project overview
VANCE AVE COMMUNITY | Vance Ave
Artist: TBD
Budget: $25,000 (includes three finalist honoraria of $500 each)
Upcoming benchmark/update: Artist Selection
BACKGROUND
About Vance Ave Community
The Vance Ave Corridor is known for being a vibrant business district and cultural hub. The neighborhood is home to prominent churches. Local musicians such as Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, and Bobby Blue Band have lived in the neighborhood. Music is a huge component for the Vance Avenue community. Some musicians such as Al Green and Elvis Costello have recorded at the nearby Memphis Magnetic Recording Co.
Some example neighborhood institutions include but are not limited to: NAACP Memphis, Cornelia Crenshaw Memorial Library, Vance Youth Development Center, Memphis Magnetic Recording Company, Off the Walls Arts, Cynthia Place, Paradise Club, Advance Memphis, Memphis Inner City Rugby, Grigg’s Business College, R. S. Lewis & Son’s Funeral Home, Historic Mount Nebo Baptist Church, Greater Love Miracle Center Church, St. John’s Church, and SCORE Community Development Center.
About OFF THE WALLs ARTS
OFF THE WALLs ARTS is a nonprofit arts organization working to build a stronger, more prosperous Memphis by creating equitable access to the arts in our South Memphis neighborhood 38126. We supply shared resources and financial opportunities to artists, create unique collaborative art events, offer community workshops, and provide a wide range of spaces for exhibitions, music performances, aerial and fire arts, film and video screening, set design, and art fabrication.
About UAC:
The UrbanArt Commission (UAC) works to create opportunities for artists and neighborhoods to connect and shape spaces through public art. Since 2002, UAC has managed the City of Memphis’s Percent-For-Art Program, which allocates funds annually to develop public art in connection to capital improvement projects. UAC also facilitates public art projects throughout the city working with various partners and clients to support artists and new experiences with art.
OFF THE WALLs ARTS
Vance Ave-Lauderdale St
Vance Ave-Lauderdale St
Vance Ave-S Orleans
Vance Ave-Walnut St
SCOPE OF WORK
UAC and the City of Memphis, in partnership with OFF THE WALLs ARTS, are seeking an artist to create four crosswalk murals along Vance Avenue celebrating the neighborhood’s history as a thriving community and business district, hub for Black culture, arts, and education, and heart of the civil rights movement. The crosswalks will be site-specific to their proximity to the institution, located at the Vance-Walnut St, Vance-Orleans St, and Vance-Lauderdale St intersections.
The selection committee has expressed interest in crosswalks that:
Include themes of community, sports, youth, education, and music
Pays homage to the rich history of the area
Creatively highlights the significant historic and current community, faith, and cultural centers in the neighborhood
Complies with the City of Memphis crosswalk guidelines (This information will be shared with selected finalists.)
Selected artists will also host workshops with students from Booker T. Washington High School and Bellevue Middle School to install the crosswalks.
SELECTION COMMITTEE
SELECTION COMMITTEE
Alison Heverly- OFF THE WALLs ARTS
Ann Koonce- Historic Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church
Barbara Nesbit- Vance Avenue Youth Development Center
Carrenna Montgomery- Neighborhood Art
Jacob Steimer- Advance Memphis
Rebecca Matlock-Hutchinson- SCORE CDC
Scott McEwan- Memphis Magnetic
Yvonne Bobo- OFF THE WALLs ARTS
William Ezzell-City Traffic Engineering Division
