House of Trees arts collective is dedicated to the transformative effects of contemporary art through the creation and production of dynamic, site-specific, public art projects. Each project incorporates a variety of artistic practices, including installation, textile art, sculpture, video, and performance art, among others. House of Trees seeks to create work that is part of our personal and political conversations nationwide and internationally, bringing together artists and institutions to collectively explore and expose deeper ways of connecting through artmaking.

"We originally created the project Word on the Street as a series of protest banners used in the Women's March 2017, responding to the tumultuous political climate. We use the form of the protest banner as a platform for poetic language and imagery that exists both as an institutional art and a resistance object in the streets. We are working to collapse space between the institution and the street, breaking down the invisible societal wall between politics and art. This project in Times Square was a chance to challenge commercial culture with its own weapons, through co-opting public advertising space to install the imagery and language of resistance. We are waking up to the truth that all expression, choice, action or lack of action is an act of politics."

- House of Trees

For Word on the Street [Spring Edition], renowned female artists and writers collaborate to put artistry into action, addressing urgent political concerns using poetic banners and signage. Each original artwork is fabricated in felt in collaboration with female refugees based in Texas, then photographed and printed for outdoor installation on street-pole banners and “Bigbelly” solar-powered receptacles in Times Square. The signs constitute a series of poetic, political works that speak directly to the moment. Because the banners across all iterations of the project are made at different times, they take on an archival quality, responding to and capturing their own particular political junctures.

"Thoughts, fleeting and fragmentary - slogans, catch-phrases and images give us pause, prompt us to think (differently), re-frame the moment. These banners raise questions, entertain, provoke, they ask those passing by to engage, to respond, to stay active."

- A.M. Homes

The project's deployment throughout Times Square seeks to create a network of visually disseminated texts that help articulate, support, and empower positive responses to the ever-changing social and political landscape.

“It’s important to sum things up sometimes.
And it’s hard to do that succinctly - to create
something challenging using very few words.
And it’s easy to fall into the style of ads and
slogans that only ask you to agree with them.

The banner project is an ambitious program that will hopefully
inspire the people who just happen to pass by and look up.”

- Laurie Anderson

Word on the Street [Spring Edition] is part of a yearlong collaboration between Times Square Arts and House of Trees, and a larger Word on the Street project with recent iterations at Socrates Sculpture Park and The Watermill Center. From August 2017 to February 2018, the Word on the Street {Fall Edition] exhibited works in Times Square by Anne Carson + Amy Khoshbin, Carrie Mae Weems, and Wangechi Mutu. Other events in the series include opportunities for public participation - Workshop on the Street and Workshop on the Street: May Day - and an artist talk - Artists Take the Street! – featuring Tania Bruguera, A.M. Homes and Amy Khoshbin.

In association with Times Square Arts and House of Trees, Word on the Street at The Watermill Center will be the first viewing of all original refugee-fabricated banners by Word on the Stre et collaborators. The exhibition will open during the Hampton Arts Network's inaugural THAW Fest March 23^rd - 25^th and remain on view through April 17^th, 2018; and will feature performances by Inga Maren Otto Fellows Anne Carson and Tania Bruguera, as well as a banner-making workshop led by House of Trees.

"Given the times in which we live it is important that institutions stand up and support one another, ultimately to collaborate with individuals who are not afraid to speak truth to power, not afraid to fight for themselves or others that has been mistreated, oppressed, marginalized, or forgotten. The artists, refugees and producers collaborating on Word on the Street are the voices we should be listening to as a way forward, especially at this moment."

- Noah Khoshbin, Curator, The Watermill Center