Invisible Lines
What Painting a Giant Hopscotch in Greensboro’s South Elm Neighborhood Taught Us About The Community
by: Patrick McDonnell
We start with a simple idea. Let’s paint a hopscotch around the neighborhood to liven up the sidewalk and get people to play. Sounds innocuous, right?
Then add the question — How will this project get people to rethink their city? Then add another question — How will this project bring attention to the neighborhood in advance of all the new development happening from the south of train tracks to Bragg Street?
The more questions you ask, the more more the narrative changes, and suddenly a simple notion become a complex one.
Hopscotch Origins
We all know the game. It’s something you learn as a kid.
For the most part it’s 10 numbers. There are a series of boxes, singles and pairs of two. You roll a rock to a square, hop around the ‘square with the rock’ to the other squares, pick up the rock and hop back to the beginning making sure not to step outside the hopscotch square boxes, which is out of bounds.
Hopscotch began as a training exercise for ancient Roman soldiers. They used to play in fully clad armor to keep fit improving their stamina and endurance — some courses were as long as 100 feet. Then, Roman children picked it up and started drawing courses on their own, and eventually the training exercise became popular game that spread throughout Europe. A training exercise to prepare soldiers for battle got co-oped by kids and was turned into a game for fun.
We don’t usually associate hopscotch with battle, but in it’s own way, the painting of the hopscotch in the South Elm neighborhood brought it into a theatre of hidden relationships and conflicts that we didn’t know were there before — the latent designs of the city became invisible.
Agustina
Agustina Woodgate came to Elsewhere as a resident in 2012, helped create the glass forest on the 2nd floor of the museum, started a radio station, and has been coming back periodically and continuing an ongoing relationship as we have evolved together.
Agustina returned to Greensboro to paint the Hopscotch installation as part of a six-month initiative funded by ArtPlace America that will foster Community Art-scaping Projects in the South Elm neighborhood.
The Hopscotch that she painted in Greensboro was a continuation of the one she started in Buenos Aires in 2014 — where she begin number 1 and went all the way up to 1692. She’s painted the hopscotch in other areas including Miami, and Poland, but this is the first time she’s continued the numbers. In this way, the hopscotch is now growing into a narrative that connects cities together from around the globe.
Hopscotch In Greensboro
Greensboro’s hopscotch starts at number 1693 in a drain under the train trestle where McGee and Davie streets converge. It is significant for a few reasons. One, because that’s the thorough faire you use to subvert train traffic, two because it is a nod to our moniker as the “Gate City” which references our history as the railroad gateway to North Carolina, three because it touches on one of the main themes of the project, connectivity.
Each segment of the hopscotch starts and ends in and out of drains, jumping from one side of the sidewalk to the other. Jumping in and out of drains gives it a sense of whimsy, creates continuity because it doesn’t have a definitive beginning or end, and allows for the hopscotch to travel far distances.
After the trestle, it continues up the side of a grassy knoll with historical markers referencing the Greensboro’s connections to the confederacy. The climbing landscape and the climbing numbers allude to the dawning of the city of Greensboro — whose origins starts in 1771 with the settling of the area, the the naming of the town in 1781, Greensborough, and it’s incorporation in 1809. The hopscotch reaches the top of the knoll and disappears again down a drain.
It picks back up at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s statue and begins it’s journey through the business-heart of the South Elm neighborhood. It traverses brick and concrete down the 500 Block of Elm roving in front of the furniture store Area, interior design company Vivid, Victoria Carlton’s recently opened art studio/gallery, Dudley’s Hair Salon, Artistika salsa club, Hudson’s Hill clothing shop, Coe’s Grocery a feed store/army surplus/convenient store, and Al’s Furniture an incredible menagerie of antique furniture, refrigerators and washers and dryers.
It pops-up over to the 600 block where Table 16 begins. Touches Social Status shoe store, Alter Vapes, Cake Decorating, Elsewhere, Art Mongerz, Mosiac Piano Repair, the new restaurant PB and Java and finishes it’s Elm travels at the corner of Bain Street. In a matter of two blocks, we see a diversity of uses and a fascinating wealth of character coexisting together.
The hopscotch travels down Lee Street up to the bus stop on Eugene. Probably the most traveled part of the hopscotch because of it’s proximity to the bus stop, Lee illuminated a different vibe of the neighborhood, one with a sense of movement and a utility centered around transit. It emphasized an area designed as a through-faire for both cars and pedestrians, but mainly for cars.
After Eugene, the hopscotch travels to the corner of S. Elm St and Bragg St by the Yellow Cab Taxi and the future Greenway. It pops-up on Bragg and Arlington in on the outskirts of the ‘Ole Asheboro neighborhood and future site of the New Zion church before heading back north to continue it’s loop.
It finishes on Arlington Street, from Lewis to MLK, on the sidewalk leading into the entrance of the Beloved Community Center.
The Hopscotch in it’s entirety touches all of the parts of the South Elm neighborhood, it’s wayward loop pays homage to the business character of the neighborhood, it’s car-laden character on Lee, the future Greenway down Bragg, the residential of the ‘Ole Asheboro neighborhood and finishes by touching two points of spiritual loci on Arlington.
The hopscotch enlightens us to the differences of use and serves as a connectors to the thorough fares and districts of the neighborhood telling us a story of past, present, and future. It’s latent function speaks to the notion of travel, and freedom of how close it is to walk or ‘hop’ to theses sectors of activity.
Making the Invisible Visible
In thinking about this project on a larger scale, we approached the hopscotch through the lens of ‘placemaking.’ Placemaking is a term that describes activation of areas — either to liven up and area or magnify things that are already happening there, so that the identity of the place becomes more apparent.
Painting the hopscotch taught us a lot about the different areas in the neighborhood, relationships about who ‘owns’ the sidewalks, how we define public art, and collegiality. Much like the ancient Roman children co-opted the hopscotch and transformed it into a game, the hopscotch in Greensboro was co-opted as a way to find the hidden designs of the city.
On McGee Street, we grappled with the high-speed, cut-through traffic and that whips around the corner up to the stop sign at Elm. Because the hopscotch went down the drain on McGee and shows up across the street there was a concern about people getting injured should they cross over to play on the other side.
Lee Street is a State owned street. We didn’t know it when we initially planned to paint, but we found out on the third day of painting after we had already started. The concern about Lee was that the City of Greensboro didn’t have authority to allow us paint of the sidewalk, and should the State find out, they might power wash it off immediately — they haven’t yet.
On Bragg Street, we met some resistance on the part of the sidewalk that lines the old Daily Bread Flour mill on S. Elm street. Though sidewalks are public domain and the city permits the activity on them, the owner of building wasn’t as excited about the hopscotch the way that other people in the neighborhood were. The day we started painting on that site, there were a series of interactions that guided us to a new route for the hopscotch. We quickly jumped over to the side of Bragg and Elm on the Yellow Taxi cab with the project.
When you paint on sidewalk where it’s public you can’t predict who it will affect or how people will react. Some neighbors are down, others aren’t — that doesn’t make them curmudgeons it’s just illuminating a prerogative.
A place is not defined by one person, but multiple people. It is our responsibility to attend to those prerogatives, to respect differences and work with the people in our neighborhood to make sure everyone is heard.
Final Thoughts
A lot when into making the hopscotch happen. A LOT!
From the commitment of workers who spent 4–6hrs a day painting squares, to the amazing efforts by City Planners to who spent 2 months helping permit and support our efforts, to our neighbors getting on board as well as the efforts of the Elsewhere team documenting, promoting, programming, and helping to facilitate the needs of Agustina to complete the project.
Going forward, we’re much more aware the gravity of each of the South Elm Projects, what they mean for the neighborhood, who they’re for, how to work with each other, and making sure that everyone is being heard.
What started with a simple idea, let’s paint a hopscotch around the neighborhood to liven up the sidewalk and get people to play, turned into a complex meditation on what it means to be a neighbor in South Elm.
Originally published in Elsewhere Tumblr
