Project Description
This public art commission transformed a repurposed newspaper dispenser into a seed library for the Joy Project’s storytelling garden.
Created with spray paint and acrylic, the library embraces weathering and change as part of its meaning, echoing the cycles of nature and community life. By combining abstraction with symbolic detail, the project honors both personal transformation and collective resilience, offering the community a functional artwork that stores seeds while embodying the possibility of rebirth.
Process
Art Description
This repurposed newspaper dispenser, transformed into a community seed library, explores the cyclical nature of birth, death, and renewal. The base begins in deep blues and oranges, layered with binary code, elemental triangles, and mirrored words like learning, growth, and becoming, which serve as symbols of life’s beginnings and the internal journeys that shape us. A gradient of red, white, and purple with burgundy polka dots marks death as transition, reminding us that endings, too, become part of our collective story.
Moving upward, peach and blue spray-painted dots depict ancestors and the living in dialogue, carrying forward wisdom and light. Above them, green and gold forms sprout new blooms, representing rebirth and the seeds we plant for future generations. At the top, a profusion of flowers encircles the library’s name, embodying harvest, gratitude, and the giving of flowers while recognizing that no single stage of the cycle exists in isolation.
The design resists permanence, embracing weathering and change as part of the work’s meaning. By layering symbols, gradients, and abstraction, Cycles of Becoming honors the full spectrum of existence, life, death, and the unseen transitions between, while reminding us that each stage nourishes the next.
