 Welcome to CTN Member Highlights, I'm Leslie McVane, and today I'm with Alice Spencer, the Chair of Tempo Arts. Hi, Alice. Hi. It's great to have you here again. Thank you. I think the last time was maybe in the park with the installation. So let's update everybody about Tempo Art and what's happening. There's a lot coming up this summer. Where do you want to begin with the first Fridays maybe? Sure. Our first piece, which is called The American Dream, has been up now a year. It will be up until next October. And we decided this summer to invite artists to respond to that piece, and to respond to it in the context of our present world situation. That's one of the wonderful things about Tempo Art Public Art is that it has the ability to address issues and ideas that are current, quite different from permanent public art. So we put out a call for artists. We got a number of responses, and we chose three artists that are going to do pieces, and I'll tell you a little bit about them. That would be wonderful. I would love to know. The first artist, his name is John Sunderling, and he is going to do an installation that takes Lincoln Park and shows its original boundary using a fence, so that it will go across the Franklin Arterial, turn a corner, and then come back again. So it will give the audience a sense of what was lost in installing the arterial back in the 1970s, and we're hoping to have historic photographs and other materials to show what happened. So are you working with greater Portland landmarks on this? We probably will be with some of their documentation for that. Our second piece is actually a kind of a performance piece. We're working with an artist called Kristina Bekstein, and she is working with a group of mainly Syrian Muslims who live in the Kennedy Housing Projects and doing gardening with them. And it's a community project, and it's a project to talk about community and connection and welcoming our immigrants from other parts of the world. And I know they do have a wonderful garden area there. And they'll be all sorts of beautiful signage along the arterial that we'll be talking about the project. The public can see this sort of evolving. Exactly. Oh, wonderful. Exactly. And you're third. And the final one is by a young artist called Kristine Prash, and it's going to be in Post Office Park, which is right across the street, actually it's part of Tommy's Park in the Old Port. And he is building blocks, and the blocks are going to be configured either to make an archway or a wall. And he's going to invite his audience to talk about what they want to make, whether they want to build worlds to prevent people from entering the park or whether they want to create an archway. A welcoming. Yeah. So it's a performance piece. He's going to have to be there to work with his audience. And I think it's full of potential. It gave me goosebumps, actually. I think it sounds wonderful. We're hoping that all of them, it starts conversations. That's the point. So will these be the start? You'll do some sort of an introduction on the first Fridays? Yes. They'll be an opening for each of them. And what we're hoping this year is that we'll have an actual table here right in the middle of the Bustle of Congress. And then have maps and send people off, because they're not right in the center of town, but we want people to go there. To go and explore the creativity that's around the city. So we had, I think that John wants to do some sort of a picnic in the medium. Invite people to come and have a picnic. Where they would have been able to. In the park. I think that's tentatively his thinking. Christina is actually going to have a potluck. She wants to have people eating together. People who come from afar eating with the women. And eating from the garden. Maybe something will be ready. I don't know. Or some other gardens. Her project is supposed to last only a month, but I think it's going to last much longer than that. Carry through even after her projected time. Now the house that's here now, the piece of art, the American Dream. Which is in the park. What will happen to that after October? We're not sure. There's been some interest in buying it by a real estate agent. It would, because it's a temporary piece, some of the rivets in it are not permanent. So there would have to be some remaking of it. But basically it's the artist's choice. She's been paid by us. If you can sell it again for her own benefit, that's wonderful. But she's in charge of removing it. I think it's been such a delight to have it here. I thank tempo art every day when I go buy it. We can look forward to the next art, and you've chosen a curator for choosing that piece coming up. Right, right. So we can look forward to that. I don't know. There's probably not a lot happening right now, but... Well, we are actually in the process of meeting with our new curator, just a little bit about her. We again put out a call for curators. We have quite a limited budget. We were astonished by the number of curators that responded. The young woman that has been chosen is a well-known national curator. She's curated over a hundred public art projects. She's from the Boston area, and she was so interested in our city and our arts that she wanted to play a role in our next piece. I'm so excited. The next piece is going to be on the back cove path, and it may be more than one piece. Oh, we're not sure. Oh, well, so... Stay tuned, everybody. Stay tuned. Well, thank you, Alice. And if people want to know more about tempo art, they can go to your web page and find out everything they need to know. And we have a Facebook page as well. Terrific, though. Thank you for being here, and we look forward to talking with you again and seeing all these wonderful things evolve. Great. Thank you. Thank you.