FHC MINI GRANT
APPLICATION COVER SHEET
Sponsoring Organization:
Name George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida
Address P.O. Box 117007, Library East Rm. 200C
City Gainesville Zip 32608
Federal I.D. Number 59-6002052
Congressional District in which the organization is located # 6

Head of Organization:
Name Dale B. Canelas
Title Director of Libraries

Project Title:
The Concrete Blog: messages on the Wall

Project Director:
Name Stephanie C. Haas
Address Digital Library Center, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of
Florida
City Gainesville Zip 32611-7007
Email address haas@uflib.ufl.edu Phone (352) 846-0129 x 404

Humanities Scholar:
Name Richard Heipp
Address 101 FAC P.O. Box 115801
City Gainesville Zip 32611-5801
Email address heipp(@ufl.edu Phone (352) 392-0201 ext: 239
Organizational affiliation School of Art & Art History, University of Florida

Florida Humanities Council
599 2nd Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Phone 727-873-2011 Fax 727-873-2014 E-Mail: slockwood@flahum.org Website:
www.flahum.org

The Concrete Blog: messages on the wall

Over the years, countless messages painted on the 34th Street wall in Gainesville,
Florida have chronicled the lives of Gainesville's students, full time residents, and the
ebb and tide of local, regional, and national events. Kelley Benham of the St.
Petersburg Times [Through thick and thin... February 24, 2006] wrote about the paint
layers that record "Birthdays, anniversaries, book signing, lectures and keggers.
Declarations of love, lust and retribution. Wins and losses. Political campaigns for
student government parties no one remembers the names of anymore. Proposals for
marriages long dissolved. Outcries against injustices that seemed unforgivable.
Memorials to people whose names are lost to the paint..." Truly, the wall serves as the
concrete blog for the entire community. This project is intended to build a digital
historical record of the wall's ephemeral messages by soliciting from the entire
community of wall painters' images and comments about their wall decorating
endeavors. What motivated them? What twists of fate did they set in motion? This
project is intended to document the changing social and individual concerns of the
Gainesville community over the 50 plus or minus years that the wall has been standing.
This information will be shared with the entire community through the development of an
open access Web site developed and maintained by the Digital Library Center,
University of Florida; a public lecture to be held at the Matheson Museum in May 2007,
and a citizen produced pamphlet containing images and commentary on the wall. A
limited number of these pamphlets will be made available at the lecture, and it will also
be available for downloading from the project web site.

Richard Heipp, an art professor at the University of Florida, will be the humanities
scholar for this project. Heipp is a painter, who also creates large-scale installations and
site-specific public art projects. He has taught painting at the University of Florida for
over 20 years. In the 1980s, the Gainesville Sun interviewed Heipp for an article in
which he discussed the 34th Street wall graffiti as art. His biographical information may
be found at http://www.richardheipp.com/ and
http://www.arts.ufl.edu/art/Personalitv/facultv/bio.asp?PID=155 He will present a public
lecture on the wall at the Matheson Museum in May 2007. Because the target audience
of this project includes the adult general public, local members of the community have
been asked or have voluntarily offered to help solicit and build the digital records of the
wall. Ray Hale, a photography instructor at Santa Fe Community College, will be
conducting class exercises to document the wall paintings during the project. Mark
Dolan, a former photographer at the Sun, who is currently traveling the country creating
a photo story via the web on Backyard BBQ places has volunteered to create audio clips
from different people who have worked on the wall. Lourdes Santamarie, a
photographer and graduate student in Museum Studies, UF; Carla Hotvedt, an
independent Gainesville photojournalist who owns her own photo agency; and Bob
Arndorfer, formerly a feature writer for the Gainesville Sun will select and comment on a
set of the images for the pamphlet. Pennie Delmond will coordinate the distribution of
requests for submittal of digital images and/or photographs of wall painting, and will
organize, document, and prepare analog photographs for scanning. Small digital
images will be accepted through email; larger images will be accepted on CDs. A
submittal form including basic information on the wall painter, date, reason for painting,
etc. will be part of the request package and also available for printing on the project web
site. Barbara Hood, Public Information Officer for UF Libraries, will assist with the
publicity needed. Lisa Auel, Executive Director Matheson Museum, will accession both
digital and paper images into the Matheson Museum collection for permanent storage

and curation on DVD. Additionally, DVDs will be stored at the Digital Library Center
and TIFF images will be sent for permanent archiving at the Florida Digital Archive
maintained by the Florida Center for Library Automation
(http://www.fcla.edu/digitalArchive/). All technical aspects of the project Web site
development, functionality, and maintenance will be done by the Digital Library Center
(DLC), George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.
The PI for the project will be Stephanie C. Haas, Assistant Director of the Digital Library
Center.

BUDGET

The $2,000 FHC funds being requested will be used for the following activities:

Programming of web site functionality and submission template $1,500
Publicity including pamphlets, lecture posters, postcards $ 250
Speaker's fee $ 200
DVD storage for archiving images at Matheson and DLC $ 50
Total $2,000

In-kind contribution provided by the
University of Florida Libraries will include services
related to:
OPS labor for digitization of photographs, $2,600
quality control of images, creation of archival
DVDs of images, metadata creation and/or
enhancement, and web design