LOVE01760 is a community public art project that began as a conversation among local artists, business owners, members of the Natick Center Cultural District and SPARK Kindness and grew into an amazing movement that brought Natick residents together in an extraordinary way.
Like the rest of the world, we were struggling with the uncertainty of Covid 19 and sought a way to “connect” with each other while maintaining our distance. We asked people to design heart “halves” at home with the promise to join their individual halves with other handcrafted heart halves to make whole, complete hearts. The “joined” hearts would then hang together as a community art installation displayed in Natick Center. Residents embraced the concept and created spectacular, unique and inspiring halves. Some were painted, drawn, contained stickers and stamps, conveyed messages of hope, love and encouragement, and some spoke without words. Each one was thoughtfully made and were very special because Natick residents of all ages and abilities created them. In essence, the heart halves were symbolic of how we all felt while isolated from each other and the whole hearts symbolize our feeling of being complete when we can once again be together.
The LOVE01760 project continued to grow as 30 plus local businesses began creating and displaying giant hearts in their storefront windows to show their love and support for each other and for the town.
Another outpouring of support took the form of t-shirts displaying the LOVE01760 logo that were made by a local business owner who wanted to show their support. A website was created to purchase these t-shirts with proceeds going to our local community non-profit who provides much needed resources to others. The LOVE01760 project was created to help weather the health crisis but overflowed into helping others struggling in our community.