Performance art can be a beautiful thing — so long as it stays the hell away from our workaday life. Today at noon, your friends at SPACES gallery will blitz the streets of downtown Cleveland to transform metered parking spaces — you know, the one you’ve been circling Public Square for 20 minutes to find — into “PARK(ing) installations.” That’s right: fresh sod, a park bench, maybe a gay prostitute or two — all that you love about Cleveland’s parks, conveniently recreated in the space that could have been occupied by your Camry.
The three target areas: the Warehouse District, the West Side Market, and East 9th and Huron — aka the nexus of Cleveland’s parking woes. Somewhere today, an artist’s blood will seep into concrete.
SPACES calls it “artists respond[ing] to the diversity and complexity of the urban street.” We call it Get your $%@#& art back on the gallery wall where it belongs. The good news: Each installation lasts only till the meter runs out. And you gotta believe the meter maids will be vigilant. — Erich Burnett
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2006.