Neighborhood groups in Stamford, Conn., have commissioned artists to "beautify" the city's sometimes ugly traffic-signal boxes, resulting in an impressive public art exhibition, says Alison Leigh Cowan in the N.Y. Times (11/25/06). "About 50 of the city’s 190 boxes, once covered with graffiti, are now suitable for framing," Cowan says. "A blown-up version of the green-and-yellow crayon box familiar from childhood sits by the Boys and Girls Club. Down the road is a white takeout carton that could feed the Chinese Army. The box outside the firehouse on Washington Boulevard appears to be aflame.'” It all started in 2003 when Springdale Neighborhood Association commissioned the first box. "The city was worried that if we did it, everybody else in town would want to," says association president Marilyn Trefry, "and they were right.” [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham