Bridges - and Public Art - Update

A few years back, before a redo of Business 40 was in the conversation, I wrote a piece about how Winston-Salem needed a signature structure to help brand itself and make it a place so distinctive that people would want to come and see. This was a result of a brainstorming session held by the Winston-Salem Visitor Center - a group which needs community support now more than ever. I suggested a national contest for a signature bridge design and Photoshopped a Sergio Calatrava bridge right in front of an artist's rendering of the planned downtown research park as a way to say "new," "cool," "groovy," or whatever positive you wanted to say. Mainly you just would want to see the thing (click on the small image for a bigger one to better see the "harp string" cables).

This summer, I stepped away from a few meetings of the Arts Council's Public Art and Design committee and this blog - a family member's illness and an unexpected denouement to my role on the local elections board kept me away from monitoring their conversations and, frankly, lessened my enthusiasm for community involvement. In the process I did learn, however, that wordle.net does give you an artistic way to deal with news you'd rather not use.

But interesting things have been happening, and I thought I'd let you know. Over the summer several members of the PA&DC began discussions with members of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, the Community Appearance Commission, the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, NCDOT, and a few other individuals about the issues raised and opportunities presented in creative highway design enhancement - i.e., better architectural design of highways and bridges, and more aesthetic attention to the same (through public art, materials, lighting, etc.). The group has even looked at potential for LEED-type efficiencies in highway design (including recycled and local-produced materials and rainwater catchment issues), even though there is no LEED certification program for highway construction - yet. Most all of the tweaks involve a change to current NCDOT practice but it is change that other states have modeled can be done, and done cost efficiently (see several posts on the blog you are reading). Anyway, many of these ideas local DOT leadership is open to exploring. These "working group" meetings could be the beginning of concrete steps to go from fifteen minutes worth of Photoshopping to true creative destination placemaking in our major transportion corridors. The deadlines for serious involvement in design changes are probably no later than 2011, though competing state priorities with scarce DOT funds could push local projects farther out than that. But I wish them well as they seek to build better, and more beautifully.

The Arts Council's PA&DC having split off its ideas on the Business 40 bridge design redo to a separate group, the committee has returned to its primary work promoting and assisting public art installations in the city. Several of the committee members aided the Arts Council in selecting the artists whose work will be displayed in public areas of the new Sawtooth Center. I missed SECCA's public art event during the National Black Theatre Festival (Kianga Ford's oral and aural interpretation of Winston-Salem's history - "34 x 52 x 40" is still accessible here). But I did hear SECCA-sponsored Mark Jenkins talk about his work at Reynolda House the last full week of September. That week, indeed, was probably as big a week as public art has had in the city this year. On Monday, Jenkins' first public work was taken down within hours of its placement in a kerfuffle over the failure to give a heads-up to officials over its location and purpose; Tuesday saw Jenkins speak on his evolving philosophy of public art at Reynolda House before a packed audience of art students and the public. On Wednesday the Arts Council board met to decide its public art contest winners, and on Friday the Enrichment Center opened its loving new public art sculpture garden. On that Saturday the 26th, West End hosted its ARTSfest, where, among a variety of media represented, you could buy sculpture for your own public art.

All the while that week, construction was resuming on the city's biggest investment in its skyline, the baseball stadium. Let's hope that in all the cash invested and to be spent in this project that the city and owners will abide by their commitment to have the developer spend $10,000 for public art installation. If Charlotte can do one percent for city buildings on public art, and Greensboro can have a community public art foundation lead in assembling monies for art, surely the City of the Arts can abide by a 0.0212765957 percent investment in art in this important public work.

And now on video...

WGHP Fox 8's Brent Campbell reported on the advocacy of the Public Art and Design Committee and the Business 40 project in tonight's six o'clock news. You can watch the report here [Link expired 6/20]. A nice nearby example of extra attention to the details of functional bridges is the Innis Street bridge in Salisbury, featured in the report. We'll leave posted (as long as they are active) this link and other video feeds about public art and design in the city in a sidebar on this blog. This also gives us a chance to re-post a video report about the earlier community meeting in April that was originally only referenced in a blog comment.

Introducing the Public Art and Design Committtee

The Public Art and Design Committee has been working within the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County since 2004, first under the leadership of art professor David Finn and currently led by attorney Thorns Craven. It follows an earlier Mayor's Task Force on Public Art assembled in 2000, led by neighborhood advocate Eric Elliott. The committee has worked to add new public art in the downtown landscape; assisted Wal-Mart as they worked with a local artist in the production and installation of sculpture and a gazebo at their Peters Creek location; and is investigating possibilities for funding and processing art acquisitions by public and private entities in the area with the assistance of Chapel Hill's Gerald Bolas, past interim director of SECCA. Though the group lacks a formal budget and depends on volunteer time, they are knowing and active advocates of the value of a better-designed cityscape, of which the insights and inspirations of public artists can play an important part.

The re-design of the front room of our shared Winston-Salem house - the renewal of our downtown transportation corridors - is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make improvements both functional and aesthetic to our town. When you re-do the interior of your home kitchen, you want all the function a kitchen needs. But because you live there, you want it to be a place of beauty as well. Why not add beauty to the function of our city's major roadways? The current committee consists of: Thorns Craven, Chair, Attorney, Mediation, Inc.; Nick Bragg, Former Director, Reynolda House; Eric Elliott, Past President, West End Association; David Finn, Artist and Professor of Art, Wake Forest University; Tripp Greason, Attorney, Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice; Glynis Jordan, Deputy Director, City-County Planning; Mark Leach, Director, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art; Carroll Leggett, Ralph Simpson & Associates; Doug Lewis, Southeast Gateway Council, and Past Chair, Community Appearance Commission; Duncan Lewis, Sculptor and Adjunct Professor, Salem College; Leo Morrissey, Assistant Professor of Art, Winston-Salem State University; Mary Elizabeth Parks, Executive Director, North Carolina Stroke Association; Milton Rhodes, President and CEO, Arts Council Winston-Salem/Forsyth County; Sandra Romanac, Calibre, Inc.; Greg Shelnutt, Director of Visual Arts, North Carolina School of the Arts; Ralph Simpson, President, Ralph Simpson & Associates; Carol Strohecker, Director, Center for Design Innovation; Belinda Tate, Director, Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem State University; Bill Watkins, Architect, W. R. Watkins Architecture; Keith Wilson, Architect, Calloway Johnson Moore and West.

Place-making with Public Art in our City of the Arts

This blog will serve as a spot for ideas and inspirations. How we as a community can better claim for ourselves and our visitors the title "City of the Arts." How we can demonstrate the qualities of life and priorities that makes Winston-Salem a place apart. How we can show an appreciation for the insights and pleasures and aspirations that the arts community offers to all. How we can make it more obvious that in this place "ars urbi serviat": "art serves the city." A Public Art and Design Committee at the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County has been meeting for some time now trying to strategize how we can better intentionally design and showcase a City of the Arts.

A wonderful opportunity to show the value of art to our city is in the upcoming redesign of the Business 40 highway right through the heart of our town. Imagine if we could take a necessary engineering improvement and simultaneously intentionally design it with a sense of place unique to Winston-Salem - bettering the function of the roadway and also its form and beauty. We wouldn't be the first place to try it, as later posts to this blog will show. Those localities which take the time to do something more, to make special with art and design that which might otherwise be bland and homogeneous, have found rewards in community pride and increased visitor interest. And the costs for major improvements in aesthetics are comparatively small. Above, Earline Heath King's Barbara Smitherman statue in Grace Court.