Recycled Road Signs: The Landmark Artwork In Meadville

When I see a road sign, no matter what it is, I always think about a speeding ticket. Why? It’s quite simple really. Those speed limit signs keep haunting me for some reason. Even though I am not very keen about acting like a complete nut on the roads, I still managed to get a speeding ticket not too long ago. I wish someone had taken that particular speed limit sign down that particular day and that might not have happened. Of course, that would have been illegal.

However, on Amara Geffen’s initiative, there is a community called Meadville that is taking a whole different approach to the matter. It has all to do with road signs, discarded and recycled one. They have created something called “Read Between The Signs” (RBTS), and it is highly creative. As a matter of fact, it has become a landmark for Meadville and will continue to grow each year.

So what is it? It’s a whole fence artwork piece made up of thousands of recycled road signs all bundled up into a colorful and amazing sculptural artwork piece depicting Allegheny Mountains, the French Creek watershed, roads, PennDOT workers, farms and forests. The project was first started in 2002 and is an ongoing project with new pieces added every year to further create this patchwork of amazement. The “fence” has also integrated solar cells to further prove that environmental thinking is not only taking old things and creating new uses for them, but also making them work together with current technologies and blending them in seamlessly.