SECCA Steps Up: "Inside-Out"

Great news to start a year of public art. SECCA, Winston-Salem's Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, is sponsoring a series of seven prominent exhibitions of public art in the city in 2009. As the Winston-Salem Journal's John Railey noted in a recent editorial, SECCA is itself closed for all of 2009 in order to undergo major renovations to its building, and could have been forgiven for staying out-of-sight for a year as it revamped. Instead, they have boldly announced a plan to broadcast their mission of engaging the community with best in current art by turning their museum "Inside-Out," the title of this series of shows. You can hear SECCA's Curator of Contemporary Art Stephen Matijcio and Curator of Education Michael Christiano talk with WFDD's Bradley George about the concept for the series in this Triad Arts Up Close radio/podcast interview.

First up in the SECCA lineup is wood artist and sculptor Charlie Brouwer, a Radford University art professor. On the last two weekends in February, Brouwer will invite the town to lend him its old wooden ladders - and any war stories attached thereto - for a month-long show at Tavern Meadow at Old Salem. Brouwer has wonderful gifts for pulling beauty and meaning from woods, from intimate carvings to large assemblages. In Winston-Salem, he'll use the familiar, the community meeting ground of Old Salem and your own garage artifacts, to present an installation of new meaning and depth by which to welcome spring. We'll post more details here on Brouwer's wants and display dates as they become available.

What a nice connection between the craft traditions of Salem and the art aspirations of our modern town - thanks, SECCA! All images from Charlie Brouwer's website.

Proof Everything Ends Up on the Web Eventually

For those who want to imagine a different driving experience on Business 40, I offer a palpable reminder of what it currently is like. An unknown YouTube poster, "linesinthesand," has posted an extended video from his dashboard as he cruises from the west side of Forsyth County, first on US 421, and then to the east along Business 40. The real-time driving experience of the bridges in the planned Business 40 reconstruction begins at 5:19 into the clip at Fourth Street, and ends at 6:28 of the clip at Church Street. Good music here, too, though I personally prefer ZZ Top's "La Grange" as a soundtrack when motoring for pleasure. The groove in this video takes me back to days patrolling Gaston County in the late '70s in a mellow cream-yellow-and-tan Cutlass Supreme. "Opera windows:" now that was public art!

Guess Which City

Here's a job advertisement just received from public art advocates in a North Carolina town looking to build on its cultural advantages. Take a guess: where in North Carolina might such an effort exist?

"X" seeks an entrepreneurial and visionary leader for the position of Executive Director. In fulfillment of its mission to “promote, inspire, encourage and support visual arts for uplifting the human spirit in the community,” "X" commissions public art, organizes exhibitions of public art, presents educational art programs, and supports community arts events with investments of artistic, financial and volunteer resources.

The Executive Director will provide vision for the fulfillment of our organization’s artistic mission. In collaboration with our Board, the Executive Director will identify and prioritize opportunities for new art commissions and programs; identify and recruit artists to participate in competitive selection processes; recruit financial and human resources; and implement commissions and programs. Experience in the management of public art projects; recruitment and organization of volunteers; and fund-raising through grants, contracts, and personal solicitations are required.

The Executive Director will work with the our Board to develop and implement a strategic plan that will address the opportunities and challenges of a community experiencing dynamic growth, one that values its history while welcoming national acclaim as one of the best places to live in the United States. The Executive Director will develop creative partnerships throughout the community – with the town government, private corporations, schools, and non-governmental agencies – to engage personal participation and financial investment in the visual arts.

Now one might think that such an endeavor would be happening in a town many call a "city of the arts," a town that hosts the flagship arts educational institution in the state's university system, a town that boasts the newest member of the state's art museums and another facility hosting a premier collection of American art. The fact that same town has a thriving downtown arts district with galleries, lofts, shops, and restaurants - and is home to the first local arts council in America - would have you nodding affirmatively that that surely sounds like something a town like that would be doing.

But that's not happening in my town, Winston-Salem, the fourth-largest in the state. Instead look to Cary, which a generation ago was a 10,000-person one-stoplight bump on the back-road trip from my dorm in Chapel Hill to see friends in Raleigh. Cary is the fastest-growing suburb in the state, so fast in fact (over 120,000 now, half a Winston) that not too long from now folks may talk about flying into Raleigh-Cary, not just Raleigh-Durham. Befitting a town that sees its best days as both now and in the future, Cary - with a public art plan and the help of Cary Visual Art, Inc., the group in search of a Director in this ad - is intentionally planning beauty and inspiration as part of its rapid growth and ongoing community re-imagining.

In Raleigh-Cary, each community, Raleigh and Cary, has an organization and a plan to accept, site, acquire, and maintain public art. In Winston-Salem, neither Winston nor Salem do. What we are left with here is the "-". Would that we could fill in this blank.

Showing Pasts and Aspirations Along a Highway

Artist Janet Echelman was one of the presenters at the Public Art 360 symposium in Chapel Hill last spring. In browsing through YouTube for public art ideas, I ran across this sculpture of hers done a few years ago for the culturally rich city of Porto, Portugal. After opening with a quick overview of the artist's other works, the video takes you through five years of development and installation on "She Changes," a signature piece which captures the city waterfront's heritage as a fishing community and puts it in the sky above a highway where imaginations and the wind can play with it. The video shows how drivers approach the work, measuring 160 feet tall and 300 feet wide, and then how pedestrians enjoy it as well.

On the YouTube site the comment section under the video is half-filled with snarky comments about the work, half-filled with serious ones (heaven help those who try to please the tastes of the drive-by verbal assassins of the net). The piece was not inexpensive. I don't know how much of its 1.6 million dollar cost was paid for with private funds and how much with public; nor how much of its costs were for land acquisition, or materials, or construction. But as a piece of inspiration, and an authentic jumping-off from a community icon - the fishing net - it works for me.

Art doesn't "work" for everyone in the same way - as the sampled audience in the video shows. Really good works assuredly don't. But what an aspiring, confident statement. I lift a glass of tawny Oporto product in admiration....

Top image from Sculpture.org website, courtesy Florence Lynch Gallery; photo by Joao Ferrand and David Feldman.