Great news for those of us who can’t paint, sculpt or contort our bodies into modern dance pretzel-ish positions: Now, we, too, can make our mark on Atlanta’s wildly creative public arts scene.
OK, so they'll be teeny-weeny marks … But that's the whole point of Tiny Doors ATL's tiny bricks crowdfunding campaign. For as "little" as $25, you can purchase a pint-sized engraved brick to go along with the group's next pint-sized door that's slated to rise proudly — and petitely — in Cabbagetown in December.
Tiny Doors ATL is the somewhat mysterious, insanely clever public art collective that creates doors that stand approximately 10 inches high and turn up in the most unexpected places: Alongside the Beltline opposite Historic Fourth Ward Skatepark. Inset in a graffiti-tagged pillar of the Krog Street Tunnel. Even nestled within the bark of an enormous tree on the PATH Trail near the Carter Center. (The AJC profiled the project's creators and went along on a late-night installation last winter, which you can read here.)
The artistry of the doors has, in turn, inspired others to accessorize doors (usually anonymously) with things like tiny “”delivered” newspapers and little fliers and posters posted on the little bulletin board that’s part of the door outside Inman Park Pet Works.
Each wee door is reflective of its surroundings and different from all the other wee doors. Still, this fundraising campaign promises to produce the most different look yet: A tiny plaza of sorts surrounding the door, where contributors’ names or messages (anything that can be expressed in up to 10 tiny engraved letters), will permanently live on. Of course, you don’t have to stop at buying just one; there are special package deals for multiple brick purchases.
A whimsical twist on the well-known buy-a-brick fundraising technique, the month-long campaign will also help solve a problem that’s arisen from the doors’ unforseen popularity. Like many public art projects, they tend to be uniquely “loved” by the public at times: People hug them while posing for selfies, touch them to make sure they’re real, add their own graffiti or messages to the installations (the skatepark one has been particularly prone to this), etc. Throw in the usual wear and tear of sitting outdoors in all sorts of weather and exhaust fumes and the all-volunteer Tiny Doors ATL crew of artists have had to add tiny maintenance workers to their resumes.
“We spend 10-15 hrs a week maintaining and cleaning the doors and making them photo-ready,” said Tiny Doors ATL director Karen Anderson. “The funds we raise will go toward maintaining and upgrading the (stability of) the doors.”
And they've brought in a, uh, big name to help them promote the campaign. Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls is a friend of Anderson's and a fan of the tiny doors. She wrote the soundtrack music for a delightful new video posted on Facebook that's a sort of one-stop tour of all the existing doors and an overview of the campaign. You can see it here.
As of Friday morning, the campaign had raised nearly 20 percent of its goal. To buy a brick and find out more about the fundraising campaign, go to https://c4atlanta.org/tiny-doors-atl
