The Detroit Steps Project continues making giant strides.
Launched on November 3, 2018, the multi-year and multi-phase community-led beautification project, with an objective of fashioning 186 stairs with either mosaic or colored tiles, has taken another significant step towards its goal with the inauguration of the “2020 Drawing Contest.”
“The contest is to derive imaginative stairway designs that can generate inspiration to an artist retained to move the work forward,” said Suna Mullins, a member of the 12-member DSP Steering Committee. “It has to date already secured 30 entries.”
Sketches of 28 of the proposed designs can be seen on the Facebook page here.
“Submissions of art began November 22 and will culminate on January 3,” Mullins told the Glen Park News on December 8, “so there is nearly a month remaining for creative community members to submit drawings.”
The DSP steering committee has scheduled a vote to select three winners after January 3, through simultaneous venues: Facebook “likes” and balloting via Detroit Steps Google and Sunnyside Neighborhood Association platforms.
The Glen Park News last highlighted the DSP in a story uploaded to its website, www.glenparkassociation.org, on October 24, 2020. There it detailed two weekend work parties responsible for placing log seating adjacent to the Upper Steps that run from Monterey Boulevard to Joost Avenue and hauling mulch next to the steps.
The current endeavor is of an entirely different magnitude, one that assists project leaders in an aesthetic end game, and one that mirrors such stairways as the 16th Avenue tiled steps between Moraga Street and 15th and 16th Avenues and the Tompkins Stairway along Tompkins Avenue in Bernal Heights.
Participation in the “2020 Drawing Contest” is not without minuscule tithing. Each artist had to pony up an entrance fee in order to take part in the competition.
“Given the pandemic, we couldn’t have a step-a-thon fundraiser such as the one we had last year where entrants paid to walk or run up and down the Upper Steps,” explained Mullins, whose children, Patrick and Leyla, will become the youngest Glen Park News newspaper carriers when the quarterly resumes its print edition in March 2021, “so this year we asked adults who submitted designs to pledge $25 and children under 12 to contribute $15.”
“The contest fund raising will allow us to purchase drought-tolerant plants that will adjoin and surround the steps,” she said
While it’s early on yet to determine contest winners, a simple mouse maneuver provides a glimpse of some of the well-earned prizes, which include a $25 Mitchell’s ice cream gift card and 2lbs of homemade Rocky Road candy.
Readers who would like to find out more about the project (and additional prizes) can take the extra step to this link, the brainchild of Joost Avenue’s Taylor Hughes.
