BRISTOL, Va. – As Bristol, Va., city workers finish putting his sculpture into place outside the Bristol Public Library, Marvin Tadlock stands by in attentive supervision.
It’s the fourth Art in Public Places installation for Tadlock, a sculpture professor at Virginia Intermont College whose latest piece, “Ararat,” invokes a feeling of hopeful anticipation as Noah’s Ark, the Biblical boat that survived a great flood, comes to rest on the mountaintop.
His sculpture is one of eight that were selected for a yearlong installation in the sixth year of Art in Public Places, a donor-funded public art display put on around town with the help of both Bristol, Va., and Bristol, Tenn. The sculptures were installed Monday morning.
“It’s speaking to me, but I don’t know what it’s saying yet,” said Barbara Gentry, of Bristol, Tenn., as she admired Tadlock’s sculpture shortly after its installation on Monday. “I will come down and study it.”
Tadlock said what he likes about the sculpture is the window effect, as human figures lean through the open space with abstract birds perched above.
At nearby Anderson Park, sculptor Mark Connelley said he envisions his sculpture, “Drekar,” on the prow of a Viking ship, perhaps with shrubs to suggest a hull and a tree for a sail.
“Instead of the water, it’s sailing across a park,” he said of the sculpture, whose name is a Norse word meaning “dragon ship.”
For now, it’s on a concrete pad along a path into the park, a tall, modern steel figure that Connelley said has been mistaken for a chess piece, a Trojan horse, a musical note and even a giant chicken.
“I love that,” he said. “People can see all kinds of things into it.”
Candy Snodgrass, president of Art in Public Places, said the display of public art is partly about the conversation it creates.
“You always have people who love the pieces and you have people that hate the pieces,” she said,” but at least you have the conversation.”
She said she believes the conversation has changed since 2006, when the first installation of modern art sculptures generated a firestorm of controversy.
The idea, said Snodgrass, was to bring public art to downtown Bristol so those who never have the opportunity to leave town could have the opportunity to see art close to home.
While some people praised the city for being forward-thinking in welcoming the modern art exhibition, others criticized the sculptures’ non-traditional appearance.
“I think people are used to it. I think they’ve come to expect it,” Snodgrass said of the annual installation six years later. “You see public art in big cities, and now you’re starting to see it in smaller cities.”
Bristol was the first of the Tri-Cities to put up the public art displays; Kingsport began a similar program about a year later.
Snodgrass said this year was the first time that the display, which costs about $20,000 a year, went up in both Bristols at the same time.
She said the sculptures are chosen by a juror in a contest, and each artist whose piece is selected is awarded $1,000 for the yearlong display. Art in Public Places decides where to place the sculptures, but then each city manager must approve the placement and coordinate with city departments for the installation.
On Monday, Bristol, Tenn., city workers dug shovels into the grass at Anderson Park, making trenches for the legs of Adam Walls’ sculpture “Figures,” with equipment standing by to physically move the heavy pieces.
The large, steel sculpture features two large human-like shapes, each with a concave piece missing. In the center is a ball that would fit when they’re together but instead is on the ground between them.
“It’s two people that are separated, but they share some love thing between them. Maybe it’s a child. Maybe it’s something else,” explained Walls.
“I think that they were together at one time and when they split in half, there was this one thing that was shared that neither one of them could take with them all together.”
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