Natick Report

More than you really want to know about Natick, Mass.

“What’s in Your Heart” outdoor art installation is beating in Natick Center

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If you want to learn what’s most important to your neighbors, visit the just-installed “What’s in Your Heart” outdoor art exhibit located at the chain link fence surrounding the property at One South Main St. (That’s the lot that has been empty since a July 2019 fire gutted a handful of businesses.)

What's In Your Heart? Natick art

Organizer Denise Girardin, assisted by Jo LaFalce, brought the project to life. They and over a dozen volunteers  asked everyone from school kids to Community Center visitors to Morse Institute library patrons the burning question: “What’s in Your Heart?”

1,910 people fell in love with the idea, painting 2,087 4 x 4″ wooden hearts with the distilled version of what was most important to them. Volunteers—let’s title them Keepers of the Sentiments— have taken seriously their job of securing hearts to fence, delaying the installation until the weather was cooperative. Each wooden heart has been treated with tenderness and mercy to ensure that not a single one is broken. If only our fragile human hearts received such loving care.

What's In Your Heart? Natick art

The Natick Center Cultural District served as a fiscal agent for the project so that donations could be made as charitable tax deductible contributions. Local businesses, organizations, and individuals generously provided donations for materials, and created hearts of their own for this civic-minded project.

Keep reading to find out what’s in the hearts of your neighbors. For thousands more sentiments, visit the fence.

What's In Your Heart? Natick art

 

What's In Your Heart? Natick art

 

What's In Your Heart? Natick art

 

What's In Your Heart? Natick art

 

What's In Your Heart? Natick art

Feel more of the Natick love

So what’s with that empty lot, anyway?

Natick’s most prominent undeveloped space, the fenced off 1 South Main St. plot resulting from the 2019 fire that razed a handful of businesses, could start returning to life by May or June. When they do, they should thank Denise Girardin and Jo LaFalce for the hours of clean-up work they did on the site ahead of the “What’s in Your Heart” installation. Read more in Natick Report’s December 2022 update post about the property.

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Brown School in Natick has a new mural created in colorful collaboration

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The appearance of Brown Elementary School‘s humble cinderblock-walled lobby recently underwent an dramatic transformation from functional-but-boring to wow, thanks to the creative skills of artist-in-resident Joe Pimentel, along with a community partnership between the school’s PTO, the Natick Education Foundation, and the Natick Cultural Council.

Add the enthusiasm of Brown’s 450+ kindergarten through 4th-grade students and the wider school community, mix in the organizational skills of visual arts educator Michelle Parven, and the results speak for themselves. Brown School now has a welcoming, vibrant, colorful mural, one that incorporated student voice and design ownership during every step of the process.

Brown School mural, Natick

Parven found Pimentel on Instagram and was immediately impressed with his extensive experience working on similar projects. When a school partners with Pimentel on a project, the kids are fully involved from the idea phase through project completion, when it’s all hands on deck to help with the actual painting. “In October, students had a meeting over Zoom with him and then generated drawings on our theme, ‘Our School Community,'” Parven said in an email exchange with Natick Report. “He sent drafts of the design to me, and working with Brown School administrators, we made edits to come up with a final version.”

Brown School mural, Natick

In March Pimentel traveled from his home in the bucolic Hudson Valley area of New York to spend a week making the Brown students’ vision come to life.  “The students submitted over 300 drawings based on what makes their school community special,” he said. “I then took their drawings and connected them with my center mandala and patterns to make it a full collaboration. One of the main things I like to get across is to be determined on making your day dreams come true and follow your passion.”

The project was kept very much under wraps until completion, but now that pics are all over social media, we get to join in on the excitement. Enjoy these great visuals. (All photos courtesy of artist Joe Pimentel.)

Brown School mural, Natick

 

Brown School mural, Natick

 

Brown School mural, Natick

 

The life of a traveling artist

After a few weeks at home, Pimentel will be on to his next installation, this time at Poughkeepsie High School in New York.

The Parsons School of Design graduate in 2010 took part in an artist-in-residency program in Bali, Indonesia for 3 months under the direction of artist Dewa Nyoman Batuan, who specialized in Mandala paintings. The experience of Balinese culture, coupled with the teachings of an artist who had truly mastered his craft, created a life-changing impact on Pimental’s process. Several years later he established his own business, Pimentel Murals, and built a following by first completing projects locally and then extending to other areas in New York, New Jersey and Long Island. He has completed over 100 murals to date with a wide range of themes, styles, and various degrees of involvement from students from 1st through 12th grade.

Natick’s Free Little Art Gallery coming back outside

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Natick’s Free Little Art Gallery will reopen this Sunday, April 2 at 10am outside of Morse Institute Library’s entrance.  The volunteer-run art library, which allows you to take or leave items, originally opened in August 2021 as a place for artists of all ages to share their creativity, though closed this past December to protect the structure from winter weather and to make needed updates.

According to Free Little Art Gallery’s Ginger McEachern, the biggest change to the library is that “it now boasts an oak hardwood floor compliments of the builder of the gallery and my husband, Paul McEachern. Also, artists have been creating art for the gallery during this 3-month hiatus, so there will be new work and it will be plentiful!”

Morse Institute, Natick, Little Free Art Gallery

Filed Under: Art

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Hearts to the rescue in Natick Center

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The “What’s in Your Heart?” public art project, in which the public is painting meaningful messages on small red wooden hearts, will soon be installed on the chain link fence surrounding the property at One South Main St. That’s where a July 2019 fire gutted a handful of businesses.

one south main

 

I’d coincidentally reached out earlier this week to the team that’s developing that site into The Block, a retail and art studio project that will eventually rise in the space (the last we heard about the project at a public meeting, there was talk of a potential mid-2023 ground breaking). I’d just wanted to let them know that the site was looking particularly forlorn, with the black and designer coverings on the fence now torn, gone, or dangling in the wind. This space was particularly visible on Saturday mornings while candidates for town office and their supporters stood at the intersection of Rtes. 135 and 27 with campaign signs.

A member of The Block team did get back to us quickly and said she would bring the issue to others’ attention this week.

As it turns out, attention had already been recieved, with First Cambridge Realty agreeing to the art installation.

The “What’s in Your Heart?” public art project is being installed on Sunday, April 2 (originally scheduled for Saturday, but postponed due to unfriendly weather forecast).

Oh, and we snuck in a couple of hearts ourselves at the last minute.

What's in Your Heart

Filed Under: Art

Art opening reception at Bacon Free Library

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From Bacon Free Library (58 Eliot St., Natick):

Lisa Hayden, a contemporary artist from Northborough, will be exhibiting a collection of paintings from March 3 to May 2 at the Bacon Free Library. With an abstracted take on the natural world and a strong love of the ocean, she brings the outdoors inside through art. Join us on March 7 from 5-6:30pm for an opening reception, which is free and open to the public. Learn more about Lisa Hayden at her website.