The Greater Columbus Arts Council (Arts Council) is partnering with local visual artists Stephanie Rond and Catherine Bell Smith to offer an exciting community-wide arts project at the Columbus Arts Festival June 12-14, Sign Your Art—a project that might literally put ART on Columbus’ map.
During the festival the public can stop by the Community Arts Project booth and get creative by painting their own 6” x 8” tile in whatever way inspires them. Onsite, the project will be led by Rond and Bell Smith, and tiles painted by 64 local artists will be on view to offer additional inspiration.
Artists of all disciplines have been invited to create tiles so some may be paintings or collage while others might contain poems, photographs and/or representations of the performing arts.
Making a tile will be a fun interactive event, but it’s only phase one of the Sign Your Art project. After the festival, more than 300 of the tiles created by the public will be chosen to be part of a citywide, art installation later this summer. Pending approval by the Columbus Public Art Commission, the tiles will be added to carefully selected street signs throughout Columbus. Each sign will get an “anchor” tile created by one of the 64 local artists followed by four of the public-made art tiles. The tiles will remain installed for 30 days, and that is phase two of the Sign Your Art project.
Phase three to this unique Columbus project is to get included in Google’s Street Art project. A request has been made by the Arts Council and Rond to the Google Cultural Institute: Street Art Project to be included on their site of street art from around the world.
When seen from a map view, the pins of the 64 selected street signs will spell the word ART. The installation will only be up for a month, but if selected by Google for the Street Art Project, it will live on forever online.
“We want the project to be a physical manifestation of the new community-wide arts marketing campaign Art Makes Columbus/Columbus Makes Art that will launch at the festival, ” said Jami Goldstein, vice president of marketing, communications and events at the Arts Council.
WHEN: June 12-14
WHERE: The Columbus Arts Festival, the Sign Your Art project booth is on Civic Center Drive just north of the Rich Street Bridge.
For more information about the Arts Festival and the community project visit ColumbusArtsFestival.org.
GCAC Presents is a bi-weekly column brought to you by the Greater Columbus Arts Council – supporting art and advancing culture in Columbus – in partnership with the Columbus Arts Marketing Association, a professional development and networking association of arts marketers. Each column will be written by a different local arts organization to give you an insiders look at the arts in Columbus.