Castle Rock, Washington, takes beautification seriously. This storage lot sits smack dab in the middle of their beautiful downtown. This is how it looked before they turned it into an art gallery. Photo by Nancy Chennault.
You’ve seen it before: a chain link fence right in the middle of a downtown. Usually there’s barbed wire at the top. Let’s face it, barbed wire is not the friendliest look for a downtown. We can do better.
Why chain link in the first place?
When a business ends up with an empty lot they can use for storage downtown, there’s a strong drive to fence it off and protect their goods. Chain link topped with barbed wire is cheap and easy.
Businesses still need to store things. No one wants to spend a lot of money to replace the fence with something friendlier. Heck, we don’t even want to spend money at all if we can avoid it.
How could you make it look better?
A whole group of us brainstormed some ideas for you:
- Add colorful slats in rainbow patterns, waves, words or logos
- Frame art and hang it from the chain link, inside or outside
- Hang twinkle lights from the fence and barbed wire
- Twist wire foil tinsel garland around the barbed wire
- Hang whirly gigs or streamers to dance in the wind
- Set up a sculpture display in front of the fence (most fences are usually set back from the property line) or just behind the fence
- Create cut-out art to hang on the fence
- Hang some wayfinding signs to direct people to cool things around town
The Boise, Idaho, water reclamation plant features this chain link fence mural. The colors are little cups designed to pop right into the chain link spaces. Photo by Becky McCray.
The Stream of Dreams “mural” made up of individual painted fish shapes dresses up the fence alongside the school buildings in Castle Rock, Washington. Learn more about Stream of Dreams. Photo by Nancy Chennault.
How Castle Rock, Washington, made chain link fences into art galleries
When I visited Castle Rock, I pointed out the storage lot next the hardware store that in the photo at the top of this story. It’s not going to go away, so why not use it to hang art? Turns out they already had some kids’ art hanging on chain link fences, just around the corner in a less-visible place. So they moved it and added a big way-finding arrow to point out nearby attractions.
Originally, the art squares were hanging in a hard-to-find location. See those slats in the fence? You could easily use slats to be more artistic with rainbow patterns or logos. Photo by Becky McCray.
The students helped move their artwork to the highly-visible location downtown. Photo by Nancy Chennault.
The art now includes a big arrow to point folks to the nearby wildlife pond and the old jail park. You hardly notice the fence or wire at all now. Photo by Nancy Chennault.
Have you seen any good chain link art?
I’d love to see photos of dressed-up chain link fences you’ve seen anywhere. Share the ideas so we can inspire even more small towns to more beautiful fences.
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
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Hi Janice, I like the idea of using chain link for billboards, especially if they’re artistic and add rather than detract from the downtown. I’ve left your ad in your comment for now, but I hope you’ll be more conversation-minded in future comments and less advertising heavy. Welcome!