A Banner Project Art Students Warm Downtown Wall Street With Their Hanging Snowflake Designs

The banners above Spokane’s Wall Street do what banners everywhere are supposed to: add warmth and a sense of vibrancy to a city street.

But unlike the 122 other banners downtown, these are public art, designed by students under some of Spokane’s most established artists.

For their trouble, the students got a great listing for their portfolio. Businesses get a colorful street front. And Spokane gets closer to an arts and entertainment corridor from the Spokane Arena up a renovated Wall Street someday, perhaps, to the Davenport Hotel district.

The banners are the first display in what collaborators see as a three-block outdoor stage on Wall Street for sculpture and music. Like San Antonio’s Riverwalk, Kansas City’s Sculpture Walk, like Times Square.

“Don’t laugh,” says Karen Valvano of the Downtown Spokane Partnership. “Times Square has some beautiful banners.”

Commercially produced banners downtown already promote the Lilac Festival, Bloomsday, HoopFest and Kids Week. The public art banners have so far promoted the seasons.

The first 10, on red acrylic, were created in less than a week last spring under artist Wendy Franklund Miller and a handful of high school students.

The second batch, blue holiday banners hung Nov. 19, were created by design students at Spokane Falls Community College under instructor Jo Fyfe.

Flapping on the sides of poles 8 feet off the ground, they are 7-foot snowflakes that ripple and snap, bend and shake. They run from Spokane Falls Boulevard to Riverside, with images you can see a block away.

What you won’t see is all the artists’ revisions, group critiques, work done on knees, in hallways, perched on ladders in a classroom. You won’t see the arguments over the price of gold paint or the saddlemaking students called in to perform emergency hemming on the heavy fabric.

You may not even see snowflakes.

“That’s art; sometimes the tighter the criteria, the more variation you see,” Fyfe said. In this case, the designs started as simple snowflakes, but the results were entirely different.

Kelly Carlson, 20, focused circles on parts of snowflakes, adding violet, gold and silver to a field of midnight blue. Shane McSpadden, 19, focused on the composition of a few lines, creating shards of glowing orange and Christmas silver.

“Abstract,” says Sarah Walczyk, 20, of her creation. “You don’t quite realize it’s a snowflake without the others.”

After a few seasons, plans are to eventually auction off these banners to help fund new public art banners. All the work was done with $1,000 donated by the Downtown Business Association. Students earned about $10 each.

But the experience was the pay-off.

“It’s like childbirth; they learned far more than even they realize at this point,” Fyfe said. “Sometimes to appreciate something, you have to participate in it.”

Ralph Busch of the Spokane Arts Commission said such projects give young artists “a sense of self-worth because we’re interested in their expression and this is a healthy outlet for self-expression.

“It’s in such contrast to the juvenile crime problem we see.”

The students have brought their parents, dates and daughters to see the banners. They called friends and out-of-town relatives. They walk under eternal snowfall on Wall Street, their work snapping in the December wind. Kelly Carlson relishes the reaction:

“My dad says, ‘Now, you’re famous.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo