BELLEVUE, Ky. — We see a lot of vacant lots in and around both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, but what should we do with them?
WCPO has actually heard from viewers who say these unsightly spaces need some serious love.
Now, a local painter said she has the solution and it all starts with a single seed.
"I just was obsessed with the idea of creating artwork that was alive," painter Devan Horton said.
Horton is an artist focused on sustainability. The empty lot is her canvas and her paints — carried around in containers — used to house contact lenses.
“Saving these things that would have been thrown away," she said, "now, they have a new purpose.”
Horton said she has a new purpose too.
"I've been making my own paints with botanical dyes and making my own paper filled with pollinator seeds," she said.
The vacant lot is located at the end of Grandview and Washington Avenue in Bellevue.
That lot is now the site for her community beautification project she’s calling "Perennial.”
"So basically, this plot of land is owned by the railroad and because of that, the city is unable to build a house on it," Horton said. "They're really kind of unable to do anything with it. And the railroad is obviously not doing anything with it."
She said many years ago this was actually a community garden.
"There was a bunch of ragweed growing here and nothing was really being done," she said.
Horton said taking trashed landscapes and turning them around takes work.
"It takes work to do that, which is what I think is the biggest factor preventing people from doing this," she said. "So I think it's all about accessibility and getting people excited and involved about restoration and cultivation and things like that."
To get people excited she’s inviting the community to join in.
Just meet her at the lot, paint the seed paper she created and then bury it!
Then sit back and watch it grow.
"It's all native species. It's all super floral pollinators," she said. "So all the butterflies and bees will be obsessed."
Horton hopes people will be obsessed too and hopes what started as an idea blooms into a larger movement.
The Kentucky Foundation for Women’s Art as Activism helped fund this project.
Horton will host the community event on May 18 from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Roebling Books and Coffee will also attend with coffee and tea for sale.
