One Green Step for Mankind.

23Apr11

It’s up!

Green Provocateur has landed! A badge of pride to become one with the neighborhood and be tagged the very next day!

Thank you to everyone who was part of the first landing of Green Provocateur! The first international public art intervention of Green Provocateur, was awarded and commissioned by AMAZElab, a non-profit cultural lab which works for the diffusion and knowledge of contemporary cultures in projects around the world. The transitional neighborhood of Isola, Milan was the first setting for Green Provocateur, turning an urban railway staircase into a lush green oasis, for the 2011 Salone’s satellite fair, Green Island.

We also landed on the pages of GQ, Marie Claire and Stylepark; the dailies: Il Giornale, Corrieire della Sera, la Repubblica, Metro News; the all-important Interni magazine and wow! even William McDonough, the world re-known green czar architect and Time magazine’s ‘Hero of the Planet,’shared our Metropolis post on Isola with his Twitter fans!

Thanks to bloggers at Serox Cult and Saxon Henry at Roaming by Design; Claudia Zanfi, Green Island curator for the invitation, the creative agency PLANT., all our indiegogo.com supporters and thanks to Susan Szenasy, EIC of Metropolis for the opportunity to blog about the Salone, muse about green and the expanded spaces for urban art. (We have many people to thank, see them all here.)

Between artist, photographer, Paul Clemence’s pro photos and my mobile phone documentation, we’ll have a number of posts, but this one…from my mobile camera is straight up from the beginning to the end. Enjoy!

What a mantra to find upon arrival! It’s up to you. Caring about green, realizing dream projects, realizing our wall in a large part due to YOU, our fans and followers, the Wall is “Up to YOU!”…kinda cool.

I could write volumes on the magic of Isola, with it’s artisan, Bronx-like grit and graffiti, elegant historic buildings, hip spots and modern architecture world-mix…we wrote a lot about it for Metropolis…but this image hints at the magic at dusk exactly where our stairs live. Via Pepe is a major thoroughfare of cars, bikes, scooters and all kinds of people utilizing the rail station.

Paul and Jade…a little jet-lagged, a lot excited to start.

We had angels at every turn…underneath on the wall and in the flesh and blood to help us install. Specific angels were Frederico, an energetic artist, Andrea, a poetic playwright and Vilyus, a blond God who worked half-naked and whose designer pants could not be ruined.

the pants remain clean.

see all the wrinkles? just one of the challenges…

the mode of persistence prevailed.

By this time we were joined by Frederick’s adorable girlfriend who arrived on her bike and was sporting fuzzy golden lion ears.

Our friend, Dedi Salmeri of Alcos Comunicazione, arrives with her husband Alberto and their dog Tobias and Dedi gets right in on the action.

Left to right. Golden eared Elena, the mythic Vilyus, the artist Paul and Frederico, our angel anchor on the ladder.

the team.

golden angel # 10,076, Andreas arrives at 12 am, from his theatre passion, to lend a gentle and wise presence.

in the meantime…Isola sleeps.

Andreas gives me a ride on his bike and sings a song at 2:30 am winding through the streets to where taxis are to safely bring me home. He goes back and the boys share an hour of magic connection and talk after a night’s hard work.

in the morning, we begin again. can you believe the dedication?