HOPE, Ark.-Step lively when you're downtown in Hope, for you just might need to glance down and look at the art underfoot.
An ongoing project for all with or without artistic genius, Hope's new ARTpark has seen its first few plots of pavement enlivened with art. There are children's handprints, a green-eyed owl, a Pollock-esque splish-splash of warm colors, a forest setting and even, courtesy of an Argentinian artist, a red razorback.
"The ARTpark is all this. It will be 35,000 square feet, a little over," said George S. Smith, executive director at the Southwest Arkansas Arts Council, which is spearheading the project.
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Fall for Ballet
The ballet sponsored by the Arkansas Festival Ballet held Saturday November 22 at Wildwood Park for The Arts.
In all, the ARTpark will include at least 110 original works of art-all different styles, all different subjects, all different creators-on a city parking lot and its surrounding sidewalk. The art will be coated with a sealer to ensure it lasts at least seven years, Smith said, before it needs some painterly maintenance and refreshing.
The ARTpark sits in the 100 block of East Division Street in a city-owned lot near the train tracks, town visitor center and local arts council office.
You might walk all over the art, or you might find yourself, once the project is completed, parking your car on it. That's the way this communal public art project works, as envisioned by Smith.
The Argentinian interpretation of an Arkansas hog is a gorgeous rendition courtesy of the artist Mariano Padilla, who hails from Buenos Aires and, says Smith, heard about the ARTpark while visiting Little Rock. Smith would love to see him return to paint murals on the backsides of buildings surrounding the parking lot.
Just a few dozen feet away on the parking lot itself, colorful handprints appear to paw the pavement. "We're calling it 'Hope for Tomorrow,'" Smith said of this section. The prints, of course, are just a record of the different children who put down their hands there. It's in keeping with the democratic nature of the project. The hope is to have 700 handprints color the lot.
"Some people are not even artists. That's what we want," Smith said. They can put down a coat of white upon which the painter puts his or her work, or they can leave the concrete bare. They can clean it up, or perhaps someone can use a crack in the pavement as part of the art.
A 12-year-old girl from Blevins, who, says Smith, free-hands her incredible work on the pavement, added critters to this artistic hodgepodge, including a wolf and that owl.
"It's called 'A Blue Wolf,'" Smith said. The young artist wrote a poem about a blue wolf, and he'd love to see her add the poem to her painting.
Smith aims for a certain arrangement of the paintings inside the parking lot itself. They'll face the middle, so when walking through the lot one can see them correctly on either side. Some of the parking spots will be divided in half.
Project artists buy their own paint, and there are only a few stipulations, Smith said: no nudity, no politics, no religion. "That's simply because it's the city property," he said. They don't want to have to debate about approving this or not approving that.
"That's the only three rules," Smith said. "And each person has their own space." He did the Pollock-esque, drip-style section of sidewalk, employing a turkey baster. "I'm not an artist, but I love Jackson Pollock," he said.
At the corner on a blooming crepe myrtle and across the street on an elm tree, a Dallas-area artist added yarn bombing, ensuring even more funky, colorful artistry to attract the eyes of passersby.
"What's fun about art is it's for everybody," Smith said. Seeing people have fun with their individual plots on the sidewalk or lot is what it's all about, he believes.
In one section, three little girls from Dallas, Smith said, were working on their collective painting, which included, among other things, bananas of various colors. They went to lunch. "When they came back, (they saw) some kids had just picked up paints and painted that one," he said, pointing to some squiggly lines that were added. They'll just leave it as is.
In another sidewalk section, one artist will leave his forest depiction uncovered by a sealer so he can return to change it and repaint, season to season. "He wants it to be the painting that's never finished," said Smith, who notes they've received donations of paint and money. That will help make paint available to budding artists who may not have the funds.
"We buy paint for kids that don't have the money to buy paint," Smith said. "We don't want to exclude anyone." For Smith's birthday, he raised more than $345 on Facebook for the cause. "Stuff like that matters," he says.
Smith was actually inspired by a European trip to bring the ARTpark idea home to Hope. Before taking the job at SWAAC about a year ago, he and his wife vacationed there on a Viking cruise. At one tour bus stop, he found a cobblestone alley where the rocks were painted.
"Like right in the middle, like a lane. It was green, red, purple. It was nothing but painted rocks, and every single person that got off that bus took a picture of that alley," Smith recalled. "So I came back and said, 'Why can't we do that.'" He wanted to do a street, but that idea didn't fly because a street can't be closed. So, why not the city lot? The city council approved.
"The vision was to turn Hope from an afterthought into a destination," Smith said. With 35,000-square-feet of artwork, it's a place people will want to stop and see. "Because there's something different about it," he said.
There's been some pushback, he admits. Someone came up and asked Smith, "This isn't finished, is it"? Nope, not even close to being finished. And the more eclectic the better, Smith believes. He hopes the pace of painting picks up when it's not so hot outside this fall. Another person didn't relish the yarn bombing.
"It catches your attention," said his wife Bobbie Jean about the yarn wrapped around tree limbs.
The ARTpark is just one of a number of ways that SWAAC brings art enrichment to the Hope community, which is part of the agency's mission. The Arts Council itself is 32 years old.
SWAAC has partnered with Hempstead Hall for a performance series. They bring the arts into the Hope classrooms, too, through the Artist in Education program. There are also art exhibits and an upcoming Summer Poetry JAMboree scheduled for the end of July and beginning of August, and SWAAC has begun planning a historical time capsule, among its future projects.
For now, look for the Hope ARTpark to come alive with paint on the pavement, one section at a time, one artist at a time.
(For more information or to inquire about joining the project, contact George Smith at 870-777-8200.)