Dave Loewenstein

Does the glow of cell phones come from the captured bioluminescence of fireflies? This was a waking dream I had back in 2018. I was gazing out of a hotel room window in Washington, D.C. watching government workers shuffle along mesmerized by their phones and wondering what it would take to get them to look up. Fast forward a few months and a version of that vision became this mural in Iowa City.

Situated in a well-trafficked alley across from a nightclub in the heart of downtown, the mural’s main audience includes delivery drivers, maintenance workers, alley cats, and clubbers. One side features a curious raccoon cautiously trying to grasp a firefly while humans remain oblivious to the magic of the night. The mural continues around the corner where a woman captivated by an awe inspiring natural phenomenon drops her phone into the jaws of copperhead snake. The snakebite triggers a release of bioluminescence that makes its way up to a spiral galaxy becoming new stars.  Well, at least that’s my interpretation. What do you see?

Thanks to artist/organizer Thomas Agran, Karen at Beadology and Kelly at Over the Moon for their support and encouragement.  And special thanks to my friend and assistant Andrew Martin. The mural is located in the alley behind 220 East Washington St. in Iowa City, Iowa.

2009

Lawrence, Kansas
 

I look at my horoscope in the newspaper sometimes, but not on good days. I wouldn't want to spoil a good day with a downer two—star comment. No, usually I take a peek when things feel out of whack or I haven't slept, to hopefully confirm that it's the star’s fault and not mine. I'm a Libra, which I only know has something to do with scales and balance and that seems to suit me ok, but It's hard to tell reading the fifty word blurbs. Here's today’s four star example: Libra (Sept. 23–Oct. 22) ** “Break past your normal patterns and do something very different. You are in a position to instrument change and take the next step in warming up a relationship. Relax with others. Tonight: Take an overview. That one's not bad. I'm just not sure how to "instrument" beyond taking more music lessons. Mostly, it seems horoscopes encourage us to: "do what you like," "stay in," " say yes," " make that important appearance," or " be with friends." I try. 

We all like to take a chance and cast our fortunes to the fates. To be in control of all of our decisions all of the time makes no room for those unseen forces we invoke when life takes unexpected turns. With this in mind, my friend Eric Farnsworth and I made the Wheel of Willing Diversion in 2009 for the outdoor entryway to the Spencer Museum of Art.  

Here are the options you could land on:

- Forecast developing trends in human gullibility.

- Treat a stranger to an ice cream cone.

- Map the roots and branches of your family’s tree.

- Yes.

- Get to know five trees by name in your neighborhood.

- Estimate your carbon footprint by walking in fresh mud.

- Speculate about beings from another planet.

- Enjoy the view from the top ofa tree.

- Endeavor to recall your first memory.

- Plant a new idea.

- Imagine a glacier on the edge of town.

- Read the Lorax aloud.

- Traverse the gap between art and science.

- Harvest intuitions about cast shadows.

- Measure the climate for storytelling at your workplace.

- Prescribe a nap to a friend in need.

- Swear off lawn mowing cold-turkey.
 

The instructions were straightforward…

1. Spin the wheel.

2. Follow the prompt however you interpret it.

3. Document your response in words, pictures, or other expressions.

4. Return documentation of your adventure to the Spencer Museum.

5. Join other respondents at a gathering to share our stories. 
 

The idea was to give people a reason to step out of their everyday routines for a moment, explore something new and then to share their stories with fellow adventurers. Needless to say during the time the Wheel was most active, Silas And Maddie’s, our local ice cream shop, saw a slight unexplainable uptick in business, while copies of the Lorax were suddenly a sought after and rare commodity. By the way, the Wheel is still around awaiting the curious as part of my neighbor KT Walsh’s front yard art tableau on Rhode Island Street. 

2015

Topeka, Kansas

In collaboration with Washburn University art students, Half Empty examined water as a practical resource and as a cultural signifier when used for decoration, leisure and ritual. It was a part of Drift and Drag: Reflections on Water, a larger exhibition and series of events at the Mulvane Art Museum.

In the U.S., we take for granted the right to clean and plentiful water, and rarely have we considered it as a finite or vulnerable resource, until now. But as the Ogallala aquifer is depleted and our rivers and streams run dry, Kansans from the Governor on down are beginning to take notice. The Half Empty project created a new platform for student artists to join this crucial and timely conversation. 

In our studio set up in the Mulvane Art Museum, visitors were encouraged to collaborate by adding their thoughts and ideas to a large wall drawing titled Message(s) in a Bottle, where a prompt asked, “If you could send a message to the water keepers of the world, what would it be?” The student team created a series of art-based interventions including mud stencils, videos, and faux dollars with water related facts that advocated for ending the sale of bottled water on campus. An accompanying blog and booklet documented the project.

Flagstaff, Arizona, 2009

Located at 16 South Mikes Pike

Lead Artists – Cy Wagoner, Dave Loewenstein and Brett Ramey

“What Flows Beneath Our Feet” was designed and painted during a week-long community mural training that I helped facilitate with support from the Black Sheep Art Collective and the Urban Lifeways Project.  Additional partners included the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities and Program in Community, Culture, and Environment at Northern Arizona University.

This community-based project, created along the path of the original Route 66, addresses the histories, habitats, and memories that society puts out of sight and out of mind when they feel they are too difficult to deal with. The mural depicts the Rio de Flag as it is literally forced underground and made invisible, like many histories of the Southside neighborhood that have been forgotten, or suppressed. The design process and resulting mural speaks to the importance of finding the intersection between water, urban agriculture, public art, shared history, emerging visions and collaborative efforts between Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members,  all of which are essential as we work to renew the health of our communities.

During the course of the 1999-2000 school year, two groups of high school students, one from Holcomb, Missouri population 531 and the other from New York City population 10,000,000, worked together to create a mural about their perceptions of one another and the communities they lived in.

With school in session and more than 1000 miles between them, it was impossible for the two groups to work in the same physical space. The students overcame these obstacles guided by an innovative curriculum I developed with Baruch College Education Professor Sandra Stein that harnessed new computer technology to bridge the physical distance between them and make their collaboration possible.

After eight months of work, the completed mural titled “Counterparts” debuted in New York to a huge reception including, by a miracle of grassroots fundraising, all of the mural team members from both schools.

The documentary film, Creating Counterparts, follows this story from the first workshops in both Holcomb and New York where students revealed their guarded perceptions of each other from 1000 miles away, to a serious conversation eleven months later about tolerance and faith, that took place, in South Eastern Missouri.

The film celebrates the capacity of art and technology projects to open doorways and challenge our perceptions. It also shows how this particular project was realized in the hope that others will be inspired to envision their own ways of bridging the divides that separate us.

Thanks to my friends at Queen Alidore, Creating Counterparts is available to watch on-line or the first time.

Lawrence, Kansas 2012

This Green Space was a project put together by the Lawrence Percolator that imagined alternatives to a proposed (now built) hotel to be constructed on top of the adopted public green at 9th & New Hampshire in Lawrence. Many artists contributed plans and flights of fancy, the field began to speak for itself (I did the interpreting), and Percolators created a scale model of the the field and proposed hotel to show city commissioners what impact it would have.