Billboards aim to get Newark talking
NEWARK — Sheilah Wilson hopes the community as a whole experiences her public-art project as deeply as some fifth- graders have.
For the second year, the professor at Denison University in nearby Granville has arranged for thoughtprovoking art to be placed on billboards in and around the Licking County city.
Last year, two billboards contained a Yoko Ono saying, “Imagine Peace.”
This year, the project has
expanded to six billboards, containing a photo by Felix Gonzalez-Torres of an empty, unmade bed with two indented pillows.
The billboards, installed in February, will remain up through April 6.
The idea, Wilson said, is simply to compel people to stop and think.
“I’m committed to the idea of a disruption in our normal viewing experience,” said the associate professor of studio art and photography. “And I’m really aware of wanting to have a conversation, to use art as a catalyst for conversation.”
That’s what happened on a recent Friday in a McGuffey Elementary School classroom.
Although the billboards are up for all to see, they serve an educational purpose, too. Wilson and some Denison students are leading workshops for three fifthgrade classes and a drop-in teen center in Newark.
At McGuffey, Denison students Gemma Aldana and Armando Roman showed the students a slide of Gonzalez-Torres’ work — “Untitled (billboard of an empty bed)” — and asked them to say the first thing that came to mind.
First came some obvious suggestions:
Eventually, some deeper ideas emerged:
Torres made the piece as a memorial to his partner, who died of AIDS in 1991.
“They seemed to understand the theme of relationships,” Roman said of the students. “I’m glad they were able to extrapolate some of that meaning.”
After the presentation, the students were given a disposable camera and told that they had a week to take photos that fit the project theme of “Who Do You Love? What Do You Love?”
When the class ended, the fifth-graders streamed out, talking excitedly about taking photos of soccer balls and family pets.
With their photos and any other elements they want to include, the kids will make a collage. The results will be published in a newspaper to be displayed at the Denison Art Space, in downtown Newark, beginning in April.
“I like that this is an opportunity for them (the students) to put their work out there,” said Emily Cline, who teaches art at McGuffey. “Usually, their art is only exhibited in school, so this is exciting that other people will get to come and see it. It makes their work feel valuable and takes it to a different level.”
Last year, Denison covered the estimated $5,000 cost of the Yoko Ono billboards. This year, the six billboards and roughly 100 disposable cameras cost about $17,000; grants from the Ohio Arts Council (nearly $5,000) and the Licking County Foundation ($6,000) paid for most of those expenses, with Denison picking up the rest.
One of her motivations, said Wilson, 41, was to add some contemporary art to the Newark community. The city has public art but mostly in the form of sculpture, said Connie Hawk, director of the Licking County Foundation.
“This is another opportunity for everybody to connect with art on their own terms,” Hawk said. “People are able to see something interesting that evokes thoughts or emotions, or even just, ‘What is this, and why is this here?’
“That is valid, too.”