Sandy Springs’ annual public art competition has been narrowed to nine finalists whose sculptures will soon be featured in an outdoor exhibit.
The sculptures are entries in the city’s third annual Art Walk competition. Collectively, the large-scale pieces are valued at more than $100,000. They are scheduled to be installed on the City Springs campus in late August. The sculptures will be on exhibit until next summer when some will be added to the city’s permanent public art collection, said Cheri Morris with Art Sandy Springs.
The nonprofit partners with Sandy Springs to bring outdoor art to the city landscape.
Six of the nine sculptures currently on exhibit at City Springs will be moved to a sculpture garden at the corner of Wright and Abernathy Roads, Morris said. The other three will be returned to the artists.
“Every year we do the annual Art Walk competition where we’re looking to select art to be installed in the city’s existing parks and public spaces,” Morris said, adding that the nonprofit also recommends which sculptures they’d like the city to purchase.
Morris is chair of ArtSS in the Open, a component of Art Sandy Springs. The organization has helped to curate 24 public art pieces displayed around the city since 2007, including the playable sculptures at Abernathy Greenway Park, she said.
City Council approved the nine Art Walk finalists for 2021 during a July 20 work session where Morris gave a presentation on the sculptures. One of the tallest was a 15-foot creation of found objects, steel and cast iron titled “Minko.” The sculpture by Kentucky artist Jeremy Colbert is priced at $10,000.
Work by Atlanta-based David Landis is an 11-foot stainless steel hydrangea priced at $43,000 and is called “Floret.”
The finalists in the Art Walk contest were narrowed from 120 who answered Art Sandy Springs’ national call for entries in December.
City staff helped to whittle down a virtual list of artwork to about 60 sculptures. Those 60 were viewed by a juried panel of local museum curators, gallery owners and art educators, Morris said.
The sculptures are judged by their scale in size, the materials used, their appropriateness for the city and other factors.
The competition ensures an annual rotation of artwork along the greenspace at City Springs. When the development was being considered and designed in the mid-2010s, Art Sandy Springs worked with officials to create nine foundation bases for the changing sculptures, Morris said.
The Arts Sandy Springs leader said future projects for the nonprofit include mapping out locations to place larger scale sculptures that can be seen from moving vehicles in a roundabout or along an island in the road.
“Art Sandy Springs will get ... with volunteers this year and flesh out the map to envision what locations would make sense for large scale pieces,” Morris said.
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