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Contact: Michael Geneseo
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You Bring the Dreams; We Bring More Chalk – EXTENDED
“Before I Die…” installation extended in Portland through August due to public enthusiasm
PORTLAND, Maine (JULY 3, 2013)—The Maine Center for Creativity today announced that its installation of the acclaimed Before I Die… interactive public mural will be extended through August 15, due to enthusiastic public response.
Hailed as an art project for those challenged by drawing, Nela Alvarez-Sotomayer, one of the organizers of the Before I Die… wall, explains that “people from all walks of life can participate by writing their hopes and dreams on the wall near Flatbread Company off Commercial Street”.
“It’s wonderful to see how completely Portland and its visitors have embraced this project,” commented Jean Maginnis, executive director of the Maine Center for Creativity. “The overwhelming response speaks to people’s desire to connect and share. We felt it was important to engage that conversation as long as possible.”
Originally slated to be documented and ended on July 7th, due to the public response and interaction with the project, the mural’s sponsors – including Nela Alvarez-Sotomayor of South Portland High School and a member of the Maine Center for Creativity’s Community Art Task Force; Maine Center for Creativity board member Greg Boulos, of CBRE|The Boulos Company; and Bobby Morgan, owner of Flatbread Company in Portland – have decided to extend the installation until the middle of August.
For more information about Portland’s Before I Die…wall, visit www.beforeidie.cc/site/portland-maine/.
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About Maine Center for Creativity
The Maine Center for Creativity (MCC) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) led by a volunteer board of directors. Founded in May 2005, MCC is committed to nurturing innovative companies and people in Maine by developing projects and programs that support the growth of creative industries and the arts. Among its educational and creative projects, MCC is organizing Art All Around™, an international design competition to paint the Sprague Energy tanks in South Portland, the Creative Toolbox Series, Pecha Kucha events in Maine; and the newly formed Community Art Task Force. For more information, please visit http://www.mainecenterforcreativity.org.
Before I Die… is an interactive public art project that invites people to share their hopes and dreams in public space. After artist and urban planner Candy Chang lost someone she loved very much, she painted the wall of an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans with chalkboard paint and stenciled it with a grid of the sentence “Before I die I want to ______.” Passersby can use chalk to write directly on the wall. The project has since spread worldwide and walls have been created by communities in Mexico, the Netherlands, Australia, Kazakhstan, and beyond. The project is about remembering what is important to you, creating a public space for contemplation, and reimagining how our public spaces can better reflect what matters to us as a community and as individuals. For more about Candy Chang http://candychang.com.
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