Deirdre Robb’s wishing tree installations are designed to provide a platform for the individual and community voice. She seeks to counter negativity and through a visual creative energy, celebrates the best of the community aiming to create debate and a platform for discussion. This is a text-based project that allows the participants to create three wishes, one for themselves, one for a loved one and the last one for their community. Robb stimulates participants to explore identity, encourages them to celebrate their community and inspires the individual to look to a positive future. She then creates outdoor interventions in parks, shopping centres, abandoned sites and various outdoor settings.
Wish Garden in Orangefield Park part of the Eastside Arts Festival
FREE CITY PUBLIC ART FESTIVAL
Robb was invited to participate in Free City Flint Public Art. Free City was a large-scale public art festival that temporarily reclaimed the former Flint-Chevy manufacturing site along the Flint River for public use. In 2013, more than 75 artists and organizations from the city, the region, and the country participated, including more than 20 from Flint, a dozen from southeast Michigan and the Great Lakes region, as well as international artists from Germany, Ireland, and Poland. The event attracted thousands of visitors from the region to activate the sprawling city-owned landscape at the curve of the Flint River. The art festival took place in an abandoned site that was previously the car plant that made Chevrolet’s in Flint Michigan. Robb created 2 installations ‘Art Flag Bunting” and ‘Wish Tree” in response relate to the post-industrial changes experienced in a community when industry collapses without replacement jobs and limited support to the community.
Hewitt in the Frame
Deirdre Robb 