Crowdsourcing the Giant Trumpet Flower That Will Bloom at Main Street Square

Trumpet Flower Painting Event, Market Square, Downtown, Houston, 77002

Preston St. was closed down Saturday afternoon between Travis and Milam, as hundreds of people showed up to Market Square to paint the reclaimed strips of wood that will compose Patrick Renner’s upcoming Trumpet Flower installation.  The sculpture is designed to loom 60 feet above the space between One City Centre and its parking garage downtown (off Main St. Square and Fannin, between Lamar and McKinney).

Renner, of far-more-horizontal Funnel Tunnel fame, is slated to install the towering cone by the end of March, as part of the Art Blocks project planned to jazz up Main Street Square leading up to the 2017 Superbowl.  The tip of the structure will stretch down from the top of the garage and flare out into a furnished canopy shelter at street level. A tiny model of the installation was on display at a side table during the painting free-for-all:

***

Trumpet Flower Painting Event, Market Square, Downtown, Houston, 77002

Participants were asked to paint only 1 side of each board but given no other restrictions; the finished slats contained everything from whimsical swirls to ideological graffiti.

Trumpet Flower Painting Event, Market Square, Downtown, Houston, 77002

Photos: Swamplot inbox

Sprouting Downtown

One Comment

  • From the model, that thing looks like it will be 50 feet tall. I hope someone good at math figured out if it will stay put in a hurricane. I’m squinting at you, artist.