- December 26, 2024
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The Ormond Beach Arts District wants to bring more public art to the downtown.
On Wednesday, Oct. 25, the district's board approved an application for 11 traffic signal and streetlight cabinet box wraps within the downtown depicting works by local artists. This will also need to be approved by the Florida Department of Transportation and the Ormond Beach City Commission, but the board is happy that the initiative — which began three years ago — is finally moving forward.
"We are really fortunate in that our (city) planning department is supportive of public art," said Becky Parker, executive director of Ormond MainStreet and president of the Ormond Beach Arts District Board. "It really is a joint project with the city. ... I think the majority of the commissioners that we've spoken with are also supportive of public art as well."
Nine Ormond Beach artists have donated their art for the wraps, to be placed on select cabinet boxes on both sides of East and West Granada Boulevard from North Orchard Street to A1A. The artists — Lee Dunkle, Gregory Grant, Scott Hiestand, Karlene McConnell, Barbara Perrotti, Sang Roberson, Antoinette Slick, Akiko Sugiyama and Margaret Schnebly Hodge — all use a variety of mediums, from photography to paper collage and ceramics.
They have all been onboard for the past three years, said Julia Truilo, a member of the Ormond Beach Arts District Board who is a leading force in the public arts initiative. One of the first things the board had to accomplish before bringing this project forward was to help the city create a public art ordinance, which passed in 2021.
When the board envisioned the project, the idea was to honor the Ormond Beach "master" artists, Truilo said.
"One of the things about the arts in Ormond Beach is that there are tons of professional artists living in Ormond Beach ... but at least when we started out, there were very few places for them to show their work," Truilo said.
The "masters" have all lived in Ormond for 25 years or longer, are working professional artists and have their art displayed nationwide.
The cabinet wraps last about three years, so the board's goal is to renew the project based on that timeframe with fresh art.
Truilo said she looks at the project this way: People walk the downtown at least once or twice a week and after a while, you stop "seeing it."
"The idea of having public art, transient art ... is to allow your eyes to be refreshed by something new, to give you an opportunity to see work that you might otherwise never see, and to experience that," she said.
This initiative is also designed to promote pedestrian activity, inviting the public to look at the art up close.
"I'm really thankful to the artists who have held on with me this long and who are giving their work to the city," Truilo said.
Parker said that she hopes this project helps open more doors to be creative about public art in the downtown. The board's next focus, she said, is to expand the downtown mural program.
"We all travel to other places and other downtowns and other parts of the world and other parts of Florida where we see things that we love and we can glean ideas from that," Parker said. "I think that, to me, these types of projects are sort of 'all hands on deck' and the community should be a part of these processes."
