Pennsylvania winters can seem to drag on in a depressingly endless stretch of cold, grey days and nights, so when the first flower buds start to poke up through the ground, they often bring a sense of joy and hope that spring is really coming.
That is a feeling that Alex Russell hopes to evoke with her new community arts project, “Buds!”
Russell, a Penn State visual arts graduate student, is embarking on the project with the help of funds from a $1,000 3 Dots Awesome Foundation grant. With the assistance of some other Penn State art students, Russell is making paper mâché sculptures designed to look like plant buds, which she refers to as “little gift-giving hubs.”
The sculptures range in size from 12 inches to 20 inches tall. They’re colorfully decorated with sand, paint, and mirrored mosaic, and include a removable lid so that small items can be placed inside.
Russell hopes people will sign up online to be “bud hosts,” responsible for placing small gifts inside a bud and placing it in a public space where it can be found. The rules are rather loose, although each bud will come with a small sign that prods the finder to open the bud to receive or give a gift.
“It’s kind of like the ‘Give a penny, take a penny’ concept,” she said.
“Ideally, people will be giving and receiving gifts from them organically. It’s whatever the host and their neighbors decide to make it.”
Bud hosts will display the buds at their Centre County home or business for several weeks until March 28, when Russell hopes the hosts will join her in a walk from downtown State College to Zoller Gallery on the University Park campus. There, the buds will be displayed until April 1 as part of Russell’s thesis show. Afterward, Russell will return the buds to the hosts to be used however the hosts may wish.
“The main thing is to create unexpected joy, really, for anyone. I think the sculptures themselves are a little colorful and odd, so I think their presence alone can create those moments, something like going on a walk and finding things blooming and it feels like a gift,” she said.
“I’m hoping when people open them up and find something like a little note or something inside, it reminds people that other people are open to giving gifts and sharing, and I think that’s really special.”
Anyone interested in becoming a bud host can sign up via a link through the 3 Dots website:
Russell invites people to post photos on social media of the buds and the gifts as they come across them, using #CentreCountyBuds as the hashtag.
This story appears in the March 10-16 edition of the Centre County Gazette.
