The design for the fence has two major themes: 1) to reflect the colorful heritage of the Baltimore Arabber cart tradition and 2) to complement and play off of the fruit trees planted in the greened area.
Baltimore Arrabbers are street cart vendors local to the east coast. Arrabbing is predominantly a male, African American tradition of selling fruit out of a horse-drawn wagon. On Bruce Street we are lucky enough to have one of the oldest Arabber barns in Baltimore! With this design, I wanted to draw attention to the horses and create a space for them to roam. The entrances of the fence feature two horse-drawn wagons with fruit spilling out over the top of them. The fruit then continues to enlarge, and pears, apples and cherries cascade down the rest of the fence. On the back, a different assemblage of fruits are painted directly onto the fence. To make the fence into a more solid structure I also added more boards to the back. This made the fence into a wall-like structure and made it easy to transform the fence into a mural.
For my senior thesis studio, I made a 3D model of the entire fence out of basswood. To explain the process, I took images of just the middle section of the fence through the different transitions.
NOTE: This does not include the cut-out pieces that will be on the front of the fence.
Here is a picture of a Baltimore Arabber. They are hardly seen in the streets anymore because many of their barns have been shut down. Many cities have made them illegal, but Baltimore is one of the last cities to hold onto this tradition.
