14 November 2005

Beautifying Canberra's intersections

| Kerces
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You may remember a competition in September for designs to be painted on traffic controller boxes. Well, 30 of the 50 entries received were chosen and work has begun at intersections in Belconnen, Woden, Ainslie, O’Connor and Dickson. Twelve of the boxes have been finished, including this one on Aikman Dr, Belconnen, which is called “Green Poles”.

Green Poles

It turns out the competition did not end with the choosing of the artworks. After all the boxes have been painted, a panel of judges, including Becky Hoffman from Belconnen Community Service, Emma Epstein from Canberra Museum and Gallery and Rod Quinn from 666 ABC Canberra, will choose winners in various categories.

All the boxes are to be finished by 30-NOV-05, but even in their half-finished states they are quite pretty, like “Colours of spring”, below.

Colours of spring

The third box in Belconnen is on the corner of Belconnen and Benjamin Ways and I suspect this location was part of the inspiration for the design — titled “Fruit and veges”.

Fruit and veges

Now there’s another 27 boxes out there in various stages of being painted and, since I don’t want to make a special trip to the other side of Canberra, perhaps some of you who live or work southside can email photos of them to johnboy@the-riotact.com to be more Images of Canberra. To find out where they are, you can either ring Canberra Connect on 13 22 81 or click here for a copy of the list the kind lady at Urban Services sent to me very promptly after I rang this morning.

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So where’s the picture of it nyssa? We want pictures!

Absent Diane3:40 pm 15 Nov 05

Follow the yellow brick road JB

JB – definitely agree, Green Poles is very cool. And now that you mention the corn thing, I worry even more about your mental state. Getting enough lately?

So how come the Hobbits get light rail and we don’t? Where’s the fairness in that, hey Mr Stanhopeless?

My Dad used to tell me that little Vietnamese men sat inside Autotellers dispensing your money. Ah the good old days of political irreverance…

I like “green poles”, but I also like the one opposite the Canberra Hospital (Maternity side).

Must be why there’s a cumquat there too.

I seriously dig “green poles”.

But “Fruit and veges” is problematic, firstly because if you have to write little labels, to help people interpret, then your art isn’t doing its job.

And secondly because the corn reminds me of something else entirely.

Absent Diane4:52 pm 14 Nov 05

See I always thought they were boxes full of mechanics and electronics that I don’t understand that make the lights do things, which is also beyond my comprehension…

I like em! (The paintings on the boxes, not the dwarves/hobbits)

Samuel Gordon-Stewart4:03 pm 14 Nov 05

I once had an idea of getting people who are long-term unemployed to become traffic light controllers as a kind of work for the dole scheme…then I realised that they might decide to have fun changing traffic lights at random or just not changing them…much better to leave the professional dwarves and hobbitts to do the job.

My mistake Mr Evil, I defer to your superior knowledge.

Kerces, they are not Dwarfs; they are Hobbitts! They have a little chair that they sit on and every few minutes they flick a little switch to change the lights, whilst watching Hobbitt TV. They ride to and from work on a Hobbitt Camel or by Hobbitt light rail.

I once came up with a theory, which I half-heartedly tried to convince several small children of, that each of the boxes housed a dwarf who was in charge of changing the traffic lights. I did manage to convince one or two people this was actually the case.

Samuel Gordon-Stewart3:22 pm 14 Nov 05

I saw somebody painting the box at the intersection of Ainslie Avenue and Limestone Avenue over the weekend…I’m sorry, but I like the nice blue boxes, when they aren’t grafittied anyway.

In further incriminating evidence for people like Caz, I used to have conversations with the boxes…or at least one of them, one I saw twice daily…it was always nice to be able to talk to something that wasn’t going to abuse you after a hard day. (And before you ask, no, I didn’t stand there chatting with it, I had the conversation in my head as I was crossing the road)…never mind, think what you want…

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