Stephen Farley's Favorite Places Project



		About the Artist… Stephen Farley Stephen Farley is a graphic designer, art director, multidisciplinary media- and visual artist from Tucson, Arizona, who creates extensive multifaceted public art projects involving individuals, community and non-profit groups. The Favorite Places Project is part of Farley's work as the biennial national 2002 McKnight Fellow in Interdisciplinary Arts. He is working closely with Minneapolis's Intermedia Arts, whose mission is to be "a catalyst that builds understanding among people through art."
What is a favorite place? The intimate component The public component About the artists The host site Funders and partners Home page Entire contents copyright © 2002 by Stephen Farley. All rights reserved.
			Farley is committed to the sharing of personal stories among the broader community, and has consequently been involved in teaching art, design and computer skills to young people of diverse backgrounds while collaboratively producing a series of publications exploring the social and personal histories of local neighborhoods. In 1999 he founded a nonprofit called Voices: Community Stories Past & Present, which runs afterschool programs which employ at-risk youth to interview Tucson residents and publish books and magazines of community stories and photographs.
Farley is also known for his large -scale photographic glazed tile murals, created using a process he invented. His largest tilework to date is 1999's 4075-square-foot "Windows to the Past, Gateway to the Future," (pictured above) which is situated along a major traffic thoroughfare in downtown Tucson. This work features 18-foot-high historic street photographs of Tucson residents donated by their families for the project. Farley subsequently published a book called Snapped on the Street (pictured at right) which documents the oral histories and photos discovered in creating this mural, and which has sold over 4,000 copies so far.
	In 2000, Farley spent four months working in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, with a group of local teenagers to produce a publication exploring the history and renaissance of their community. This was a residency sponsored by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation with the NEA and the White House Millennium Council as part of the national Artists & Communities program which placed one community artist in each state during the year 2000. In 2001, the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona commissioned him to do a series of tilework honoring the people and organization served by the Foundation. At left is Hae-Ryoung Lee of the Philharmonia Orchestra of Tucson next to a tilework of herself in a part of this project. In 2002, along with his work as McKnight Fellow, he will be spending two months as artist-in-residence for the Cuyahoga National Park, just south of Cleveland, and will help develop the curriculum for an ongoing arts program in National Parks nationwide.