“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” ~ Edgar Degas
With its public art commission only eight years old, Wake Forest is increasingly a town where public art is visible and exciting.
All you have to do is to talk with the commission’s chairman, John Pelosi, or with any of the members, Rebecca Christian, Sharon Pullen, Elizabeth Hayes, Jim Wallace, Julie Young, Gail Joyner and Lauren Zenker.
Or you can walk around downtown to see the two current temporary projects: Spotlight on Local Artists and Sculpture Wake Forest. Both feature art that is displayed for a year and then replaced. The first edition of both has been on display for a year and will be replaced later this summer so look quick for the art and sculpture.
The Spotlight on Local Artists art works – four paintings enlarged to fit on 4’ X 8’ vinyl – are displayed on town-owned buildings and include Rain Forest by Gayle Blackerby on the north wall of the Wake Forest Police Department; Three Is Company by Linda Burrell on the Flaherty Park Community Center; Neuse River Crossing by Anne Howard on the Wake Forest Facilities Building (former laundromat on Brooks Street; and Creation by Beth Massey at the sprayground next to the Alston-Massenburg Center.
The local artists either live in Wake Forest or are a member of the Wake Forest Guild of Artists. They send a painting to the commission and its artist selection committee made up of commission members and downtown business people select those to be displayed. The same selection committee also reviews the sculptures submitted by sculptors across the country and selects seven each year.
The current sculptures are the colorful Popsicles in front of the Depot Parking Lot; the equally colorful Mountain Landscape at the corner of South Taylor Street and Elm Avenue; the quiet Turning Point next to an entrance path in Miller Park; Transformation in front of the Renaissance Centre Art Annex; the lacy Oak Leaf Horizon between Wake Forest Town Hall and the Facilities Department (former laundromat); Bench 5, a 2” X 4” wooden construction in Holding Park; and Cloud at the Smith Creek Soccer Center.
There will be a reception on Saturday, July 28, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Renaissance Centre to unveil the sculptures and art selected for 2018-2019. Maps showing the locations of all will be available.
“There needs to be more art on the greenways,” Pelosi said this week, and a somewhat whimsical project proposes to put a lot of it on some unlikely structures – the above-ground sewer structures next to many greenways that can resemble giraffes. There are 70 in all, all owned by the Raleigh Public Utilities Department, but the commission plans to start small if Raleigh agrees – just 24 structures along the Sanford Creek Greenway.
An organizing committee made up of members from the greenways advisory board and the public art commission will solicit ideas for painting the structures from individuals and community groups, approve those that are suitable and provide the paint and other supplies.
There is a plan for permanent art works along the greenways and in parks, a plan drawn up by the artist husband and wife team of Jim Hirschfield and Sonya Ishii, who now have a $100,000 grant from the commission to plan a band shelter for the Joyner Park amphitheater and incorporate art into the Joyner Park Community Center now being constructed. They will present the plan for the band shelter to the Wake Forest Town Board at its June 19 meeting.
For its first project the public art commission asked for proposals for benches in the first White Street streetscape project and chose two. Those are the stone Rain Gate bench with a copper triangular vat to catch rain and distribute it down a series of bells into the water garden in front of the Wake Forest Chamber of Commerce parking lot and the brick Leaf Shade bench with copper leaves above at the Jones Avenue square.
Money for the art works and grants comes from 1 percent of the approved budget for capital improvement projects.
