Playful Public Art Comes to Downtown

Did you notice something new on Broadway? The first utility box in the art project has made its debut featuring a fun and colorful design by Crystal Nguyen, a research assistant in child development and community health at UCSD. If you want to paint a box, too, there’s still time to apply.

Nguyen, 28, lives in City Heights and used to work in the Lemon Grove School District teaching nutrition education through a classroom program in the elementary schools. She learned about the project on the school district’s website.

“My heart’s still in Lemon Grove—I still check up on them,” Nguyen said.

For her winning design, she reworked some characters based on Brussels sprouts that she had drawn for a project that fell through.

“I transformed the Brussels sprouts into lemons and just kind of rolled with it,” she said. A co-worker, Laura Terrones, and a sister, Christiana Nguyen, helped her with the painting.

Nguyen said community reaction to the work was “really great.”

“People would drive by and shout out ‘Great job!’ or ‘We love it!’” she said.

Located in front of the store on Broadway, the newly finished utility box brings together the city’s citrus symbol with the project’s theme of healthier living. On different sides of the box lemons play football, walk a little lemon dog, and dance ballet.

Sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Lemon Grove and San Diego, the project called on artists and others in the community to contribute ideas using the theme “Living Well in Lemon Grove” to transform utility boxes in the downtown business district into local works of art.

To prepare for the winning designs to be painted on the utility boxes, Rotarians spent a long, hot morning scrubbing, sanding and painting more than 20 of the fixtures with a primer coat. That effort was part of , a worldwide day of hands-on service held by the organization each year on the last Saturday in April.

Would you like to paint a utility box as part of the project? Submissions will be taken through the end of May. The application can be downloaded from the Lemon Grove School District website, which also explains all the rules. Artists will be notified within three days of entering their submission.