The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has announced the selection of two artists who will serve the country’s first statewide artist-in-residence program, embedding artists in the agency and in its work around Washington state.
Artists Kelly Gregory and Mary Welcome will spend a year working within WSDOT, to bring a creative approach to the agency and help with achieving agency goals. Recognized as a tool for pioneering innovative and creative solutions, these two artists are seen as offering assistance in advancing WSDOT goals of inclusion, practical solutions and workforce development. This first-of-its-kind program has been created by ArtPlace American and Transportation for America, a program of Smart Growth America.
“We’re excited to work with Kelly and Mary to find innovative ways to better engage the communities we serve and deliver the best possible transportation projects,” said Roger Millar, WSDOT’s Secretary of Transportation. “They have experience with both rural and urban communities that will help us foster deeper community engagement, build relationships with underrepresented communities, and bring creativity to design challenges.”
About the artists, Mary Welcome is from Palouse, Washington, and as a multidisciplinary cultural worker, she has collaborated to build cooperative environments that encourage civic engagement, radical education, and community progress. Kelly Gregory is an itinerant social architect, based on the Pacific coast, with a practice rooted in socially-engaged work such as affordable housing projects, exhibitions, reimagining spaces of incarceration, democratic public space, and in-depth community-driven research.
The residency will begin in July 2019. For more about this artist team, read a Q & A held between the artists and Transportation for America (click here.) The Artists-in-Residence program is largely funded by a grant from ArtPlace America, with WSDOT providing only in-kind contributions such as work space and staff time with agency workers collaborating on the program. Find out more about what WSDOT is doing on the WSDOT news website (click here.)