A Next Chance to Talk Possibilities

At the June 3 meeting of the West End Association, Public Art and Design Committee member Eric Elliott will present a brief 15-minute slideshow highlighting national "best-practices" in the use of bridge design and public art in the creation of transportation corridors. The meeting begins at 7pm and will be held in the community room of the Central Family YMCA, accessible through the entrance of the Y at Glade St and West End Boulevard. For more information on its meetings, visit the Association website at www.historicwestend.org

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.

Creating Cultural Icons with Public Art

The very first speaker at the recent "Public Art 360" Conference in Chapel Hill was Winston-Salem native Glenn Weiss, a leading critical voice in the field of public art and guide at the helpful blog Aesthetic Grounds, which both samples his critical eye and provides some of the best web trails at the nexus of disciplines and interests that converge in public art projects. Glenn has also pulled together videos of successful public art installations and events (Newcastle-on-Tyne's "Nocturne" bridge illumination project is featured in a video on the sidebar on this page), and offers photos of his visits to installations around the world.

One of Glenn's photo albums is actually a presentation of his on what makes successful "Icons in Public Art". Interestingly, he begins the presentation with the happy accident of the tin coffee pot, the unofficial hospitality symbol of his hometown, Winston-Salem. The over-sized coffee pot was an advertising gimmick, suspended in front of a store along old Main Street, and now sits in a grassy median island at the northern edge of Old Salem. Though it is a sentimental favorite of locals, I think it has surpassed the possible kitsch of its advertising origins by reminding residents and guests of something about the value of memory and hospitality in the town, not to mention the taste of the special coffee that is a part of Moravian Lovefeast traditions. In his Chapel Hill talk recently, Weiss noted that while critics often evaluate the success of public art based on a vocabulary of professional art criticism, communities consider public art successful if it becomes a cultural icon, or a photo opportunity; if it makes enjoyable a pedestrian space; or if it solves some other non-artistic problem for the area. The transportation corridor work coming to Winston-Salem offers plenty of opportunities both for "problem-solving" and successful place-making - in the eyes of the local community and of professional art critics. We've added this week a number of links to Public Art sites on the web that Glenn and others have suggested, as well as a sample of other helpful local links to those thinking about public art in Winston-Salem.

Welcome to the Conversation!

Thanks to those who took part in tonight's conversation at Green Street United Methodist Church about the possibilities for public art and enhanced design in the Business 40 bridge project. As tonight's panel discussion showed, the potential to re-imagine and re-present our city with the aid of transportation corridor renovation exists both along US 52/future I-285 and along Business 40, and helping create an infrastructure to address those opportunities will likely be a part of the future work of the Arts Council's Public Art and Design committee. But we'd like you to be part of the conversation now with us. How?

--Leave a comment here on your ideas for what's possible - what's exciting - what's important to say about our place in such a venue. Showplacing the work of well-known artists and designers? Integrating stories and symbols of what makes this "our place"? Brainstorm with us on how can we use art and design to make the necessity of transport corridors into opportunities to celebrate and build and reflect community. Is there a cultural icon or got-to-have-photo-opportunity down the road in this project?

--Participate in local bridge design meeting groups sponsored by NCDOT over the summer and insist that the talents of artists and designers be included in the plans for the corridor from the start, not after the fact. Keep in touch with plans for these sessions at the Business 40 website.

--Lobby regional and state leaders at NCDOT to include consultation with artists and aesthetic design teams in the earliest planning of the project.

--Stay tuned here for updates on future events promoting the opportunities of this project and other public art work. And tell your neighbors you want them to join in "this vision thing," too!

Special gratitude to our hosts at Green Street United Methodist Church for being yet again a great place for community building, and to Salem College Arts Management Students Sandy Romanac and Katie Gunter for their good work in promoting the Business 40 corridor opportunity.