Sewing With Nancy

Quilts jumped off the beds and onto the streets in Missoula, Montana. Thanks to a collaboration between the Missoula Electric Quilters and the Public Art Committee city traffic signal boxes once eyesores are now covered in designed artwork. Kathi Olson and Chris Milodragovich join us via Skype to tell us about this unique project. Welcome, Kathi and Chris. Thank you. Thank you for having us, Nancy. Thank you. When I saw a news release about this, I was so intrigued. Kathi, tell our viewers how traffic signal boxes are now works of art, and how that started. Well, everyone has either ground level or pole level signal boxes. They're large gray boxes sitting right next to their traffic signals with all the electrical components. One of our local artists said gee, we have artwork on our signal boxes in Missouri. I'm a member of the Public Art Committee and I brought the idea to our committee. Everyone endorsed it and loved it. So, five years ago, we started asking artists. They each receive awards of $1,000. We started asking artists to submit designs for our traffic signal boxes so that we could support the artists through our local community. Chris, your quilt group designed the traffic signal box covers. That's correct. There was a small group of us in Missoula who decided to challenge each other to learn the software, Electric Quilts. We'd been meeting for several months, challenging each other and having a great time doing round robins and group design work. When the opportunity came to design traffic signal box art we jumped on it. Like a quilt, your traffic boxes have quilt art but it's not made of fabric. Tell us about the material that it's printed on. Well, there are two choices for our local traffic signal boxes. In our case, we chose to do a vinyl wrap. So, our images are digital. We've never made these as quilts out of fabric. The digital image then is printed onto a vinyl material that is adhered to the traffic signal boxes. You chose the designs very carefully to have representation of Missoula and Montana. Tell us about that.

Chris Milodragovich

That's correct, Nancy. Part of the art call was to reflect images that were specific to Missoula. We're in a valley that has lush wildlife. We're surrounded by mountains and some very iconic things that local people, as well as visitors recognize the elk, the deer. Certainly, we tried to show those things through the traffic signal box art. They're very clever. Kathi, when we were talking earlier you mentioned that there's a side benefit to the traffic signal boxes being covered in art that I wouldn't have thought about. Actually, multiple benefits, some of which are they have been known nationwide and worldwide because many people do them around the world to reduce graffiti on signal boxes but even more so, there's that traffic calming aspect. People actually slow down and look at the signal boxes. I can't tell you how many wonderful comments that we have received from people throughout the world who've traveled to Missoula and have appreciated the artwork on the signal boxes. Tell me, Chris, when you were designing these what were some of the challenges that you had? One of the challenges is that we were newbies in learning the software so we helped each other in that regard. Another challenge was trying to think outside the box a little bit.

Nancy

Literally! Yes, we are a college town, and so often representations of Missoula have to do with the university colors and the mascot. We thought, let's let somebody else tackle that. We don't want to include that. So we let that rest and moved onto other things. But we found that what one person in our group didn't know somebody else did, and the emails were flying as we were trying to get our proposal ready to submit the art committee. We had to put together a scale model that represented what the traffic signal box would look like on all sides and the top. We had to write our proposals, submit resumes and for some people in our group that was a rather daunting sort of activity. Well, what an encouragement to other communities to add quilt art to their community. I thank you for sharing this with our viewers. I'm sure, Kathi you're going to be contacted by other groups. Thanks for joining me. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. If you'd like to find out more information about this great project that took place in Missoula, Montana you can go to nancyzieman.com where you'll find all things Sewing with Nancy. Click under Nancy's Corner and find information. You can also re-watch this television program along with 52 other shows. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.