Never a town to let itself be overtaken by sadness, two initiatives are creating beauty where there was once desolation.
- A sculptor named Rick Brown is working on a site-specific sculpture that will memorialize the colossal 300-year-old tree that was felled in McIntire Park during the June 24 microburst. NBC29 notes that the tree has survived the "Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and highway construction," and, it should be said, the advent of mass paper production. Sounds like Brown and some helpers have already segmented the tree, and will fan planks around its stump. The sculpture will be done by the end of the week and will be one of this year’s ArtInPlace exhibits. Read more about it here, or go check out an ArtInPlaceInProgress at McIntire Park.
- Sarah Lawson, who by day is communications manager at Piedmont Council for the Arts, has launched an initiative called CommonPlace Arts that will fill empty Downtown storefronts with local art. Lawson recently got the big O.K. on the initiative from the Downtown Business Association and says that she hopes to have an empty storefront filled with the good stuff by October’s end. "We will not function as a gallery," writes Lawson on the CommonPlace Arts blog, "but rather as an artspace that is strictly visible from the sidewalk." Similar initiatives exist in cities nationwide, like Milwaukee, New York and Portland. Find out more here.
What bad thing needs to be made beautiful?
