’ said Emily Craig of Riverlife, one of three organizations that spearheaded the event in Pittsburgh. ‘We represented that there are other ways to use our streets.’ Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl donated his Fourth Avenue parking space to the cause, as did the event’s co-organizer, councilman Patrick Dowd. The Community Design Center of Pittsburgh and the Office of Public Art were also responsible for bringing Park(ing) Day to Pittsburgh. Andrea Lavin, the Design Fund project manager of the Design Center, said that the center is interested in participating in Park(ing) Day next year. ‘Next year, we would like to work on getting some more student involvement from universities and public schools in the area,’ she said.’ The organizations that headed the event brought in additional Pittsburgh foundations and businesses to set up parking spaces at their locations. These included the Mattress Factory, Venture Outdoors and Whole Foods Market. The participating organizations contributed their own themes to the 23 Pittsburgh parks, said Craig. ‘ARL Wildlife had a site on Walnut Street in Shadyside with a live snake, turtles and an owl,’ said Craig. ‘There was lots of foot traffic. Kids loved it.’ Some pedestrians looked for a political message in Derry’s piece. ‘I think it’s a novelty concept,’ said Mary Beth Guzzetta, resident of Regent Square. ‘If you have any sense of humor, you’ll get the whole green SUV thing. But I don’t think it will stop SUV people from driving SUVs.’ Derry said that he did not create the parking space with a political agenda. ‘You can’t escape the political implications,’ said Derry. ‘But there’s a reason there’s not a whole lot of literature around it. I wanted people to experience a visual anomaly.’ At nearby Schenley Plaza, another group of artists encompassed politics and aesthetics in their own Park(ing) Day lot. CMU art students Dana Lok, Sibel Ergener, Michael Royce and Sara Schoenberger took on the assignment as a component to their 3-D studio class. ‘We were trying to do something that contrasted the surroundings ‘mdash; nature and the urban environment,’ said Lok. The students created the sculpture in relation to the history of their location. ‘I feel like a lot of people probably don’t realize that Schenley Plaza used to be a parking lot,’ said Ergener. ‘We wanted people to realize the importance of allowing nature into cities.’ Schenley Plaza was transformed from parking lot to park in 2006. The CMU students created their park with overturned shopping carts and chairs, painted white and splattered with black paint. Vines and decorative songbirds ornamented the creation. The students attracted glances from passersby, some of whom stopped to examine the piece with mixed reactions. ‘I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really get it,’ said Oakland resident Jack Muir. ‘I’m sure there’s someone somewhere who’s going to see something, but all I’m seeing is a pile of junk.’ Despite the criticism, the students said they were ‘really pleased’ with the reactions of those with whom they spoke. ‘ ‘People are stopping and thinking, even if it’s just because they saw something weird,’ said Lok.