The Public Art Corps was forged through a partnership between the Springville Regional Service Coalition and Springville Center for the Arts, funded through the Coalition’s Drug Free Communities Grant. The goal of this grant is to create connections in the community that encourage the reduction of youth substance abuse. The program resulted in the creation of a corps of high school-aged artists that deployed numerous temporary and permanent art installations in the Village of Springville in the summer of 2021.
A decade ago the Center hired its first theater interns to engage youth in performing arts workshops for the summer. In 2018, the first visual arts intern position was added and a public art program was forged. Since this time the Center has installed numerous murals, including in collaboration with Albright Knox.
As a result of the pandemic, community involvement, especially among youth, has been particularly low. Inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the program employed out-of-work youth to facilitate community improvement. Led by staff and two visual arts interns skilled in mural painting and design, the Public Art Corps, through direct participation, gave a group of students a unique and valuable experience while impacting the physical world and community in a positive way.
To become a member of the Public Art Corps, these students went through an application and interview process. They received training in public art’s relationship to our environment by becoming assistants in a workshop at the high school with artist Max Collins. They created a mural on a utility box in the Center’s monarch waystation park, installed a trail of fiddles painted on the sidewalks for Springville’s Fiddlefest, scouted locations for public art and installed five murals. This included assisting visiting artists such as Nghi To and Alisia Glasier with their murals Sunday Morning and Crow and Deer– Sweet Companionship.
The Public Art Corps also self-directed multiple projects for Promenade, an event that encouraged residents to stoll the streets for two evenings in August. The first was a Musical Animals Scavenger Hunt conceived by Corps members Maggie Boyle and Olivia Schindler. They created a series of designs, painted these on the windows of ten businesses along Main Street, talked to each of these business owners and attended Springville’s Historic Preservation Meeting to gain permission for the project. Another Corps member, Serena Salamone, completed a yarn bombing project in the pocket park next to Main Street and designed a wheatpasted mural that was installed on the side of a storefront during the event.
View the photo report from this summer program here!
