Public Art Gets $50,000 Federal Grant

A downtown Casper art project has been awarded $50,000 dollars from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Listen Here;

The “Housing the Art of Possibility in Casper” project is a partnership between The NIC, the city of Casper, the Wyoming Community Development Authority and Grimshaw Investments - the developer of the “Sunshine Apartments II” housing project going up at the site of the demolished KC apartments.

Nicolayson Curator, Lisa Hatchadoorian, says its a pilot project for the state that looks to match public art with low income housing...

"And we're looking at it as something that's gonna be a community gathering place, both for the residents in the building, and for the community downtown. Kind of something to extend the corridor downtown to make it a more livable space and ramp up the quality of living in the area."

What form the project takes will depend on the proposals that come in from artists. The project timeline she admits will be tight, because they hope to see the art in place by the time the housing project is completed next year.

"Getting out the requests for proposals, that will be within the next month. Then we'll have a time period for artists to get their proposals together and then we have a jury panel already set. So we will convene the panel to select the finalists and the finalists will do a presentation here in Casper."

Hatchadoorian says the $50,000 comes from the NEA's 'Our Town" grant program. She says it was a competitive process and an honor for Casper to be chosen. Artists proposals will be gathered regionally and from across the country with a special emphasis on Wyoming artists.

Here's a link to more information http://www.thenic.org/PressReleases/2011/PublicArtDownloadables.html