Local groups hope for more public artwork

As they switch from trash cans to traffic control boxes, round two of the Bloomington Area Arts Council’s Stop and StART program is expected to be even better than summer’s round one, said the council’s development director Ed Vande Sande.

“They’re those boxes that sit right on the intersection, and they’re really quite ugly,” Vande Sande said.

As with round one, the focus is not just about making Bloomington more aesthetically pleasing, he said.

“The idea was, ‘let’s get the community involved. ... How do we get the average artist, how do we get school groups, how do we get you and me involved in public art?’” Vande Sande said. “The real purpose of this is to make public art and the provision of public art available to everyone, not just the painters and sculptors who can charge $50,000 or $60,000.”

One of the winners in the last round was a group from Stone Belt, a local nonprofit organization that helps mentally disabled adults live as independently as possible in the community, said Larry Pejeau, director of Stone Belt’s arts and crafts division. The staff took drawings done by their clients and translated them to the can.

“It’s just another way to keep clients active,” Pejeau said. “It builds their self-esteem.”
Miah Michaelson, the city’s assistant economic development director for the arts, said this is part of a broader project.

“We’re calling them ‘pocket art projects,’” Michaelson said. “It’s sort of a bite-sized project.”

She said the inclusiveness and overall effect are two of the most important aspects.
“It keeps the visual landscape exciting,” Michaelson said. “It’s a project that can be adapted to different places.”

For Vande Sande, projects such as this one this exemplify the artistic freedom in Bloomington. He mentioned an incident concerning one of the trash cans from round one.

“I was spray-painting the sealant, and this woman comes up to me and says, ‘What are you doing?’ She thought I was vandalizing it. ... She was defending it,” he said. “That’s part of what makes this town so cool, that people do stuff like that.”

Vande Sande said after the original competition, the Bloomington Area Arts Council received many e-mails asking them to keep up the work.

“A lot of people didn’t understand what we were doing,” he said, adding that they anticipate many more applications this time around than in round one, which included no proposals from IU students. “I’d really love to have some submissions from campus. ... There are some really talented artists on campus.”

A jury of community residents with backgrounds in the arts will choose six artists or teams from the applicants, which Vande Sande said he thinks is the fairest process. This year, the jury will consist of members of the Bloomington Community Arts Commission. Winners will receive $250 and the paint for their boxes.

The boxes to be painted are located in a block-wide radius around the square downtown, Vande Sande said.


Proposal submission:
Proposals must include a painted, drawn or computer-generated design concept and a completed application, which can be downloaded from www.artlives.com. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 17. If the artist wants his or her submitted work returned, they should include a self-addressed and stamped envelope.