CINCINNATI — In her neighborhood, some people now know Kennedy Cantrell as the “paint can lady.”
She tells me this while drilling holes into lids at the headquarters for Keep Cincinnati Beautiful. Cantrell’s been collecting paint cans for the nonprofit’s new BLINK installation.
“This has become part of the job,” Cantrell said. “Just drilling.”
WATCH: See how paint cans turn into art at BLINK
She laughs and tells me some of the paint cans are older than she is. Then, she hangs one up on a tree. Cantrell has only worked here for about a year. Katie Davis has been collecting paint cans for 15 years.
“They stack so nicely,” said Davis, an arts program director for the group. “We always knew they were destined for greatness.”
The organization has a lot of paint cans because volunteers there regularly paint vacant properties to try to make our neighborhoods better places to live. And for a festival that draws more than 2 million people, Keep Cincinnati Beautiful is transforming those paint cans into benches and trees.
They'll light up, of course. Because they're using around 1,700 paint cans.
Davis smiles and tells me I can sit on them.
“It might seem a little scary to sit on a wall of paint cans, but it works,” Davis said. “I laid on it to just to see."
Near Cincinnati's Black Music Walk of Fame, Leslie Mooney laughs. She’s the vice president and executive director of BLINK. I’d asked her if it was possible to describe how much work goes into the festival.
Still smiling, she begins to try. She discusses the Coast Guard and then the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and even Times Square in New York. She talks for more than two minutes straight and then laughs again.
“That’s not a very succinct answer,” Mooney said. “But it gives maybe a little glimpse into why — frankly — BLINK happens every two years instead of every year.”
Because she tells me the No. 1 question she gets from people is: How do you do it?
The answer for the nonprofit Keep Cincinnati Beautiful is using supplies others might throw away.
“Somebody’s trash literally is somebody else’s treasure,” said Claire Bryson, an arts program director for the organization. “But you can transform it into something amazing.”
Want to see it?
During BLINK, the installation described in this story can be found at the corner of Green and Elm streets in Over-the-Rhine.
