Marrikka Trotter MDesS ’08 presents public art installation
Marrikka Trotter, MDesS ’08, and 50 fifth graders from the Josiah Quincy Elementary School recently presented “small things,” a temporary urban public art intervention along Marginal Road in Boston’s Chinatown. The project creatively appropriates an underused and overlooked edge of public space for public use by using everyday materials and simple tactics to construct an engaging recreational space. The students collected and recycled materials such as plastic grocery bags and plastic bottles to create an abstract ‘garden’ of pattern and color to enhance this border zone. The installation aims to encourage active civic transformation of existing urban space and to draw attention to the eroding edges of this community. The art installation is intended to demonstrate how outdoor public resources in neighborhoods like Chinatown can be enhanced by creative, collaborative design.
Marrikka Trotter is a Boston-based architectural designer, artist, and writer. She is currently pursuing a Master of Design Studies degree in Architectural History and Theory at the GSD. Marrikka is co-founder of the artists’ initiative, ltd.; co-editor of (Dis)Courses, a Harvard GSD history and theory journal; a contributing writer for Big Red & Shiny, and a designer at Miller Dyer Spears Architects and Planners. This project was conceived and executed with the support of artist Antoni Muntadas at the MIT Visual Arts Program.