THE WORKS p EVE ARTISTS ADORN THE NEW EACIEiTY
T he work of five Athens artists will be on
permanent display starting this week at
one of the most prominent downtown
locations: the new parking deck behind
the Georgia Theatre. Twenty-four metal panels
and eight long, fabric banners are scheduled
to be installed on the building this week,
as construction wraps up about two weeks
after the projected Aug. 31 deadline. When
complete, the new parking deck will add 500
spaces for downtown visitors and businesses,
six new storefronts and a rooftop office.
"We were trying to open it for the first
home game, but that's not going to happen—
but we're close," says Ken Crellen, SPLOST
project administrator for Athens-Clarke County.
The original plan, Crellen says, was to open
the deck to parking while the retail spaces
were finished. But that plan changed as work
on the retail spaces followed the timeline of
the rest of the construction.
"They said, 'Hey, we can turn it over to you
and you can open it,' but we didn't want to
mix people with construction," Crellen adds.
The artwork dressing up the outside of the
new parking deck was selected by an inde
pendent jury after the Athens Cultural Affairs
Commission issued a call for art in the spring.
The recently installed commission, which will
next work with the Classic Center and county
jail expansions to find places for public art,
collected a jury of representatives from down
town businesses, a neighboring church, an art
professor and other volunteers, says commis
sion chair Marilyn Wolf-Ragatz.
The metal panels and fabric banners were
part of the original design submitted by the
contractor, and the final designs were selected
from 52 metal panel submissions and 67 ban
ners. Wolf-Ragatz says she's excited to have
a part in installing public art on such a large
scale for downtown.
"I am passionate about art in everyone's
life, and giving artists a chance to be a part of
the community with art," she says. "And the
fact that the builder and the commission set
aside money for it, it's overwhelming for me...
It's just the beginning of what's going to be
the start of more public art in Athens."
The metal panels will be installed in vari
ous exterior openings in the parking deck's
stairwells, representing two designs each from
artists Chet Thomas and Elizabeth Dennen.
Thomas is a part-time artist and land
scape architect who also teaches yoga around
Athens. For his panels, he says he was inspired
one day while walking through the woods. The
resulting images, which will be translated to
metal, are half guitar, half leaf.
"Something to do with music just seemed
a given," he says, noting that he focused on
the shapes of the objects rather than colors.
"But I also work as a landscape architect, and
I work with nature... the idea just popped
into my head of putting those two things
together."
Dennen is a graduate student at UGA's
Lamar Dodd School of Art. She is a mixed-
media artist with a degree in drawing from
Georgia Southern, and her images show
abstract gingko leaves. Both artists focused
their subjects on shapes rather than colors,
because the final product will be cut shapes
within the panel.
The deck also will feature 2-foot by 40-foot
fabric banners hanging from the eight brick
columns lining the west side of the building.
Designs from local artists Heidi Hensley, Jared
Brown and Robert Clements pulled from the
sights and sounds around downtown Athens as
inspiration for the odd-shaped pieces.
Hensley, for example, started with the UGA
arch and then added cycling (a nod to the
annual Twilight Criterium), restaurants and
music in her three banner designs. A longtime
Athens musician who more recently found a
passion for painting, Hensley says she wanted
to show what downtown has to offer.
"They are all super bright colors and a real
loose style," says Hensley, whose three banners
focus on the University of Georgia and cycling,
downtown restaurants and bars and music. "I
did that because that's sort of how I envision
Athens—such a funky little town. So, I wanted
to show what downtown has to offer."
Hensley spent 10 years as a musician
before having her first child. She now has two
with a third on the way, and evenings spent in
clubs gave way to getting kids ready for early
bedtimes. That's how she turned to art as a
creative outlet.
"My degree is in art and architecture
design, and I started painting downtown
architecture, and people started to catch on,"
she says. "I've found out I love painting as
much as I love singing, and it's been well
received, and that's exciting."
Jared Brown, a course editor with UGA's
Distance Education program, used the call
for art and the unique banner size to teach
himself how to create art in a vector (digital)
format. Although Brown says art is a hobby,
his work has been featured in galleries across
the country, as well as in Craft magazine and
Herochan.com. He says he looked for down
town scenes to inspire his creations.
Of eight pieces submitted, three were
selected for banners. He says he thought the
digital format lent itself to being sized for a
banner.
"Mine are two-dimensional representations
of things you might see going downtown,"
he says. "It's people dining, someone garden
ing—which is more of a community thing—
and cycling."
Brown says the extremely vertical design
made the project a challenge, as did another
winning artist, Robert Clements. A professor
emeritus at UGA's Lamar Dodd School of Art,
Clements has created public art for decades.
His work has appeared in more than 100 exhi
bitions, and his sculptures can be found in
corporate art collections and museums, includ
ing the Smithsonian's National Museum of
American Art. But these skinny banners were
a first.
10 FLAGPOLE.COM • SEFfEMBER 14. 2011
