By Tony Freemantle
Sam Jones relaxes on a bench he crafted from objects collected along Kuhlman Gully. Photo courtesy of James Nielsen and The Houston Chronicle.
Kuhlman Gully is a quiet 1.09-mile tributary that flows into Brays Bayou. Cavanaugh Nweze remembers it from his childhood, “The Kuhlman Gully gave us many opportunities to play, to just get away from big city life, to skip rocks, and even sometimes to just get in trouble. . . It played a quiet but important part in our lives. As a child it didn’t seem like much but now, as an adult, I realize how important the Kuhlman Gully is as a natural space and resource and to our neighborhood.”
The once beautiful waterway is today littered with trash; it pollutes the water and can cause clogs in Brays Bayou further down the line leading to flooding. Fortunately, the Southeast Houston Transformation Alliance is spearheading the first steps toward reclaiming Kuhlman Gully for the neighborhood by joining with the Harris County Flood Control District, the City of Houston Public Works and Engineering Department, and Keep Houston Beautiful in community clean-up efforts.
The following article explains how artist Sam Jones is turning the gully’s trash into an artistic treasure as part of the waterways beautification projects. It is reprinted with permission from author Tony Freemantle and The Houston Chronicle, where it first appeared on December 16, 2013.
Click here to read the full article.
Click here to visit Sam Jones’s website for more photos of the bench project and items collected from the gully.
http://samjones.me/samjones.me/KUHLMAN_GULLY.html
Watch Johnny Hanson’s video on Kuhlman Gully and what it means to members of the community.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/63576552[/vimeo]
Watch Sam Jones’s video on the Kuhlman Gully Bench Project.
Watch Paulette Wagner speak about SEHTA on Fox News’ The Black Voice.
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