Hollie Berry works on the installation "Book Flock" in the former Yesterday's building.IF YOU GO• What: Open Spaces Launch Party• When: 7-8 p.m. tour, 8-10:30 p.m. reception, Friday, Oct. 3• Where: Waterhouse Pavilion, 750 Market St.• Admission: Free• Phone: 265-3700
Nineteen art pieces are being installed this week and next week in unoccupied downtown office windows as part of the Open Spaces program facilitated by River City Company to animate empty storefronts between Fourth and Eighth streets.
The pieces will be revealed during a launch party Friday at Waterhouse Pavilion. Guests will be given maps, and they can tour the windows between 7 and 8 p.m. and return to the pavilion for a reception.
Many of the pieces, partially funded with grants from The Lyndhurst Foundation and the Tennessee Arts Commission, are interactive, meaning they come to life as someone walks by or they allow for hands-on activity.
Hollie Berry's piece, "Book Flock," located inside the old Yesterday's restaurant/bar on the first floor of the Ross Hotel on Georgia Avenue, features books suspended from above and, as passersby pass the window, they seem to fly like birds.
Berry normally paints murals and also creates the dew art pieces called "dewdles" at Coolidge Park, and she said this was a chance to do something different. She conceived the piece and her husband, Rudy Elizondo, designed the mechanisms to make them work.
"This is my first installation and my first interactive piece, so there is a large learning curve, but now, especially since I'm partnering with my husband, I can't stop coming up with new ideas," she said.
"We've been very happy to see several of the artists partnering up on projects," said Amy Donahue with River City Company.
Kevin Bate's work, called "Subramanya," is located on Seventh Street and features a large image of a fortune teller with a giant rotating piece representing the passage of time and another moving piece representing the stars.
David Moon, creator of Picnooga.org, a website that celebrates Chattanooga's history through archival photographs, has created "Chattanooga Hist-o-rama" in the display window space of the Miller Building facing Broad Street.
Viewers will be able to manipulate the screens of a 70-inch TV and a 60-inch TV much like they would an iPad or iPhone, using their fingers to expand a photograph or swipe the screen to move on to a new image. A special film on the windows allows for the interaction.
The pieces will be on display for one year, or until the spaces become occupied.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.