'Call and Response: Radiating Safety' by L'Merchie Frazier
This public art project will complement the newly constructed Fire Station 42 in Roxbury.
This project is in the fabrication phase.
Project details
PROJECT CONTEXT
The City of Boston and the Boston Fire Department demolished and constructed a new fire station at 1870 Columbus Avenue, near Egleston Square. The $19.6 million new Fire Station 42 includes:
- three apparatus bays
- housing for two companies and a district chief
- a training room, training deck, and training stair
- an open and transparent fitness room, day room, and kitchen
- an elevator and three fire poles, and
- a workshop and technical and operations areas.
In 2018, the Office of Arts and Culture released a Call to Artists for public art for the new fire station.
Artist team
In 2019, this commission selected the artist Ralph Helmick for the commission. In May of 2020 Ralph presented a preliminary design to the Boston Art Commission. He then decided to not develop the design any further given the Commission's feedback.
Ralph took some time to explore a number of different potential paths forward for the project, and ultimately established a new structure for the project with artist L'Merchie Frazier serving as the lead artist in a team of four. The project team then began developing a new preliminary design, which was approved by the Boston Art Commission at their October 2022 meeting.
PROJECT SITE
Three potential sites were identified as initial suggestions for the location of the artwork. The artist ultimately chose the facade of the building as the site.
ARTWORK DETAILS
This project has a budget of $300,000 for a site-specific, impactful, focal design feature. The art should enrich the connection between the Boston Fire Department and the surrounding Egleston and Roxbury communities.
Fire Station 42 is the first new Boston fire station in 30 years.
Meet the Artist Team
Meet the Artist Team
L’Merchie Frazier
L’Merchie Frazier visual activist, public historian, educator, artist, innovator, and poet, is the Executive Director of Creative / Strategic Planning for SPOKE Arts and was formerly Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket. Her innovative focus supports social and reparative justice and the quest for civil and human rights through the lens of five hundred years of Black and Indigenous history. She was awarded the Boston Foundation Brother Thomas Fellowship. Her work highlights the reparative aesthetic approach to expand the historical narrative, diminishing erasure, responding to trauma, violence, and crisis through artistic activities and public art that mirrors community. Her work is based on authentic evidence, providing place-based education and interdisciplinary history pedagogy, programs and workshops, projects, and lectures. She delivers diversity, equity, and belonging workshops for corporations and municipalities.
Frazier has served the artistic community for over twenty years as an award-winning national and international visual and performance artist and poet, in one life work “Save Me From My Amnesia”, with residencies in Brazil, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Africa, France, and Cuba. Her works mirror the community. Her artworks are collected by the Smithsonian Institution, the White House, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art. She is a State of Massachusetts Arts Commissioner. She is also a past City of Boston Artist in Residence.
Keena Banda
Project Manager, Fire Station 42 public art project
Keena Banda is a Project Management Consultant where she provides planning, coordination, guidance and oversight to multidisciplinary teams to complete deliverables to the client. Prior to becoming a consultant, she worked as a healthcare professional for twenty years where she managed diverse teams in a variety of client-based services, led process improvement, project design and implementation.
She is especially interested in cross-sectional partnerships between government, not-for profit organizations, and the private sector to deepen the impact. Her work includes project co-design with senior leaders, group facilitation and presentations. One of her cornerstone projects was COVID recovery work with the Mayor’s Health Inequalities Task Force and City of Boston Leadership to produce the Boston Health Equity NOW Plan.
Ben Bruce
CAD Design, Fire Station 42 public art project
Ben works as a designer at RODE Architects. Prior to RODE, Ben obtained his Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Architecture degree with a concentration in Urbanism from Wentworth Institute of Technology in 2015. He has worked in Boston as a designer for the Boston APP/Lab, designLAB architects, and Payette. He is especially interested in how the built environment is impacted by social justice issues, meaningful cultural collaboration, and ecological systems. Ben aspires to utilize his knowledge and experience in this realm to further mission-based projects, and to build socially just housing and other sustainable urban projects.
Ralph Helmick
Contracted Artist, Fire Station 42 public art project
Ralph Helmick earned a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from the University of Michigan, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and received a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts.
Early in his career, Helmick exhibited his work in numerous solo shows, as well as in group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the northeast United States. Since committing himself to public art in the late 1980s, he has completed over forty major civic commissions for interior and exterior settings.
Among his many awards is the CODAaward for Best International Institutional Artwork for the Founders Memorial in Abu Dhabi, a General Services Administration National Design Award for a federal courthouse in East St. Louis, IL, a National Endowment for the Arts / New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous design honors for his public artwork. His commissions have been honored by inclusion in the Public Art Network’s Annual Year in Review eight times.
Aesthetically, Helmick is interested in how referential forms and images can be broken down and subsequently re-formed anew. The approach is often paralleled by a fascination with how small three-dimensional components can collectively create larger sculptures, forging a microcosmic/macrocosmic dynamic.
Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture staff, representatives from Boston Fire Department, and artist team participating in scaling test at Fire Station 42.
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