Public art is the glue that hold The Green Chair Project together. This is a participatory public art that literally involves every aspect of working with and for community. While it appears that more hours are spent on non-arts programming than in arts related activities, all activities are focused on the youth-run workshop and the building of our chairs. Our workshop provides an opportunity to use the art and craft of hand-building as a vehicle for arts education, civic learning and participation, and for developing for craftsmanship and job skills. Our crew members also gain experience in the board range of skills required by the field of public art and social entrepreneurship.

Green chairs, we have learned, can be interpreted on many levels. Of course they help us to relax. They also suggest reading, writing and conversation-humanities based notions. The word "chair" also connotes representation, such as chair of the board. Indeed, "chair" can represent a group of people. In our democracy, we are served by representatives who sit in chairs in city halls, at the state capitals and in Washington, DC In the past years, GCP has employed these themes is various installations and special activities on the local, state and national scale, which culminated with the Washington Monument Installation in the Fall of 1996. The event generated international exposure for GCP and offered our teen crew the opportunity to learn more on how government works and to meet their US Representatives.

Public Art as the end of the millennium is as much about dialogue that occurs among those engaged in a project as it is about any finished product. The process often resembles theater, in which individuals assume roles and responsibilities with a common goal in mind. Planning, negotiating and navigating bureaucracy is critical. Whiles these complexities can confound and discourage newcomers, public art efforts can reap many rewards and give meaning to art that reaches the hearts and minds of people where they live, work and create.

We need artists to help us memorialize, to beautify, to address problems, to serve communities and to manifest ideas. We need artists to alert us to issues, investigate phenomena, to make us smile, to engage the young, to teach us lessons, to shape identity and to bring individual, creative perspectives to the world we live in. The Green Chair Project is a good beginning.