BENTONVILLE -- West High School juniors are adding to the city's growing repertoire of public art. The students created work that will be in a trio of pedestrian tunnels along the city's trail system.
The three projects made up half the pieces the City Council approved without discussion at its Tuesday meeting.
Public art
Public art is defined in the Bentonville Public Art Policy as art that “is visually or physically accessible to the public and that is acquired by city funds, donated to the city, borrowed or on-loan to the city, and/or placed on city maintained property.” Public art is vetted through the Public Art Advisory Committee prior to going before City Council for approval.
Source: Staff report
Michael Toney and Abby Fipps created Glow, a series of brightly colored, vertical stripes that line both sides of the tunnel walls. It will be placed in the tunnel on Wishing Springs Trail at North Walton Boulevard and Interstate 49.
Adrienne Day and Allie Bennett designed Shadowed Lights -- a three-panel mosaic illustrating Bentonville residents are shaped by the people they interact with and experiences they encounter, according to the students' written description of their piece.
Gaelen Elliott designed Future, which illustrates "how Walmart has created a community for younger generations, and how we are using it to create a new future for ourselves," she wrote in the piece description. It has a series of different size yellow boxes throughout the tunnel with different size blue circles sprinkled in between the boxes on the right side of the tunnel.
Future and Shadowed Lights will be installed in the tunnels on Wishing Springs Trail at North Walton Boulevard and the Crystal Bridges Trail at Northeast A Street. Which mural will be at each site is yet to be determined.
"It's really cool to see our ideas actually happening," Day said.
"And just knowing that people will see it," Bennett added.
The students are in Sarah Bartmier's sculpture and 3-D design class at West. Bartmier and four of her students attended Tuesday's council meeting.
"You can't comprehend -- OK this is going to be in a 15-foot tunnel that people can walk in," Elliot said of designing her piece. "It's unreal."
The Public Art Advisory Committee issued a call for proposals to the high schools. Eight proposals were submitted in September.
Bartmier said it was the perfect opportunity for her class as they didn't have many supplies at the beginning of the school year since West just opened, adding the project required less supplies and more thinking and planning, she said.
"They're going to be able to say, 'I designed this when I was in high school'," Bartmier said about her students when they're grown and venture through the tunnels with their children like she does hers now. "I think it's such a neat opportunity for our students, and (I) really appreciate the city for reaching out and taking them seriously."
The Public Art Advisory Committee saw the tunnels as a good canvas for displaying student artwork, Shelli Kerr, planning services manager, said Wednesday.
It gives students "an opportunity to express themselves through their artistic talents and share it with the Bentonville community," she wrote.
The three pieces are part of the larger project Tunnel Vision, which includes four additional pedestrian tunnels where commissioned artists will display work.
Aura Activity and Always a Pupil are in the South Bentonville Trail tunnel at South Walton Boulevard and in the North Walton Trail tunnel at North Walton Boulevard, respectively.
The council also approved artist Kenneth Siemens' mural Hello for the North Bentonville Trail tunnel at Northwest A Street. The mural will have a comic book styling similar to the mural on Northeast Second Street.
"I'd like to explore what every kid does when they walk through a tunnel," Siemens wrote in his application. "They yell 'hello' and check for an echo."
The mural includes a robot beaming out "hello" with a sonic blaster on one side and an astronaut saying "hello" into a handset on the other side of the tunnel. Visit Bentonville is paying for Hello which is estimated to cost less than $2,000.
The council voted to hire Memphis, Tenn., sculptor Tylur French to create two bike tower sculptures to be placed at the north and south gateways on the Razorback Greenway.
The towers will be 16 and 18 feet tall and use between 60 to 90 bicycles each. Each base will be a cylindrical sculpture with a niche on one side to house a bike pump and tool kit, according to meeting documents.
Each tower costs $11,480. The Public Art Advisory Committee has $20,000 for public art, and the remaining $2,960 will come from the Parks budget, according to meeting documents. The committee will seek donations for delivery and installation, which is estimated to be $2,820.
NW News on 10/27/2016