This past February marked my third year participating, in various capacities, with the Boston APP/Lab. I reflect on this as several projects and initiatives are moving steadily forward within the Lab, especially the ArtsCommons project.

My connection to Boston as a city...

I don’t think this is simply a difference without a distinction: 

Leave us substitute “Creative Place-shaping” for “Creative Place-making.” 

What has always struck me about the latter is that whatever the place, it has always existed in some form as part of the landscape...

About a year ago, sculptor Eric Sealine put something in writing, in connection with one of the Lab’s Workshops, that continues to resonate: “One of the functions of public art,” he wrote, “is to transform the way people respond to each other. It has less to do with th...

Back about five years ago, when I migrated from urban planning to a focus on art in public places (not that far a migration, it turns out), a friend told me about a New Yorker article dating from the early 1990’s -- a profile of the artist Robert Irwin. Its title: “In...