New Public Art Tweet for this Blog

We've decided to continue this blog in 2011 after some soul-searching.  It will not be directly following the work of the Creative Corridors Coalition, other than an occasional comment as warranted.  Even though much of the theory behind their initial planning is discussed here in our earlier articles, if you are interested in that effort, we encourage you to follow them on their website.

We do think there remains a need for a public art advocacy in our town independent of the Arts Council and our traditional local arts patronage structures.  I am a historian by training, and a community advocate by interest and passion.  I am an admirer of the arts and quality urban design by acculturation and experience.  I want our town to have a public arts commission: to involve, by citizen representatives, the whole community in the selection, creation, and enjoyment of public art works.  That's infrastructure building, and value assessment, by a community. We're not there yet.  I'd like for us to be.

To that end I have, after ending our "arsurbi" Twitter account, begun a new "arsurbi2" Twitter feed where, a couple of times a week, I will highlight stories from the web about public art and its appreciation, creation and struggles from our state, region and the world.  We live in a place of information overload.  But we also live in relevant-information decision-making deserts sometime.  Maybe the Tweets and this year's blog will help our community with that.  That's the hope anyway. More next week.
Photo of Northumberland sunrise from FreeFoto.com

While You and I Are Waiting for Business 40, Let's Help Design It

If you have not expressed an opinion about proposed Business 40 changes to bridges, interchanges and road design as presented at three NCDOT public meetings in mid-October, please do so soon, and contact NCDOT and City Council members with your ideas.

Although the timetable is not firm for when the work will be done, decisions are being made now on what will be done when it starts. One proposal for saving money and changing traffic is to close the bridge at 4th Street connecting the West End to Peters Creek Parkway, making a cul-de-sac there passing right in front of
Hawthorne Art Gallery. Please check the pdfs listed below to see all choices proposed for the several bridge interchanges, and a link to a pdf of the comment form you can print and send to NCDOT.

Sadly, the Winston-Salem Journal did an unusually and truly terribly inaccurate job both in advertising and in reporting on the details of what actually was shown to the public at these October meetings (using graphics from the January 2010 Old Salem meeting on their website links still, for example).  And NCDOT at their Business 40 site (www.business40nc.com) has not yet updated it with these new choices as they told me they would be doing to allow further informed citizen input. Then again, they haven't really updated citizen info online since 2008. They do seem to staff a public meeting well (though I've yet to get an email from them after signing in with an email at every one of the half-dozen events I've been to).

Here are links to online copies of the very informative packets NCDOT provided at these public meetings:
An Overview of the Business 40 Project Thru October 2010
Detailed Design Drawings of the Alternatives at Each Interchange
Working Groups Plan for the Future and Contact Info to Share Your Opinions With
Public Comment Sheet

Coda: "Creative Corridors" Receives NEA Funding Endorsement

From an Arts Council press packet: "[Yesterday] the National Endowment for the Arts announced a $200,000 matching grant to The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County and The City of Winston-Salem as a result of a joint proposal made to its Mayor’s Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Grant program. Randall Tuttle, Chair of the Coalition, can be reached at 336.725.4411 or rtuttle@tradestreetcap.com . Christine Gorelick, Vice President of External Affairs, The Arts Council, can be reached at 336.725.2585. cgorelick@intothearts.com. Creative Corridors Coalition has reserved the Web site www.creative corridors.org, which will be operational soon."

The NEA award shows national acknowledgment of the merits of the ideas for Business 40 improvements advocated here by your author and by the Arts Council's Public Art and Design Committee for over two years now. The ideas still need ongoing local support: vocal, financial, and inspirational. We refer you to the Corridors group website for their further development and ask you to stay involved with their plans. - JEE

The end of a blog and paths forward

Looking west from County Kerry, Ireland. By Stefan Tarzan.

A local issues blog like this one is, at its best, a reflection of things current, an agitator and encourager for things better, and a celebration of those better ideas made elsewhere concrete, all brought together with zeal and synergy by the blogger as he recruits fellow believers in the one quality humanity should never hoard or put a price on - hope. My initial hopes for this particular blog were to get other friends excited by the possibilities for better quality of life, economic development, and civic pride by having a more aesthetic and artistic design in the re-building of the Business 40 interstate corridor through Winston-Salem. This interstate idea had been bandied about among the dozen or two folks who made up the Public Art and Design committee of our local Arts Council; but as we lacked funds and interested partners in the public arena to champion the idea in 2008, I suggested that we could at least post some news on a blog and keep people informed.

Thirty months later, after public education meetings and slide shows by committee members; after a contest run by two art administration students to showcase "what-if" ideas; after public speakers and artists and architects were brought to town by local cultural institutions; after residents sent me and others stories and pictures of their holiday travels; after internet visitors from every continent with highways visited this site (occasionally with words of support and inquiries of our efforts); after a separate "Bridges" group was formed last summer by representatives of the Arts Council and the local Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Partnership, the City Appearance Commission and state and local transportation officials; and after representatives of fifty-plus business and community organizations endorsed the idea of requesting better, more aesthetic, more memorable design in a meeting in November with three State Cabinet secretaries (Commerce, Transportation, and Cultural Resources), the announcement of a new non-profit "Creative Corridors Coalition" is at hand. Thanks to a gift of funds by Winston-Salem Foundation award-winner and PA&DC member Doug Lewis, the Coalition even has seed money for its work. The task for which this blog was established, to grow friends for an idea and pass it on, is now complete. A thank you, heartily and happily, for all who have helped in that goal.

Frank Gehry's BP Bridge, Millennium Park, Chicago. From iamhydrogen on Flickr.

Now I am well aware that the tasks of getting attention and of getting results are two different things. After so many words here, it may help to remind all of the result that this particular writer wants out of a Business 40 re-build for our city: a top-quality functional roadway (I drive the route often, in traffic), made architecturally and artistically distinct (I'd like my visitors to want a poster of it), economically inviting (I'd like it to say "can do" in a way that invites business folks to move here and help us grow our economy), and - since I think I pay enough taxes - I'd like for this to be done at no additional cost to the taxpayer. I'd like the design team to figure out how "better" and "prettier" and "cooler" can be done cheaper. After surveying through this blog the experience of so many around the country and world, I am convinced that the only way to get all of that is to bring in "fresh design eyes" - outside design and artistic advice - for the whole corridor at the beginning of the design project.

NCDOT Business 40 presentation in winter 2010. By your blogger, before this.

But because it hasn't happened here before, there are dangers on the pathway to "creative corridors" (an idea which, if modeled in implementation along Business 40, might travel well around the city). The biggest danger may be in shortchanging our possibilities from the outset. We don't dream big enough, long enough. Tonight was to be the next meeting of a NCDOT working group on the Business 40 project. There was same day public notice of this meeting in the paper, and though there is a brief notice on the project's website, that site has not been seriously updated since 2008. Unofficial word from one DOT representative said that tonight would be a discussion of “concepts” for the Business 40 bridges project that, due to time constraints, would discuss which bridges “we’ll do and which ones we will not.” Now amongst the four major groups making up last summer's discussion of the highway work, there was some discussion of limiting which of the bridges to be replaced in the project might get extra attention. But that is the exact wrong approach at this stage of planning. It is a remnant of the typical contracting process for building roadways - assigning a portion of a project or a bridge at a time (on the current stretch of Business 40 moons ago, each bridge was done by a different contractor). The goal of our PA&DC original proposal was not to add new "art and design sprinkles" to an existing construction cupcake, but to challenge our road-builders and our community to come up with new ways of expressing something about our place with its highways while ensuring the task of our safe travel.

New tasks require new thinking. And not just from transportation officials and potential subcontractors. Politicians, who locally have shown innovation and political risk-taking on other largely private investments - the baseball stadium's multi-million dollar loan and today's news of another $200,000 grant to the downtown biotech park - have yet to champion in their official capacities this effort or have the city establish a needed community-wide citizens' commission to give advice on the planning, purchase, and maintenance of public art projects. A $200,000 grant would have surely helped us secure top-flight national or international design advice - but the taxpayer in me would be happy if our city and county leaders just formally resolved that this issue was important, and organized a government body for ongoing public art and design issues. Winston-Salem has been blessed with a few special individual benefactors to guide our cultural investments. But given that our local economy is no longer as centralized as it once was, citizens shouldn't have to depend solely on private largesse for enhancements to our economic and cultural investment in the arts. The Corridors Coalition presents business and philanthropic leaders with a new kind of project (hiring of expert design advice) - one which may not offer its benefactors any direct perks of privilege, and which may in fact only succeed as more community stakeholders without financial investment are invited to share thoughts on design and its impact with the design team. Finally, average citizens have to think anew about what is wisdom in how we spend scarce tax dollars - a creative thinking, that doesn't reactively shy-away from all spending but demands of needed investments that they be done better and with a goal of multiple impacts.

Those who support these ideas for better transportation design, be vigilant of distractions, but be encouraged. Those who question their feasibility or wisdom, engage with your neighbors in a debate about your questions and ways to make our place better for all, realizing we can use both the talents that are unique to this place and talents of others that are uniquely skilled in place-making. There is a faith quote that says when the Spirit is on the people, the old shall dream dreams and the young shall see visions. And, as the Cardinal once said, "Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true." Winston-Salem, "ars urbi serviat." Let art serve your city.

-J. Eric Elliott, 18 May 2010

Ten Changes for a Creative Highway Overpass

Highway engineers have a tough job to do as is, especially when traffic flow and geography don't mix well. Many of us have marveled as we visited bigger cities at the mix of concrete and spaghetti bowl that is used to channel traffic in, out, and through an urban area (if you don't know your cloverleaf from your "spooey," check out this "field guide" to the interstate). In Winston-Salem, Business 40 and US 52 frame our downtown in ways that are not as demanding on creative engineering necessities as in our most crowded cities, but they can give rise to other creative opportunities for highway designers over the next ten to twenty years. Are there ideas others have tried elsewhere that might help us as we creatively re-design our major roadways, to make them stand out in the driving experience of our guests and residents? What follows is my list of ten things you can do with a highway overpass - in addition to its traffic engineering necessities - to help it give our town a distinct sense of place. Please click on any one picture for a larger view.

Color
Albuquerque, New Mexico uses two simple colors in its major overpasses, salmon pink and turquoise. The "Big I" interchange - where I-40 and I-25 meet - is pictured above. The colors become a branding of the area, as they mimic both earth and sky in the desert Southwest and are prominent in local Native American art. The colors are applied as paint in some locations and are integrated into the concrete of these overpasses. Color change does have some practical limits - as Albuquerque efforts to change street signage are showing. But color change can do more than just brand. Designers of the Lynn Cove Viaduct here in North Carolina used pigmented concrete with another goal in mind - to blend their highway bridge into the granite landscape in which it sits.


Texture
This Route 28 bridge over the Little Delaware in Bovina, NY was a Federal Highway Administration Excellence in Highway Design merit winner in 2002 because it used the same kind of stone in its construction as did a church next to the bridge. Rather than having the roadway intrude into the traditional architecture of the neighborhood, the designers sought to integrate it into the landscape with the use of textured stone.


In North Carolina, we are most familiar with this technique along our mountain parkways. In the picture here, an overpass on the Tennessee side of the Smoky Mountain Parkway is built of the same stone as its surroundings and overgrown by plantings as if it were an outcropping of the mountain on which it sits. Currently Business 40's corridor has several outcroppings of rock visible near the three bridges near Cherry Street. What would bridges styled off of that natural rock look like? How about a brick bridge mirroring the old-fashioned brick styling of the new downtown ballpark at the Peters Creek overpass?


Landscaping
Business 40's rebuild will have to follow roughly the same corridor in which it currently inhabits - no widening. So where are there opportunities for creative landscaping? At the underpass near Corpening Plaza, perhaps? Berkeley professor and former North Carolina resident Walter Hood created Oakland, CA's Splash Pad Park alongside and under the I-580 freeway. Sidewalks crossing the park play off the freeway's pylons, and arching benches and grassy mounds and plantings segment the space into a multi-purpose urban oasis with even a lively farmer's market. It's part of a body of work that has just won Hood the 2009 National Design Award in Landscape Design from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Business 40 itself covers old Bellews Creek Street, and a number of side streets mask water features. Plans for the Piedmont Triad Research Park at US 52 and Business 40 include a rainwater catchment basin that will afford us a significant roadside aesthetic opportunity.


Lighting
Plans for an I-95 redesign through Pawtucket, RI include serene blue-and-white LED lighting alongside and under a bridge that serves as both a highway overpass and a river crossing. Many bridges are illuminated in colorful ways over water around the world, playing off the reflections below.


Noted highway aesthetic designer Vicki Scuri placed ethereal metal willow lights along the Douglas Avenue bridge in Wichita, KS, inviting you to feel the wind rushing through a town noted for its aviation history. But fewer highway overpasses take advantage of distinctive lighting either of the overpass itself or of the street it carries.


The street lightings above greet users at the light rail station in the midst of Portland, OR's high-tech "Silicon Forest" business district - artist Brian Borello likewise calls these illuminated whimsies "The Silicon Forest." These "trees" generate their own electricity through solar panels which branch out at their tops. Imagine a comparable iconographic and green-friendly lighting on the bridges framing our downtown biotech research park.


Regional Iconography
No surprise that the Lone Star state likes to use the Lone Star symbol on its highway bridges, is it? Texas highways make the regional brand an often-integrated part of their overpasses. Buck Scott's Scott Systems firm used elastomeric-urethane formliners to cast the gold star above into the overpass support. And Lone Stars augment with distinctive color banding the pillars of the "everything-is-bigger-in-Texas" experience that is the I-635/US 75 "High Five" interchange north of Dallas.



Many smaller highway overpasses in the state serve as de facto city signage, embossed with a state outline and a distinct artist's illustration for the locality hosting the bridge. Winston-Salem has two distinct city symbols, I'd argue - a Moravian multi-pointed star and that tin coffee pot of hospitality. Either could find its way around our highways more often and be seen by more than passersby of Baptist Hospital or an Old Salem traffic island.



Landmarking
Although they're on a pedestrian overpass bridge on Interstate 705 in Tacoma, WA, there's no mistaking once you see those large Dave Chihuly glass sculptures foisted skyward that the city's Museum of Glass is at hand.


Yes, you can simply slap a logo on an overpass, as here at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ; but why not creatively show folks "this" is the exit, "this" is the spot you drove to see. Old Salem is not located next to the highway - could sculpted images of frilled Moravian candles bookend the proper exit overpass instead?


Storytelling
The highway overpasses of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most celebrated in the country (yes, hard to believe that's true, for those of us used to concrete slabs). Why? you might ask. Because they tell you something about the place you're traveling through, vistas which might otherwise be sparse. Be it in the symbolism of the Native American designs in this New Mexico bridge above, or the stairstep geometry of its bridge abutment mimicking adobe housing, they fix a place in your memory.


Along a six-mile stretch of Pima Freeway in Scottsdale, AZ, a section known as "The Path Most Traveled," artist Carolyn Braaksma cast concrete reliefs and textures to place symbols of the desert landscape on otherwise unsightly overpass and sound barrier walls. Plantings and pathways along other stretches of the highway soften the disconnect between the land and the inhabitants of motorized vehicles. In 2003 Braaksma completed a commission ("The Green") for a park fountain in Charlotte, NC.


In Seattle, WA architect and "art practitioner" Alex Young placed a salmon run over a highway, jumping painted bronze fish along the walls of an I-90 HOV access ramp and leaping them occasionally even over the guardrails of the overpass. Did salmon once traverse the highway? No (though there are some in a nearby creek). But it is part of the distinct story of the Great Northwest that visitors expect. Everyone knows of Winston-Salem's tobacco heritage, one that has been tough to discuss but which is a distinct part of who we are. Could a Peters Creek bridge by the ballpark, nearly straddling the dividing line between old Winston and old Salem, artistically celebrate the blending of tobacco and textiles in the two towns with its new anchors in the arts and innovation? Could a bridge over US 52, a historic dividing line between our black and white citizens, celebrate struggle and triumph and hope with an imprint of Winston-Salem resident Maya Angelou's words, "Still I Rise"?


Multipurpose Design
This photo of the wilds along the Trans-Canada Highway shows an overpass whose primary function is not auto transport but animal transport. The edges of the overpass are fencing hidden by landscape trees and bushes, coupled with barriers to otherwise crossing the highway, corralling area wildlife to flow from one side of the highway to the other with minimal interruption. I use it as a reminder that highway bridges often break up urban space unnaturally. A bridge that crosses a natural barrier like a river is often praised as a blessing for development and livablity on both sides of the divide. A highway overpass, however, too often cuts off previous human traffic flow between areas except by vehicle. Making overpasses accomodate happily motorized and pedestrian (and bicycle) traffic is a goal our city transportation officials are already examining, including the possibility of a greenspace park as a potential part of any 3rd-4th-5th Street overpass rebuild on US 52.


Pattern
When in town last fall, bridge architect Fred Gottemoeller (whose design for Greenvile, SC's Reedy River footbridge made it a city icon) pointed to an interesting model for the replacement of multiple bridges with a shared vista, an opportunity we have for the bridges of Business 40. Look at the series of arched overpass bridges on eastbound US 59 entering Houston, TX.


As I've looked at the photos of the place, the nesting effect of the arches in a driver's sight line serve to announce the coming of downtown, something special. Announcement by pattern is nothing new: ancient Babylon announced the Ishtar Gate with an avenue adorned with a gold-on-blue repetitive lion motif.


One need not go archaeological to confirm the practice. Almada, Portugal also marks its city's presence with a pattern of distinctive design in the overpass bridges that serve its citizens. I'm not sure if the elevated central support shown above is an allusion to an arrow or symbol of the city or simply a whim of the bridge designer.


Instead of a repeating and building pattern in the distinct shape of the city's bridges, you might create a repeating and building pattern of symbols or structures along the roadway as you near the city center. Visitors to Los Angeles Airport are greeted by Paul Tzanetopoulos's series of glass pylons along their roadway approach, illuminated in LED colors from Angstrom Lighting at night. If you saw the changing LED light display at the Millennium Center here last fall, you know the enchanting potential for such devices. Here, one might build in intensity a forest of double helix or something as you approached a new 52 and 40 interchange, or repeat some "arts and innovation" symbol around innovation gateways throughout town, from Baptist's research hospital to the Arts District to our local universities.


Architectural Showpiece
A step beyond a pattern dictated primarily by aesthetics, not engineering, is what I'm calling the architectural showpiece - a roadway that funnels you into and through such a distinct design that it would create a detour-inducing "I'd like to drive through that" experience. Frank Gehry designed the amphitheater at Chicago's Millennium Park only after officials agreed also to let him build this over-the-highway connector. The serpentine BP Bridge is, for pedestrians and those driving underneath, a "full-metal Gehry" experience, not just a simple way to cross the road.


Imagine the driving experience going through the Clyde Arc, the Glasgow, Scotland landmark known to locals as "the Squinty Bridge" because of the tilted angle of its asymmetric tied arch. Here's a daytime view. Yes, this is a bridge going over a river, not a highway overpass. But you could create the same kind of driving experience going over the extended elevated highway section of Business 40 in front of Corpening Plaza. It takes advantage of the intimate view of Winston-Salem's living room that is afforded in that stretch of road, and "Squinty" isn't too different from an arch span design proffered by one team of local designers for that spot in last October's Creative Bridge Design exhibition. Likewise, the same driver's vista would be appealing alongside the Piedmont Triad Research Park - not that different from the Santiago Calatrava bridge I Photoshopped into downtown a few years ago.


Authenticity, and "the Gambler" rule
In designing a creative highway overpass, it is possible to use any combination of these creative attributes here listed or others, limited only by an artist's, engineer's, or architect's imagination. I would only add two aesthetic caveats of my own to their use - I'm sure the money folks and others will find more. It seems to me the best regarded works shown here are authentic both to their place and to their purpose. The creative additions in design are celebrations of real things in the location or its spirit. For example, to me, the Hakim Expressway Overpass above in Teheran, Iran has many interesting things in it: but as an outside visual visitor, it also strikes me as being less authentic to its place and more a zealous banquet of stylistic tweaks. Then again, I freely admit that, having seen Babylonian blue bricks from the Ishtar Gate, I feel incongruence when I see Williamsburg brick in the land of ancient Persia.
.
Lastly, given the number of overpass bridges we will be replacing in a short stretch in Winston-Salem, there probably should be either a measured restraint in the variety from any one overpass experience to the next or at least hints at stylistic consistency throughout. To that end, the Arts Council's working group committee has these last few months already noted that some of the bridges to be replaced lend themselves to extra design opportunities more than others. To me, it brings to mind the judiciousness called for in the old Kenny Rogers' song, "The Gambler" - "you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." Just because you can make every bridge a work of art, a light show, and a fountain - and, yes, Nanhu Bridge above is a nice bridge in Nanning, China - it doesn't mean you have to or ought to.

Many of these images of bridges were posted by Flickr users in public topic forums. Since clicking on an image here in Blogger will only lead to a larger image hosted on this site, I have listed the source link and poster of the original image in the "title" tag visible when you hover your mouse over an image. I have not seen a cataloging done of transportation designs by the kind of aesthetic category I have tried to do here (let me know if you know of one). Yet an inspiration for me and the PA&DC remains Dian Magie's book On the Road Again: Creative Transportation Design, which catalogs examples by function of project rather than by the aesthetic element creatively altered. -JEE

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.

If life is a blank book, shouldn't we put art in it?

That's the idea being brought to the community by the Forsyth County Public Library in its new collaborative book art project, "Leave Your Mark."

Modeled after Portsmouth, England's Visual Libraries project, the local effort begins this weekend for teens and kids as part of the June 13 kickoff of the county library's Summer Reading Program, and starts later this month for adults. Librarians Audra Eagle, Candace Brennan, and the library staff have created several themed folios of pages which patrons can check out of the library and to which they can add their individual art drawings and materials to the folio book's theme. Themes for adults include "Memories," "Mountains," "Winston-Salem," "Dreams," "Love," and more. You can then "Leave Your Mark" by writing, sewing, drawing, painting, or adding photographs or stickers. Check out a themed book from the Humanities Department at the reference desk in the Central Library on Fifth Street and let it be your journal, notebook, sketchbook, or craft book. Books can be checked out for two-week intervals (no renewals) and can also be put on hold and sent to other branches for pick-up. Patrons are asked to avoid adding bulky art and to not disturb the work of other contributors. Return your book to the library and watch as your art becomes part of a community expression on the theme, shared with and then added to by others - all ages, backgrounds, and talents that we have in the Winston-Salem area.

As of right now, the project is seeking to partner with local art organizations to expand its scope to other branches and promote itself to the larger art community and public. Library organizers also hope the project grows into a future art exhibit: you'll likely see them at future Trade Street "gallery hops" this summer. If your organization is interested in participating in this project, please contact Audra Eagle or Candace Brennan at the Central Library, or visit the Forsyth County Public Library online for further information.

Photos are from Portsmouth, UK's Flickr feed of highlights of their project.

Would you sign on?

"I/We, ___________, advocate the use of distinctive architectural design and public art in the renovation of our major downtown transportation corridors as a way of branding and communicating the city of Winston-Salem as a place of creative commerce."

How many institutions, civic groups, neighborhood associations, business groups and individual citizens could we get to sign on to such a simple declarative statement as a way of telling political and transportation leadership that this issue and opportunity is important?

Fill in your name. Get groups you belong to to agree to this modest proposal as well. Share the signed statement with area elected officials, city transporation and planning departments, and the state DOT. Share a blank one with friends and neighbors. Moneys will be set aside to be spent on our thoroughfares. This is about how, not how much. Add your support before old habits are in place.

More Public Art news via Twitter; Blog Update Schedule

You'll notice if you are a regular browser of our blog that we recently added a Twitter news feed at right on our full screen pages. Why did we add the feature? It's a way for me to post links to stories that will be of interest to you if you like public art, but which are on topics that were either too short to expand upon - as Goldilocks would say, they were already "just right" - or the topics were not directly relevant to current work in Winston-Salem. They were just...interesting. Idea generators.

What have you been missing if not following our Twitter "tweets"? Recent posts include: "CNET's recent list of 'Top 5 Hi-tech Public Art Masterpieces' (with another five thrown in for good measure...)." "Love and Public Art in the Time of Budget Cuts (apologies to G.G. Marquez): How St. Lucie County FL is coping." "See how this Plensa piece in downtown Des Moines perks up the skyline." "Congrats to 4 in NC listed; but no Winston-Salem? AmericanStyle's Top 25 Arts Destinations: Asheville #2 small city." We will try and post something new twice a week to our Twitter account on Sundays and Wednesdays (though we won't be chained to an update if our personal travel schedule makes us late a time or two). Point is, there is much to see and learn from out there, and we want to keep you interested in this topic as we wait for more local leadership on the issue. If you'd like to follow us directly through your own Twitter account, our account is @arsurbi. Otherwise, just check our Twitter RSS feed updates here regularly.

Finally, to date, most of our blog posts have been events-driven, not calendar-driven. As summer is usually a slow period in our town, I'll be trying to post new blog entries once a week or so on the weekend. Again, the goal is to keep you abreast of news in the development of public art ideas locally, and the best in public art practices in other locations around the state, nation, and "planet Earth." Quentin Tarantino said at his Cannes premiere this week that he doesn't make "American" movies, but "movies for the planet Earth." It was movie promo hubris - and Cannes organizers loved that they were the place to go to be seen by "planet Earth" - but as art goes, it was the right kind of hubris. Public art may have local ties in Winston-Salem, but quality art has a language understood by "planet Earth."

Art needing tending by YOU - Small Plots

A new public art show needs your participation this weekend in Winston-Salem, as Greensboro experiential artist and UNCG professor Lee Walton brings real-time performance art to the streets and gathering places of our town. The next installments of his interactive series, Small Plots, are tomorrow: "Too Many Oranges" at 2pm at Mooney's Mediterranean Cafe at 101 W. 4th Street downtown; and "Lost Business Man" at 3pm on the open lawn at Trade and 4th Streets in front of One Park Vista. Other shows and locations are on Sunday afternoon, and following Saturdays and Sundays throughout May.

From Walton's own well-crafted website, this next installment of SECCA's Inside Out public art series uses "parcels of Winston-Salem as the platform for short vignettes snatched from everyday life. As such, everything from street corners and park benches to supermarkets, shopping malls and residential neighborhoods become potential stages...." "The beauty and magic of these acts is thus, that – somewhere between social experiment and staged event – the very distinction between life and theater grows dim. Instead, the city and people of Winston-Salem are activated as players on a shared stage where no one is entirely sure of the parameters." Audience members should come prepared to be "play"-ful participant observers.

A complete schedule of all venues and times for the six different 30-minute performances can be found on the SECCA website. You can preview the setup in each performance, and get cues on when and how to interact with the actors, by visiting Walton's website. The artist and actors would love to see you there this weekend. And remember: there are no small players, only "Small Plots."

Our Fermata Cantata

I am often asked "where are we on the Business 40 bridges project?" "what's going on with public art?" "what we can we do to help get it going?" And I must say, big-picture wise, regarding public art in Winston-Salem, the image that flashes in my mind, and catches responding words in my throat when asked such questions, is the symbol above.

For the musically challenged among us - and yes, I once pronounced the phrase "treble and bass" as if I were describing fishing adjectives for "hook and boat" - here's a nuanced description from the site www.bach-cantatas.com. "A fermata is the musical symbol of a semicircle (facing downward) with a dot inside it. In some music, it means we should hold a note longer than we would normally. In other music, it simply marks the end of a phrase (e.g. in a Bach chorale) suggesting a lift or a breath, with or without extra time; or in some other situations it merely marks the end of a whole piece, meaning 'don't bother turning the page, you've reached the last note.' Some people automatically assume that it means the first thing; others take it situation by situation. It's important to think about, anyway."

I think giving birth to a sustained public art effort in Winston-Salem is a bit like listening to a "fermata cantata." There are many beautiful voices - artists, institutions, politicians, administrators, advocates. I hear some intriguing melody lines - new bridges defined by creative art and design, a centennial to be celebrated with art placed joyfully around town. Efforts at a basso continuo - a city-sponsored public art commission, maybe, eventually, with common folk involved in the claiming and proclaiming. There are performing stages (though to date they change with each movement of the work) - Arts Council, SECCA, NCDOT, private developers. But there's just a lot of fits and starts that are hard for people to follow. Even for someone as dedicated as I am to the promise of public art, it takes a lot of effort to believe there is a unity to all these staccato bursts, a product that will sound as sweet as I believe it will when we look back on what we've done here.

The fact is, in music, you have to have a conductor, a leader, to tell you how long the fermatas are. The conductor tells you when to stop, but when to get going again. The conductor has to have a baton everyone can see and acknowledge from their point of view, not just a soapbox to stand on. For our public art effort, that baton-wielding conductor could be a political leader, a sustaining benefactor, or both.

I'd like to tell you when this "fermata cantata" piece will be set, when everyone will heed their cues, when unity of purpose will make a beautiful public art music we can all see with our eyes. I can promise you, though, that the more who advocate for public art from the city, who say they want "a ticket," the sooner the performance will be underway again. And at the end of that day, I'll say "Bravo!"

Silhouetted Skaters Enchant in New Public Art

In the storefront windows of Winston-Salem's historic Loewy building, 500 W. Fourth Street, downtown restaurants' evening patrons, our RiverRun Film Festival guests, and anyone with an interest to come and see can enjoy Anna von Gwinner's second local video installation, Minus 8, as part of SECCA's ongoing public art exhibition, Inside Out. The installation is on view April 15 - 30, nightly, from 7 pm to midnight.

Inside the Loewy Building, von Gwinner projects silhouettes of figure skaters practicing their routines. Watching these figures glide and soar, viewers can project their own escape from the expected in the urban landscape, and, in the words of SECCA's website, see "hints at Winston-Salem traditions of theater, athletics and ghost stories." It's also just cool to watch. You can dial 336-201-0681 and hear podcasts with more about the artist and the creation of this work.

Von Gwinner and the buildling's namesake would have had an affininty for each other's work. Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) left his mark on hundreds of products and businesses still in use today as one of the last century's premiere industrial and graphic designers. In 1949 Loewy Associates was hired to expand and remodel 500 W. Fourth (then the Thalhimers department store) with his distinctive streamlined design. His was a constancy of aesthetic vision across a variety of material mediums.

Anna von Gwinner studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths' College in London and Architecture at the UdK in Berlin. Her experience in a successful architectural practice for several years informs her talent in exploring and manipulating spaces withing the urban landscape. Her short video loops, all imaginary moments in the life of a city, show a constancy of aesthetic play within a variety of architectural shapes.

Loewy Building photo from Downtown Winston-Salem Association website; Loewy photo from Raymond Loewy on the web. A word of thanks: "Inside-Out: Artists in the Community II" is supported by a grant from The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that "a great nation deserves great art." In-kind support is provided by Sundance Plaza Hotel, Spa and Wellness Center; AdColor of Winston-Salem; and Moore's Self Storage.