Like so many before him, Brian St. Germain wandered past the Dialogue Project exhibit Thursday and froze.
A quote by Louis Armstrong caught his eye: “There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.”
Ordinary enough for some, but it stopped St. Germain in his tracks.
“Boy, is that true,” the Littleton resident said of the quote. “Especially with a lot of people I know.”
His reaction was typical of those who saw the Dialogue Project, a public art exhibit just off the 16th Street Mall. It showcases nine 5-by-7-foot screens covered with hundreds of quotes from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Emily Dickinson, Mahatma Gandhi and others.
Mike Garibaldi Frick, creator of the exhibit, greeted those who stopped to read. He has traveled to 16 U.S. cities – as big as New York and as small as Flagstaff, Ariz. – routinely watching passers-by stop, approach, read and, at times, discuss the provocative quotes.
“I was just going to work right here,” said Jennifer Nelson of Denver, “and I started reading these sayings. They’re really neat.”
Some quotes are displayed in larger type, while others remain smaller and require readers to move closer. It’s the gimmick that draws viewers – the large quotes grab onlookers’ eyes, they find one that resonates and then they start reading the smaller ones.
“New York was the busiest place we had, by far,” said Frick, a San Franciscan. “But people would come out of the subway, and they’d be trying to go somewhere, but they’d have to stop to read the screens at the same time. … One person said: ‘I have to go to work. I have an appointment. But I have to stop and read this, because it’s so engaging.”‘
While researching the project, Frick found no other artists who had traveled the country alone with a public art show. The exhibit evokes a range of reactions – distraction, intrigue, interest and eventually engagement – while also educating, interacting with and, Frick hopes, inspiring viewers.
“I wanted to create something in public spaces that showed commonalities and brought people together,” Frick said, “while at the same time sparking meaningful conversations.”
Staff writer Scott Lieber can be reached at 303-820-1694 or slieber@denverpost.com.
