October 2026
Bloomington, Indiana has a tradition of commissioning local artists to paint original designs on our traffic signal boxes. It brightens up otherwise mundane pieces of municipal infrastructure while supporting living artists in the community.
The painting above is my semi-finalist submission based on the prompt:
“Develop a traffic box design that visually represents Bloomington’s native flowers, nature, or wildlife. Designs should be vibrant and colorful and may be either representational or abstract.”
Inspired by the work that Sycamore Land Trust is doing to create the Carl Ziegler Wetland and Education Center, I focused my design on a wetland depicted in four seasons.
In the painting we see the following scenes in a single tableau:
- Winter with a lone bird perched on a dead tree surrounded by water
- Spring with cattails and a water bird standing in the sunshine
- Summer with the silhouette of a soaring raptor
- Fall with a stylized tree gradually losing its yellow and orange leaves
Each scene will fit on to a single side of the traffic box on the southeast corner of the Kirkwood Avenue and Rogers Street intersection in downtown Bloomington.
My goal is to give drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians something interesting to look at while they wait for lights and walk signals to change.
I almost always favor the brightest colors and combinations possible to capture attention and keep the eyes moving across a piece.
Installation is set of the last week of October through the first weeks of November. I’ll add photos of the finished box here once the painting is complete!