For the second year, the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County is raising art to new heights while sprucing up the roadways in and around Winston-Salem.
Five works have been chosen for ArtPop, one of the council’s Art in Unexpected Places initiatives, and last week they went up on billboards owned by Fairway Outdoor Advertising.
“The highways become a gallery for everyone to experience art,” said Jim Sparrow, president and chief executive of the arts council.
Photographs of the original artwork are printed on 14-by-48-foot vinyl sheets and displayed on billboards on major arteries in a 13-county region as the space becomes available.
This year’s works, which range from abstract and provocative to representational, are:
- “Shades of Super Moon,” watercolor, by Sharon Hardin, Winston-Salem;
- “The Lighthouse,” oil on canvas, by Skyler Holley, Winston-Salem;
- “Peony,” watercolor, by Barbara Mellin, Winston-Salem;
- “United we ... ,” photography, by Gary Taylor, Thomasville;
- “Pacifier,” fabricated, powder-coated, steel sculpture, by Bradley Tucker, Pilot Mountain.
“By partnering with Fairway Outdoor Advertising, we can take art to hundreds of thousands of travelers in and around our community,” Sparrow said. “These amazing works of art will delight all who see them as they go about other daily activities.”
The arts council pays for the creation of the artwork on the billboards, and Fairway is contributing the outdoor advertising space.
There were 42 submissions, and works were chosen through a juried process chaired by Cheryl Lindsay of Hanesbrands and an arts council board member. Other members of the panel were Saul Guinto Salinas, Que Pasa Media Network; Rosa Otero, Salem College art department; Tammy Evans, Winston-Salem State University, Department of Art + Visual Studies; Laura Hortal, Forsyth Technical Community College department chair — Humanities, Fine Arts and Communication; Tiara Reynolds, Fairway Outdoor Advertising art director; and Wendy Hickey, ArtPopStreet Gallery founder.
Artists in Forsyth, Stokes, Davidson, Surry, Davie and Yadkin counties were eligible to enter.
The arts council is also partnering with ArtPopStreetGallery of Charlotte, which created the program in 2014. The first official ArtPop program displayed works by 20 local artists on donated billboard space.
The artists don’t get paid, but they will get a mini-version of their billboards — about 10 inches wide and 7 inches tall.
And they get to see their artwork bigger than life as they drive the highways and byways in and around the City of Arts and Innovation