The city of Watkinsville is beginning to more widely embrace its brand as “The Artland of Georgia,” using a $5,000 state grant to have pieces of public art installed around the city, and intentionally allocating city funding for the arts.
The ultimate goal of this renewed focus, according to Mayor Charles Ivie, is to assemble enough funding at some point in the future to install “a signature piece” of art in the city.
In the meantime, though, the city is focusing simply on integrating more art more fully into the fabric of the community, according to city council member Marci Campbell, the city’s representative on a newly formed arts committee comprising artists, art aficionados, art instructors and other citizens.
“There are a great number of talented artists in Watkinsville, and in Oconee County and Athens,” Campbell said. “We want to embrace those artists, to show how much we appreciate the arts.”
In connection with the $5,000 grant from the Georgia Council for the Arts, the arts committee put out a request for submissions to artists across the state. Within the space of the month that the request was active, the city received 36 submissions from 14 artists. The committee eventually picked five pieces for display, including one each from well-known local artists Bob Clements and Stan Mullins.
The pieces will be on loan to the city for a year, with the grant covering an honorarium for each of the artists, along with expenses associated with installation such as a concrete pad installed at the AT&T building off Main Street for the work on display there.
In addition to the Clements piece, titled “Circus Acrobats,” and the Mullins piece, titled “Hands of Respect,” the Council for the Arts grant is bringing in pieces from Ben Lock, an art instructor at the University of North Georgia, Joni Younkins-Herzog, who earned a fine arts degree from the University of Georgia, and William Massey, whose resume includes art therapy work in a number of health care settings in Atlanta.
As installation of the pieces has begun around Watkinsville, excitement about the city’s newly emerging commitment to public art has blossomed, according to Campbell.
“We have businesses asking for them” to be installed on their property, Campbell said.
The committee’s informal plans are to continue the public art installation initiative beyond this year, Campbell said, rotating the installations to different locations throughout the city. If grant funding isn’t available, it’s possible that the city could use its own funds for continuing what Campbell is calling the “pop-up sculpture” program.
At present, there are a few thousand dollars in the city budget earmarked for art programs, but the city will continue to allocate money to the arts with an eye toward building those funds over time, according to Watkinsville Mayor Charles Ivie.
In addition to installing public art around Watkinsville, the city is also refurbishing and adding to its stock of “art boards” — large boards that can accommodate various types of art — as part of renewing its commitment to the “Artland” designation, Ivie said.
While the “Artland” theme was adopted largely in connection with the potters working in the community some years ago, the city’s art boards have played a major role in the resurgence of that identity.
Last summer, Ivie said, the Georgia Municipal Association put out a call for member cities to submit artworks for the group’s Savannah convention, and the art board sent to the event from Watkinsville, produced in association with the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation, was one of 33 pieces chosen for display.
OCAF, a nonprofit organization founded in 1994 that hosts noted art exhibitions like the national juried Southworks show, and offers a wide variety of art education opportunities, is headquartered in School Street facilities and has been a backbone of the community’s commitment to the arts.
The city’s public art initiative is, Ivie said, an important signal so that the community “can see were trying to live up to” the Artland designation. And while an ultimate goal of the growing commitment to living up to the long-standing designation is aimed in large part at boosting tourism, it also will have an impact on people just passing through the city, not to mention residents of Watkinsville and the surrounding area who are likely to see the sculpture installations on a daily basis, according to the mayor.
“It’s very important,” Ivie said.
