Wheel Mobile to put arts crafting on road
NW Arkansas will get custom vehicle
FAYETTEVILLE — The idea was simple: take the opportunity to create art to people instead of making them go to the art.
But the staff at the Creative Community Center in Fayetteville couldn’t find any examples of a mobile art studio, so they designed their own.
Executive Director Barbara Putman dubbed the vehicle, which will be equipped with potter’s wheels, the “Wheel Mobile.”
“This is about bringing the arts to people who don’t have access to the arts,” she said. “It’s a special opportunity.”
While the mobile studio will house all sorts of arts classes, the center specifically wanted to have potter’s wheels. The ability to make pottery can be especially
limited because of costs, and the demand for pottery classes has grown in the area, Putman said.
The Creative Community Center team plans to go to schools across the Northwest Arkansas area where students can experience pottery, perhaps for the first time, and other art at no cost to those schools. The goal is to serve 500 to 600 people free of charge at schools and nonprofits in the first year, Putman said.
She said the center didn’t want to gut a school bus or an already-made vehicle, so the project requires some creative engineering and specialty work.
After looking around, the center decided Winnebago’s specialty vehicles division seemed like the perfect choice to bring to life the vision of a mobile art studio with pottery wheels.
The division’s website boasts that “a vehicle from Winnebago Industries Specialty Vehicle Division can be anything you want it to be.” The division is known for building mobile dental or bloodmobile vehicles.
Putman and a few others made their way to Forest City, Iowa, in November to check on the customization. She said the Winnebago team working to design and redesign the interior seemed as excited about the project as the people at the center.
The Winnebago team said the 33-foot vehicle with nine pottery wheels and pull-down tables is the most innovative they’d ever built, she said. It will also be equipped with motion stabilizers, storage space, two sinks and traps to hold clay water for proper disposal.
The center applied for and received a Walton Family Foundation grant to purchase, design and equip the Wheel Mobile. The foundation also offered a one-to-two matching fund — where every $2 raised by the center from sponsors is matched by $1 from the foundation — for the mobile arts education programming, Putman said.
The Wheel Mobile will be an on-the-road extension of what the center offers, including multiple types of art classes for children and adults. The center will be able to rent out the vehicle for events and offer paid classes on the Bentonville Square, for example, reaching people who may not be able to travel to its Fayetteville location, Putman said.
Ashley Byers, the center’s education program manager, was essential in the project’s inception, Putman said. Byers had worked in Springfield, Mo., with a vehicle that could transport art equipment, though it had to be unloaded.
She said she was able to offer outreach programming to schools and youth programs that didn’t have art resources, especially for clay, and reach hundreds of people she wouldn’t have otherwise.
Making pottery isn’t something everyone typically gets to experience, but the results of the craft can be seen everywhere.
“Being able to see it and understand how it works changes the way you look at your everyday objects, which is kind of magical,” she said.
The Wheel Mobile’s grand reveal will take place during the Creative Community’s Center 10-year anniversary celebration in April.