A collaborative public art non-profit organization in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Project Highlight: New Iconic Signs
In 2024, ten artists participated in two design charrettes titled New Iconic Signs, in support of our ongoing project Signal and Turn. When the opportunity presented itself for a third charrette, five additional artists created designs for potential future signs. Through this collaboration, we have transformed 5 signs across Albuquerque into iconic, neighborhood landmarks.
Since 2010 FOS has worked to preserve relics of past roadside culture, as many orphan signs—signs on empty lots or unused by the current occupants—are deemed unworthy of restoration.
Friends of the Orphan Signs (FOS) brings together artist-educators and community members to creatively and collaboratively revitalize abandoned or unused road signs with artwork and poetry.
Keywords / Sara Rivera, 2020.
Day and Night / D’Ali, 2022.
Keywords was a text-based art project mounted on the reader board of the former Caravan East road sign at the site of the new Albuquerque International District Public Library, with text generated in community poetry workshops. In 2022, artist D’Ali photographed the International District community for the upper panels of the sign.
Sundowner Sign / New Life Homes Residents, with Ellen Babcock, Jeremy Carlson, Lance Ryan McGoldrick, and Christine Posner, 2015-19. To Reach the Seventh Mountain, Call 747-298-8777 / Erin Fussell, 2023.
Trans is Sacred / Pico del Hierro-Villa, with student assistant Maya Howard. Revision 2023 project. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Slant/Desvío: Better, Better, Better / Sara Rivera, 2023. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts with support from ARRIVE by Palisociety.
Intimacy, Chime, Sublime / Ameerah Bad'r with student assistant Sebastian Miranda, Revision 2023 project. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
