Forrest Curl of the Avenue Concept works to complete phase one of the Mt. Pleasant High School project (so vivid already, black details still to come). Invited to take part in the new traffic-calming crosswalks, the Avenue artists have taken the ball and run with it. This walkway should help guide pedestrians to the proper crosswalk — can’t really miss it! — with crosswalks in Kilties colors to be painted next. Returning students ought to love this.
This project is one piece of a larger traffic-calming initiative for Mt. Pleasant Avenue instituted by the city after popular teacher Anne-Marie Dansicker was struck by a car leaving school last December. (WPRI 6.1.16)
. . . the outlined project was set to include more police patrols and more electronic speed signs in the Mount Pleasant and Elmhurst neighborhoods, as well as public service announcements.
Artist Forrest Curl is an adjunct professor at RISD (Experimental and Foundation Studies) and the 2-D artist-in-residence this summer at Avenue Concept. Curl once owned Hope Street Tattoo, and here’s a fun fact: Wife Claudia Curl owns Claudia Curl Salon also on Hope Street. Yup, that’s her name.
Below is a test patch at the Avenue Concept location of the 3-D crosswalk design in Kilties colors.
Good to know about this. I drive past the impromptu memorial to Ms. Dansicker almost every day; it’s around the corner.
The city has met with local residents about traffic-calming strategies to cut down on people bombing through on the connector streets between Smith St. and Mt. Pleasant Ave., mostly on the way to RIC. Proposals ranged from making them one-way to erecting mid-street landscaped barriers. All seem to create more impediment for residents than for cut-through commuters. We’ll see.