Public artwork should be commissioned each year in Athens.
Congratulations to the city arts commission and city council for agreeing to have artist Jolena Hansbarger's mural accepted for installation on ARTS/West's retaining wall on April 17. It has unnecessarily been a long time coming since the wall was built.
Complaints by members of the West Side Neighborhood Association, as expressed by member Joan Kraynanski, were the same against my proposed mural for the old city retaining wall on North Shafer Street in 2005. That year, WSNA members, including former city council members Paul Wiehl and Carol Patterson, were totally against my mural ON LINE, "a study in Line." I went ahead anyway and finished the mural in early August, 2005. I painted three more murals on the wall before it was bricked over in 2010.
In 2006, Patterson formulated rules for public art on city property, implemented the city "graffiti" law and established the volunteer city arts commission. There are no city rules for artwork to be installed on private property in town.
While I was painting my mural in 2005, Wiehl stopped by. Behind my back he said, "city council thinks you're a putz." I reared back and said to him, "That's because y'all are aesthetically illiterate," and returned to my mural painting. Later, I learned the word putz is a Yiddish word meaning "fool" or "saphead." I seriously doubt council members said that about me. I was surprised at the negative attitude expressed by Wiehl, Patterson and WSNA members.
Hansbarger's community participation mural will only be the arts commission's second art work it has implemented in its 10-year history. It would include OU students. (The Roundabout circle is not art but landscaping using an architectural concept.) The commission's first artwork was the OU prof. Jim Eldridge mural in the Roundabout tunnel for $15,000. During that decade, we should have had an artwork — mural or sculpture — commissioned each year for our five parks, the exterior of the Skate Bowl, in front of the community center, the perimeter of the Passion Works fountain on East State Street (to block out the sight of trucks, city equipment and cars) and in other city venues.
Since 2006, commission members should have sought public art funds from the Ohio Arts Council and other art supporters to supplement city art funds. It should start to pursue outside support so we can have significant public artworks throughout our city from now on. Local media should be active in promoting and picturing public artworks.
John Spofforth is an artist and an Ohio University School of Art alumnus.
