Last fall I came up with the idea to create, through my oil paintings, a body of work that weaves the individual together with the community, evolving as it is shown. Popping up in public spaces: parks and bike paths and in communities such as nursing homes, prisons, low income housing areas, schools, factories, farm fields, and more. Gathering stories from the people at each location, then painting these- continually adding new segments to create an ever-changing  contemporary collective story. I shared this concept with my friend and fellow artist James Jenkins and he engineered and built an amazing carousel large enough to carry my 6' x 6' paintings. 

The Name

r/evovling circus = Our Evolving Circus .The carousel's bright, whimsical and engaging paintings are meant to stand out against the ordinary and not only bring art to the people but activate the creative spirit in all of us.

r/evolve

 As the circus r/evolves I am inviting viewers to submit an image of their cherished object along with a description of why it is meaningful to them. I will then select from these and continually create new paintings to panel the carousel. 

re/joice… and disappointment

Our trial run went well. We had an enthusiastic and supportive home town crowd. Shortly after this I was headed to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to unveil the carousel for its world premier. Unfortunately, the complexity involved in setup was to great and I had to face the real disappointment of failure.

re/think

The next time I set up, Jim was at my side. We constructed the carousel at the local high school and set up time ran close to 6 hours. This experience helped us both see that the carousel's scale was too large to meet its goal of being easy to display.

re/design

We decided that in order to make the structure quicker to assemble and more mobile that it needed to be half the scale and powered by human energy(and bicycle) instead of an electric motor. 

Thank you! Your support is vital to bringing this free, joyful, interactive art installation to the public. 

More paintings and news about r/evolving circus gretabell.com

Carousel Maker James G. Jenkins jenkinsarts.com

Graphic Design created by Flo Kat

Website provided by Start Interaction

Stretch Goal- $5,000

Why am I stretching the goal? Kickstarter is an all or nothing platform that allows you to raise money beyond your goal and I needed $3,000 as a bare minimum to pay for my rewards, pay 10%to Amazon and Kickstarter and to pay for the redesign and retrofit of the current carousel. The show will go on but to accomplish all of the goals below by the summer of 2013 I will need to raise more money.  Thank you for your support!

Carousel redesign and reconstruction
Purchase or build a bike cart to pull the circus
Retrofitting or replacing my bike with a Folding Bike
Materials for new paintings
Promotional materials
Canopy to protect from foul weather
Colorful, bike safe Ringmaster costume
A custom made hand cranked musical device with spinning speakers

Great r/ewards

A set of 10 postcards- all of original paintings
Posters featuring treasured objects(see below)
Commissioned  artwork—18"x24" paintings
The original and iconic Carousel Horse oil painting 62"x56"

New Pledge level… BIKE SNOB NYC

To thank Bike Snob NYC for all of the project views I'm adding a new pledge level of $65. At this level you will receive a 12x18 poster of an original painting of the crappy mix tape submitted by Bike Snob NYC. If the backer limit is reached at this level I will send the original painting to Bike Snob after the r/evolving circus completes its summer tour in 2013.