Well, at long last, someone has found a good use for old phone booths*. Botanical designer Lewis Miller ambushed the streets of New York City recently to adorn an otherwise ordinary corner in swaths of floral color and energy. A few years ago Miller transformed the notoriously banal empty garbage cans into vases of sumptuous flowers. In this most recent endeavor to make a gritty urban area appear palatable – a project he dubs “Flower Flash” – Miller and his crew filled a Manhattan telephone booth with a plethora of flowers and greenery.
“What initially began as a Lewis Miller design experiment to reinvigorate and reconnect us to our craft, turned into a beautiful shared experience in a city of millions,” the group stated. The “reactions to our flower flashes emphasizes the basic goodness in all people and prioritizes compassion”.
The results are more than a little impressive, and I feel we need more of Lewis Miller’s works in our increasingly crowded and convoluted world.
*To the under-30 crowd, phone booths are tall glass structures where people would have to make phone calls if they weren’t at home, at work or in jail. You’d put a quarter into a little slot towards the bottom of the actual phone; wipe the receiver as best you could so you wouldn’t catch germs like herpes or gingivitis; and press little buttons on said phone to make the call.
They were also where Superman used to change into his costume from his Clark Kent suit and Maxwell Smart used one to get into Control HQ.
Ah, yes! How could I forget? Clark Kent and I had so much in common: we both liked to enter phone booths and take off our clothes, then run around in red tights. But that, of course, is another story I’ll have to share later. Or maybe not.
Yeah, I’m not sure just cleaning the receiver may not have been enough…