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“The Moving City” – sculpture for safe driving. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
At first glance it seems absurd.
What benefit can public art have in the urgent effort to end reckless driving?
But Milwaukee’s first public artist-in-residence, Sarah Davitthas taken a solution-oriented approach with a work she calls “The Moving City”: It is a pickup truck covered in intricately carved traffic cones.
The goal, Davitt told Urban Milwaukee, is not to create “art with a capital C,” but to inspire behavioral change.
The underlying strategy is to meet people where they are. “We want to make sure we’re talking to people, not talking to them,” Davitt said Wednesday morning at a press conference at Red Arrow Park to unveil the rolling sculpture.
The sculpture is intended to be displayed at festivals and other events where city staff can attempt to educate the public about the safety benefits of safer, slower driving.
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Positive behavior messages in three languages (English, Spanish, Hmong) are interspersed with 50 hand-carved images of buildings from Milwaukee and across the city, demonstrating that the problem is not limited to one area.
“Every time I talk about it, I try to remove the word ‘reckless’ from the subject, because ‘reckless’ is an indefinable word,” Davitt said. “It allows you to point the finger at everyone else. It doesn’t allow you to point the finger at yourself and say, ‘What am I doing?'”
The addition of the public artwork does not mean the city is abandoning its enforcement or engineering efforts.
“We know it takes more than just modified roads to combat reckless driving,” said the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works (DPW). Jerrel Kruschke.
The city has made multimillion-dollar street improvements to calm traffic or prevent dangerous, illegal behavior such as passing in the parking lane.
The focus began in late 2021, when Mayor Cavalier Johnson declared reckless driving a public health crisis as its first official act. And efforts were further strengthened when the City Council adopted a Vision Zero strategy to prevent traffic fatalities in 2022.
“We are committed to fighting reckless driving in this city through education, through enforcement, through technology and through creative solutions like ‘The Moving City,'” Johnson said.
On the enforcement side, this included increasing fines and penalties for violations, civil prosecution of repeat offenders, and advocating for state-level legislative changes to allow red-light cameras and increasing the number of police officers through Act 12.
“I have always been very consistent and have said it very clearly: If someone causes death, suffering and destruction, a price must be paid,” said the mayor.
On the education side, an education campaign called “Speeding, We Can Live Without It” was launched earlier this summer. Johnson said the city is working to expand its education efforts to connect youth with programs designed to prevent violence. A proposal to lower speed limits on some streets is also before the DPW.
And now there is public art.
“The goal of ‘The Moving City’ is to get the public’s attention,” Kruschke said. “This is just another tool we now have at our disposal to combat reckless driving, and we will use every tool at our disposal to stop this epidemic.”
Davitt was hired by the Milwaukee Arts Board, a citizen-led committee, in March 2023. She told Urban Milwaukee that she spent the first few months researching the topic and then looking at possible materials.
This included a visit to Lakeside Plastics in Oshkosh, where they saw how traffic cones are made. The company ended up donating about $5,000 worth of materials. Davitt, who is trained as a printmaker, was able to learn how to carve the cones and make pieces out of them. At night, the piece can be backlit to highlight certain aspects.
Members of the Milwaukee Makerspace and city staff helped create the piece.
The total cost of the project was $88,000, according to a city official, which included funding for Davitt and an employee, as well as materials and subcontractors.
Funding came from the Arts Committee’s annual budget appropriations. An annual allocation of $25,000 for new art was combined with unspent funds for the restoration of artwork from previous years. The Greater Milwaukee Foundation contributed $20,000 to support the employee connection.
The drivable truck was an unclaimed vehicle at the municipal towing yard that was to be auctioned off.
“We are delighted with the result of the ‘The Moving City’ project,” said the member of the art committee Tina Klose.
Council members also joined the speakers at the press conference Jonathan Brostoff And Sharlen P. Moore, Vision Zero Administrator Jessica Weinberg and a handful of members of the art committee.
You can track where “The Moving City” will be on display next by visiting the city’s Vision Zero website. It will be on display Wednesday night at Vel R. Phillips Plaza, just outside the Milwaukee Night Market.
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