58 inches tall, 44 inches wide, and 27 inches deep. That's what they are, these ugly traffic signal boxes on the side of the road in cities all over the country. Magnets for grafitti and generally just grey metal eyesores, these utilitarian boxes sort of fade from our awareness after awhile. They blend in with other ugly things of an industrialized world. And we get numb.Enter Stamford, Connecticut. As a result of a city beautification program, 50 of the 190 signal boxes in Stamford are now whimsical displays of public art. When you are waiting for a light to change in Stamford, you may gaze at a three-dimensional painting of a park or a shark, a crayon box or Chinese takeout box, a half-painted white picket fence or a filled-up blackboard scribbled on by a little girl. The artists made very little money doing this. One artist left her art as a final legacy before dying of breast cancer at the age of 33.
And now, in Stamford, grafitti is down. Traffic has slowed. And a bit of beauty is back in the lives of the people who live and pass there.
Stamford's traffic signal box example reminds me to be more conscious as I go about my day. Not to be numb to the ugliness that pervades our society. And to think, how can I make it just a little bit more beautiful?
To see examples of Liz Squillace's Stamford boxes, go to www.paradoxink.com.
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