The canvas of Clinton’s landscape got a spectacular facelift last week with the installation of two new public art pieces — one on the campus of Sampson Community College beside the walking trail, the other closer to downtown at the All America Park off Fayetteville Street and within eye shot of students at Sunset Elementary School.
The two pieces of art — Blue Butterfly at SCC and Midsummer at All America Park — are uplifting and invigorating, both for those who get to take them in as they pass by and for those who take a few minutes to stop and gander. It’s even more so for the city, itself.
While naysayers, posting on social media about “our tax dollars hard at work,” are likely being facetious when they talk about the sculptures, the truth is, they are correct. The public art is our tax dollars hard at work, albeit very few of those dollars in the scheme of things, and they are at work in a good way.
While the cost to lease these beautiful pieces of art from the talented artists who created them is minimal and divided among foure local entities, the residuals reaped by the city are many and long-lasting.
The public art project is a partnership between the city of Clinton, the Sampson Community College Foundation, the community college and the Sampson Arts Council, groups who joined to add unique touches to the city’s All America Park and the SCC, at the western entrance to Clinton.
The art pieces show involvement, they show growth and they show an embrace of the arts, things that tell industrial and business prospects that we are an up-and-coming city, accepting of change, welcoming of new things and supportive of innovation and creativity.
It shows progress and, at the same time, it shows the spirit of community that Clinton and its mother county Sampson are known for.
Our neighbors to the northeast, in Goldsboro, have done the same, but on a larger scale, dotting their main thoroughfare through downtown with park benches, round-abouts and wonderful pieces of art that, like Clinton’s, are on loan from artists, a lease arrangement that allows for the exhibition of beautiful sculptures that likely would be difficult to afford if obtained any other way.
Goldsboro’s downtown has become an attraction and people come from miles around to marvel at the beauty.
We believe Clinton has the same opportunity to attract visitors because of our new and much welcomed nod to the arts.
Those within the alliance forged to bring Clinton these art projects should be commended for their work and forward thinking actions, providing Clinton with a three-dimensional look that says ‘hey come look at us, visit, sit a while and enjoy this city we call home.’
We applaud their efforts.
And we urge anyone who might be a naysayer to take time to actually go visit the pieces of art, look at their detail, take in the beauty and take pride in something that is actually bigger than ourselves, helping the whole of a community rather than one segment.