Let it GO! tulip planting
by Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris

Let it GO! grew from many hundreds of tulip bulbs planted in November 2022 to form letters up to 15 feet high. The expression “Let it GO!” came from the diary of Michelle Ewing, a Cincinnati resident who had survived trauma and came to Wave Pool through the Owning Your Own Voice program, which focuses on story-sharing as a way of healing and connecting.

It seemed that Michelle’s “Let it GO!” captured the dream we all share, to put all our troubles and mistakes behind us and move on. For emphasis, and perhaps out of sheer exhilaration, Michelle had made Let it GO! into an image, filling in and outlining the letters in different colors and dotting the “i” with a red heart. Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris reproduced Michelle’s image using different colored tulips and outlined all the letters in white and pink. They used the darkest purple tulips they could find to reproduce the exclamation mark that Michelle had filled in with black marker.

The planting site was adjacent to the Camp Washington access to the Hopple Street entrance and exit ramps to I-75. When the Hopple Bridge was rebuilt in 2015 a lot of rubble was strewn across the site that had to be excavated to remove hundreds of rocks, the largest of which were later used to form a low wall around the flowers. As a reliable bloomer in a wide range of brilliant colors, tulips were a natural choice for Michelle’s text. When all the flowers were blooming the effect was intensely enjoyable.

The project culminated with a Cincinnati’s Table event that was the start of the Welcoming Handbook project, becoming a new beginning for exchange and transformation as our community welcomed spring and welcomed each other.

As part of the event Michelle presented at the dinner and was moved by this transformation of her words into hallucinatory color.

This installation was funded by an Arts Partnership Grant from the Ohio Arts Council