Parking Meter Sculpture
Santa Rosa, California
"Meter Made" is a sculpture comprised of 80 recycled parking meters with solar powered LEDs that interact with visitors at night. The happy side of parking citations!
Funded as public art, Santa Rosa's defunct coin-operated street parking meters were assembled by artists at Chimaera, a Sebastopol artist collective. The work was installed in 2018, with special tech and wiring enabling visitors to influence how the meters lit up after dark.
Post-Covid, we're not sure if the LED light component remains operational (though designed with solar power, it's not uncommon for sculpture audio/light elements to eventually fail).
The vase-like upwelling of old meters still stands on a sidewalk next to a downtown bank parking lot.