The Gifts of Art and an Artist

Tuesday night, June 3, Winston-Salem's newest work of public art was unveiled to an audience of friends and supporters of Senior Services, the area's leading provider of assistance and programming for the elderly. The trustees of the agency tapped local sculptor Duncan Lewis to create a unique work honoring the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Tab Williams, Jr. and Family, whose philanthropy and leadership have made the Senior Services Center facility at the corner of Shorefair Drive and 30th Street a reality. Titled "Second Blooming," and placed invitingly before the building's entrance walkway, the upwardly reaching blossoms of this twenty-foot high piece open themselves "to the spirit of compassion that lies at the heart of the mission of Senior Services."

The agency and Director Richard Gottlieb could have properly honored its benefactors with a plaque or designation in the interior of its space, or certainly in a less symbolic fashion. Instead, with this piece they have created a new community gift themselves, making a welcoming space accessible to the general public that shares in the feelings of renewal and hope this wonderful place is host to every day.

Duncan Lewis' skill as sculptor can also be found inspiring and iconographicly reflecting the work at another Winston-Salem institution: downtown's Piedmont Triad Research Park. He has proven a unique set of talents - artistic vision, community listener, craftsman's touch - common to all who successfully create public art. Our community thanks go for the art and the artist, and the benefactors who made the project happen. Duncan's dad took the shot of the piece being hoisted by crane into place, and Duncan provided the photo above in situ. The photo below of "Triple Helix" at PTRP is by Greg Kiser from AOL Journals Photo Trek blog.

Carpe Viam

Probably the most famous bridge in the state of North Carolina is the Linn Cove Viaduct, a serpentine embrace of the slope of Grandfather Mountain installed along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the early 1980s. Although the technical challenges of traversing the site could have been made easier with road cuts and strategic mountain blasts, the bridge designers, Figg Engineering Group, seized the opportunity to make an aesthetic statement with the highway and to work with the landscape rather than simply conquer it. Blending iron oxides into the concrete, the team even "painted" its building materials to more closely resemble the granite of the rock face on which the bridge rests.

The city of Asheville sits in a high valley surrounded by mountain crests. When the I-240 thoroughfare into the city was completed a few years back, engineers sacrificially blasted through one wall of mountain encircling the city. But the highway awkwardly merged with the town's main east-west local street. The subsequent completion of north-south Interstate 26 offered the city a chance to connect the two interstates near the French Broad River running through town, relieving pressure on downtown traffic. The initial drawings from transportation officials for the I-26 connector offered several options to the city. But to many in the local design community, the plans were unnecessarily complex and wasteful in their use of city space, as well as being visually unappealing.

A local group of architects and design friends, aided by a grant from the American Institute of Architects 150th Anniversary Celebration, pooled their talents and formed the Asheville Design Center. They rented a downtown storefront, offered volunteer hours, canvassed community concerns, created a three-dimensional model where citizens could visualize alternate routes, and came up with their own set of technical concerns and aesthetic opportunities they wanted the project to address. The biggest concern was to reduce the amount of scarce lands lost to exit and entrance ramps in the official plans. When locals suggested a double-decker roadway in strategic points and a single bridge instead of two, area friend Figg Engineering Group (of Linn Cove fame) offered up a design for a two-story bridge that will solve the technical needs of the I-26 Connector and give the city a beautiful new postcard view, uniting river, mountains, and city skyline with a stylistic statement that will say that place does things differently and more beautifully.

Asheville's experience on the I-26 Connector has changed the way dialog about transportation projects and potentials is approached in that community. Both transportation officials and community leaders have new insights on the benefits of working together. NCDOT is already making great efforts in Winston-Salem to collect community concerns in the upcoming Business 40 project, and our strong local transportation and planning agencies are anxious to put their good talents to the technical challenges ahead. But Winston-Salem has yet to pull together its creative design resources, its priorities for beauty and self-statement, in addition to those technical requirements that a new urban roadway must meet. The picture below shows the new downtown baseball park just to the west of Winston-Salem's skyline, alongside the Business 40 corridor (at photo right) that will soon be re-designed. We have an opportunity to add beauty as well as improve the function of this roadway. Will we as a community "seize the day" of this opportunity? Will we, in essence, "seize the roadway," and make it uniquely our own?

Corridor-Wide: Next Round of Business 40 Meetings to be Held

The first set of corridor-wide meetings for the Business 40 project has been scheduled. Corridor-wide meetings will be conducted at major project milestones or for specific topics and provide opportunities for the community to interact with the project team and discuss project issues and recommendations.

The dates, times and locations are as follows:
Tuesday, June 10; 5-8 p.m.; Anderson Center at Winston Salem State University; Reynolds Park Drive, off MLK Jr. Drive.
Wednesday, June 11; 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sawtooth Building Amphitheater in Winston Square Park*; 226 N. Marshall Street. *If inclement weather, the meeting will be moved to the Ballroom of the Sawtooth Building adjacent to the park.
Thursday, June 12; 5-8 p.m.; R J Reynolds High School Cafeteria; 301 N. Hawthorne Road.

Call for Entries: "Creative Bridge Design" Art Exhibition in September

The art exhibit "Creative Bridge Design" will take place Tuesday, September 16th and run until September 30th at the DADA Center in the Downtown Art District. The art exhibit is to inspire and motivate both the Winston-Salem Community and funders of the Business 40 Project to incorporate public art into the Business 40 Bridges. The presenting of local artists’ works and designs of innovative bridge design will be among the first visual models to present to the public and NCDOT for the Business 40 Bridges. It will be a chance for the Community, the Arts, and the State to work side by side on a large scale project that will heighten the city’s development and identity as the “City of the Arts”.

This community arts project is open to local artists, architects, engineers, and designers that are 18 & older ("local" meaning Forsyth County and other artists who are able to "hand deliver" their artworks matted or framed to DADA Center by the 5th of September). Artworks will range from drawings, both artistic and technical, painting, watercolor, photography, graphics, and 3D. Artwork should illustrate in some form a cultural connection to the Winston-Salem community. Imagine new symbols and artistic expression to represent Winston-Salem. Final deadline will be September 5th. Purpose of exhibition will not be to sell artwork, but inquiries may be made and passed onto the artists. The "Creative Bridge Design" art exhibition is the continuation of the Community Arts Forum held April 22, 2008 at Green St. United Methodist Church with guest panelists Thorns Craven, Eric Elliott, and Mark Leach discussing public art’s impact on community and city development.

Additional information on the Business 40 Project and Public Art can be found at http://www.business40nc.com or http://winstonsalempublicart.blogspot.com. For further information on the "Creative Bridge Design" art exhibition, contact Katie Gunter at gunterk7@gmail.com