Downtown Boone Public Art Committee Charrette October 21

Story by Corinne Saunders

The DBDA’s Public Art Program annually installs a new sculpture at a site beside Boone Town Hall.

The Downtown Boone Development Association’s Public Art Committee will hold a charrette on Wednesday, October 21, from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at the Watauga County Public Library, which will allow both committee stakeholders and community members to voice their opinions regarding the future of the Public Art Program.

Stakeholders include the Watauga County Tourism Development Authority, Boone Area Chamber of Commerce, High Country Host, Watauga Arts Council, ASU’s Turchin Center and private businesses that have expressed an interest in the program.

The Public Art Committee, which was first created in 2006 when the Downtown Boone Development Association (DBDA) decided it wanted to start a public art program in Boone, is in the process of rewriting its master plan for the next three to five years.

“We will take a look at what we’ve done [and] we’ll re-look at the vision, re-look at sites and re-look at priorities,” said Mary Ella Baker, assistant director of the DBDA and administrator for the Public Art Committee.

The committee’s vision statement is to represent Boone’s diversity and character in its public art selections. Art concepts include the Blue Ridge Mountains—and its highlights, such as the Blue Ridge Parkway, mountain recreation, rhododendron and more—southern Appalachian cultural history and the eclectic character that exists because of the numerous subcultures found within downtown Boone.

Priorities, generated from public input and discussions held at committee meetings, currently involve downtown gateways, streetscape enhancements and the annually rotating sculpture installation at Boone Town Hall.

The committee-selected, potential public art sites include gateways to downtown Boone corridors, the pedestrian pathway between King Street and the Queen Street parking lot, street furniture and embellishments, the Howard Street Restoration Project and private property sites. Interior public spaces, such as the library and inside offices that are heavily trafficked by the public, are also under consideration as future sites in which the committee could display art.

Boone is considered part of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, and the Appalachian Regional Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts partnered to create the Appalachian Gateway Community Initiative Program, under which the Public Art Committee received a grant.

The Public Art Committee applied for the grant with the assistance of the High Country Council of Governments, and that grant enabled them to begin the first gateway project, which is located near the Watauga County Health Department and has been ongoing since the committee began, Baker said.

The project includes landscaping, selecting three artists to create benches and, with a grant from the chamber, making a “Welcome to Downtown Boone” sign, which the town will install, she said.

The committee recently created a “pocket park” beside the sculpture site at Boone Town Hall, which “increases the aesthetic value of the area,” Baker said.

The charrette will garner public opinion on whether the art program should continue down the same path focused mainly on sculptures or expand to include new projects and themes, Baker said. Those who attend will be asked to identify different types of projects they would like to see and the public spaces in which they would like to see them.

“We’ll talk about what we’ve done with Art Crawl and Art Crawl Presents…the most successful components and what components we’d like to change,” Baker said, adding that the Public Art Program took over the Art Crawl program this year.

The committee hopes to expand the Public Art Program to also include musical art. One aspect of this would be hosting concerts; something like the Concerts on the Lawn at the Jones House, Baker said. A lack of public space in which to potentially hold concerts may require the committee to partner with a business to host such musical performances, she added.

Another musical aspect under consideration is for the Public Art Program to adopt a program similar to Chicago’s cows—but substituting musical instruments typical of this region for the cows, Baker said.

As for the overall vision of the Public Art Committee, it will most likely continue working with the town for streetscape features, such as incorporating art into benches and creating more pocket parks and gateways, Baker said.

“I see us finding more ways to expand the Art Crawl, finding more ways to include musical components [and] finding more ways to expand the sculpture program, which is something that seems to have taken off in the community that people really enjoy,” Baker said.

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