It is becoming increasingly difficult to build and maintain community today.  As our cities are sprawling out and eating up the countryside at an ever-alarming rate, we are forced to spend much of our time in cars--driving from home to work to school to the grocery store...What has happened to our sense of "place," our fellowship with neighbors?  Our walking to work or biking to the store?  Our children walking to school?  The distances are too far, and even if they were not, would we want to walk?  All too often the spaces surrounding us are not pedestrian-friendly--we buy our groceries and pick up our dry cleaning at a strip mall...Our schools are ugly brick buildings surrounded by a sprawling parking lot.  Our experiences of place have been increasingly damaged over the last fifty years.  Our places in the public realm have become alienating spaces, used only as corridors to get from one private realm to another.  As a result, we have become strangers to our neighbors.  

What can we, as artists, do to encourage a certain quality of life?  What can we do to encourage community?  We need to recognize how the visual affects us and our surroundings, how we experience a sense of place.  What if we had a local corner grocery that we would amble past our neighbors front porches to get to?  What if the school had its parking lot in the back and a welcoming  perennial garden out front?  We need to transform our public spaces back into places.  This is possible to begin through the visual arts and education, by making students aware of how design principles affect us, and how to use these principles to begin building a sense of community in our cities, towns, and neighborhoods.