Art On Track, the World's Largest Mobile Art Gallery, was a fun and fast-paced event aboard a moving CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) train. It was the first event of its kind, and it is now in its 3rd year. The event was fun for all ages and involved about 130 local artists including Tristan Hummel, the creator of Art On Track.
Tristan Hummel created Art On Track because he believed that “there was a need to get work shown outside of the distinctly classical means; Museums, Galleries, etc..” Hummel went on to say, "Contemporary artwork is not always appropriate for those venues but the other options just don't exist mostly. In my search for the appropriate space, it was easier to create one. Art on Track was designed as a means for Artists whose practice took interest outside of the classical system."There was so much to see. Each car had a theme and was eligible to win an award at the end of the event.
Tristan Hummel had his own car in which he "designed and built his own light bulbs using clear ball pit balls on top of LED throwies. LED throwies are two watch batteries, a magnet, a pull tab, and an LED light. When you pulled the tab the ball would light up and could then be thrown or placed on a magnet receptive surface and it will stick. By placing the ball pit ball around the LED I was able to get the feel of this light bulb thing I wanted. People who got on my car could pull the tab and illuminate their social interaction. I built a canopy out of 20,000 receptive joints and 3,000 couplings for the balls to be nested in. It spanned the middle of the train car, providing a tunnel for people to walk through. The exhibit slowly became illuminated as people interacted with it more. Eventually people started making light sculptures out of the LEDs on the metal parts of the train, appropriating my idea in their social context and thus creating new mini-systems of LED signaling. It behaved like social DNA, all of the "inputs" were given to the public and placed at their mercy while the environment was controlled to an extent leaving room for mutation."
In addition to Art, Fashion also stood out on the train! Local Fashion Designer, Frog Greishaw of House of Frog had an interesting idea for her car making an interactive fashion show, where walk through one door and you are a runway model in the show… or walk through the other door and you are watching the show in the audience! Pretty cool! She had some models wearing her own designs and then randomly other people would come on the runway strutting what they had come to the event in!
I asked Tristan if he would ever host Art On Track in New York or if he could see something like that taking off there? He said, “You know, depending on how the subway system is set up it could be possible to do the show in New York. I think If I ever "Travel" with an art show it will be in converted shipping crates, not trains, set up in Urban areas.”
There was also a team of artists that created outfits and accessories that were made out of CTA cards. Rose Turner, fashion designer and founder of Rosina~Mae and good friend, Matt Haney, local artist and jack of all trades decided they wanted to recycle the cards because they kept seeing them everywhere! “I love remaking junk and discarded items,” says Haney. Their group was unique because they were a sort of side attraction drawing in crowds to the event. They were the only group that wasn’t on a particular car. Models posed in the outfits and passersby asked what was going on and snapped pictures. “It was super cool posing on the CTA platform and on the street, because we helped get a lot of people to come to the event,” said Turner. Creative styling team, Sugar Your Spice did makeup and hair on the models so they were camera ready and Aza Azunia snapped amazing pictures of the traffic stopping outfits!
Credits: Art On Track- www.artontrack.com, Rosina~Mae- www.rosinamae.com, House Of Frog- www.houseoffrog.com, Sugar Your Spice- www.sugaryourspice.com (Fashion photos by: Aza Photography/ FIJI photo by Fiji Water)
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