Community debates dreams

With a slide show of diverse community artwork flashing behind them, panel members from varied backgrounds discussed with area residents Tuesday the impact and success of this year’s community art project.

Attendees seemed enthusiastic about the project, but other members of the community have recently called art-themed initiatives into question.

The Chapel Hill Public Arts Commission’s 2005 community art project allowed community members to create art in response to this year’s theme: artists’ dreams.

The artwork is displayed in eight venues across Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Tuesday’s panel included Valerie Yow, a historian, psychologist and writer from Chapel Hill; Aaron Nelson, executive director of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce; Kenneth Jjombwe, an eighth-grader at Culbreth Middle School; Emily Mills, a local textile artist; and Kate Flory, executive director of the commission.

“We are so used to having the representation of symbols like McDonald’s, and suddenly we have access to these unique images,” Yow said of the community project. “I think it’s so exciting.”

Other panel members shared her sentiments.

“We have definitely touched on something that seems to be resonating with the community,” Flory said. “It has turned into a window of what our community thinks about itself.”

The project received more than 300 submissions from artists ranging in age from 1 to 98.

But while “Dream” is popular among residents, another one of the commission’s public arts programs, Percent for Art, has been criticized by the town’s budget review committee.

The committee recommended to the Chapel Hill Town Council on April 11 that it review and consider revising the program, which devotes 1 percent of public projects’ budgets to public arts.

Committee member Joe Capowski said the suggestion comes in response to plans for using public art at the new town operations center.

“No one anticipated a $42 million town expense and 1 percent of it going to public art,” he said. “We felt that it was excessive to spend that much money for public art in that location.”

The committee recommended that the art portion of the project be limited to $100,000 and be placed more prominently in the town.

Council member Ed Harrison said the council has not had a chance to discuss the suggestion.

“That’s reasonable,” he said of the committee’s idea. “That’s probably something that should be explored.”

But council member Dorothy Verkerk said the program could be a revenue generator — as well as an expense — for the town by attracting people to the area.

“People don't go to Florence for the leather goods,” she said.

 

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.