Brendan Greaves
Placemaking, Public Art, & Community Process: A Folklorist’s Perspective (Part 2)
Posted by Nov 10, 2011 0 comments
Brendan Greaves
I just returned from several days in Wilson, NC, where I am assisting with the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park Project. This ambitious project involves conserving twenty-nine of local artist Vollis Simpson’s monumental wind-powered kinetic sculptures and relocating them from a field outside his repair shop at a crossroads in rural Lucama to an expressly designed downtown sculpture park in nearby Wilson.
This weekend was the annual Whirligig Festival, a street fair inspired by the community’s affection for Mr. Simpson’s artworks, which already adorn several public locations downtown, providing an aesthetic identity and metereological indicator for Wilsonians.
Despite enthusiastic sanction and financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtPlace, the Educational Foundation of America, the North Carolina Arts Council, and many others, the true power of this remarkable placemaking project resides in its grassroots foundation.
The concept of using vernacular art to leverage investment in the community for the goal of cultural tourism and arts-driven economic development originated with local stakeholders concerned about both Mr. Simpson’s legacy (he is 92 and can no longer climb the 55-foot sculptures to grease bearings and repaint rusting surfaces) and the economic future of Wilson in a post-tobacco economy (Wilson once boasted the title of the world’s largest tobacco market).
Conservation of these complex pieces, constructed almost entirely from salvaged and surplus parts, is daunting, and to date, fifteen local retired and out-of-work mechanics and engineers have been hired to repair the pieces under the supervision of professional conservators, artists, and curators, with technical assistance from the National Park Service.
Beyond the significance of celebrating and recognizing the value of vernacular art and folk traditions to a community’s identity and economy, this placemaking project relies on folkloristic strategies for its success. Local folklorist Jefferson Currie has been conducting extensive oral histories and interviews with Vollis Simpson for almost two years now, acting as a liaison between the conservation team and the artist, researching and sourcing materials for replacement parts, and providing oversight of conservation processes.
The Whirligig Festival offered an opportunity to officially open the Repair and Conservation Headquarters located in the old Barnes Auto Parts warehouse to the public. Hundreds of visitors toured the facility, watched the conservation workforce at work, read interpretive panels about the project and the conservation process, and, with the help of a folklorist, recorded their own reminiscences of Vollis Simpson and his whirligigs in a Storytelling Studio.
The Headlight Gallery featured spinning lights in a dark warehouse bay, recreating a cherished community memory, the dazzling effect of a night drive to Mr. Simpson’s Lucama field, when one’s headlights illuminate the thousands of reflectors and road signs affixed to the whirling vanes. Taking the time to carefully engage both the artist and the community has been invaluable, informing all aspects of the project, from conservation, to park landscape design, to programming and education.
This folklore/public art approach has likewise been effective in informing other ambitious North Carolina Arts Council placemaking projects, including the African American Music Trails project, which has benefited from interviews and oral histories with nearly a hundred musicians from an eight-county region.
In Kinston, a hub of the project, a design team comprised of landscape architects Kofi Boone and Fernando Magallanes and artists David Wilson and Brandon Yow is collaborating to design a gateway art park celebrating and interpreting the vibrant local music heritage and providing an anchor attraction to a cultural district. The stories and ideas of local musicians, stakeholders, and city staff have shaped this process.
Similar work is underway in Lenoir, where artist Matthew Geller is designing seating and shelter for the Yadkin River Greenway on behalf of the Historic Happy Valley Byway project, another cultural tourism and arts-driven economic development project enriched by the research undertaken by folklorists hired to conduct cultural inventories of the area, compiling and interpreting the community narratives and place-based stories of local residents.
In order for placemaking to be truly effective, it is necessary first to understand the various, sometimes contested, meanings ascribed to the place in question. Such is the value of applying folkloristic strategies to creative placemaking.