Beautiful People, Beautiful Spaces (Give Them Their Flowers While They Here)

Beautiful People, Beautiful Spaces—often referred to as Give Them Their Flowers While They Here—is a large-scale sculptural installation celebrating the people whose everyday presence sustains community life. Rising above the surrounding landscape, the work features three slender green steel stems that support dynamic, flower-like forms composed of curved laminated wood bands and brightly painted structural elements.

The sculpture evokes both botanical growth and cosmic motion, with circular wooden forms orbiting around the stems like blossoms caught mid-bloom. Its vertical scale and vivid palette allow the piece to function as a visual landmark—an unexpected moment of joy emerging within the neighborhood landscape.

Designed by Janell Nelson and fabricated in collaboration with Andrés Lemus-Spont of Englewood-based Cooperation Racine, the sculpture translates Nelson’s ongoing message of beauty and affirmation into a spatial experience. It is a continuation in a series of EAC’s “More Beautiful Things” public art initiative, spearheaded by Janell after designing Grow Greater Englewood’s We Deserve Beautiful Spaces campaign. Installed in community space in an elder resident’s yard on the UnBlocked Englewood block (and initially unveiled during the Englewood Music Fest neighborhood celebration), the work encourages residents to pause, gather, and recognize one another as the living flowers of the neighborhood.