This weekend marks the annual festivities of Market Square Day, one of the busiest days in downtown Portsmouth all year.  Alongside Market Square Day, Portsmouth’s cultural commission (Art-Speak), sponsors a tradition known as Overnight Art. (Head HERE for more background on Art-Speak and Overnight Art)

Two of this year’s exhibits are “Moose Myth” (shown being constructed by artist above…more to follow this weekend) and “603/207” (shown below)….descriptions are included below the photos.

Moose Myth: “Moose Myth is sapling sculpture created by the artist team, Donna Dodson of Boston, MA and Andy Moerlein of Bow, NH. “I think we are inspired by each other’s works, and really wanted to collaborate to see what would happen,” Moerlein said. They are using Moerlein’s sapling construction method and Dodson’s vocabulary of animal headed human figures to make a 12-foot tall moose headed male figure called Moose Myth. “We want it to be really natural and really organic and look like it just walked right out of the woods,” Dodson said. The Moose Myth represents a bridge between human and animal, wilderness and civilization. This piece will be installed in Market Square.”

603/207: “Carly Glovinski and Matt Wajda of Dover will create 603/207 in the alley between Stonewall Kitchen and North Church (between Pleasant and Church Streets). This installation is meant for public use as a walkway. Collected phonebooks from 603 and 207 area codes will been assembled to achieve the appearance of wood grain through the organization of striated, stacked layers of yellow and white pages. As referential objects that provide users access to a network of people, phonebooks can be considered guidebooks to connectivity. By using 603 and 207 area code phonebooks to build this “wood flooring” surface, this interactive walkway becomes symbolic of the physical joining of two states and the networks of people between them.”