Revisiting ZAP 7: Lance Smith

Lance Smith at the Clark County resortation of his ZAP 7 art I Photo: PaintThisDesert

FIELD NOTES: The eradication and recovery of "Our Lady of Maryland Parkway," the ZAP 7 box by artist Lance Smith, changes the meaning of the piece. It is now a marker of a time when artists, and the civic community that enables art, rallied and supported public art when it was challenged.  It also becomes a jumping off point to revisit text I first wrote for Clark County's ZAP 7 site map.  Some will return original words that were edited for space. Others may touch on how the boxes have changed in meaning and representation. 

"Our Lady of Maryland Parkway" before being painted over I Photo: Paint This Desert

REVISITED:  The main set of images on these utility boxes are figures posed in reflection and guidance, a guardian watching over the walkers and drivers along and on Maryland Parkway. The blue-hooded figure, in front of the distant desert mountain range, shows street smart spiritual fellowship on a main road that functions as passage, and a vessel that creates memory of the every day. It was painted within a project designed to bring artist's colors to Maryland Parkway. It was painted over in beige, perhaps, because it represented color.