Gleaning Facebook: Art for the People

On my morning walk this today I got out about 6:15 and walked all the way down to the old business section of Vista. Like much of southern California and America in general, Vista's late 1900s was blighted by unregulated strip development and a lack of effective zoning regulations during its growth periods of the past.

But in recent years citizens groups have pressed for more creative elements. Especially in the quaint downtown section there is lots of public art and more sensitive development, as there has been in our hometown Rome. A grassroots arts group, The Backfence Society, has been a part of that. Sarah Spinks, our son-in-law's sister is quite an artist herself and a leader in the effort to beautify Vista by cleaning up and preventing littter (Only Losers Litter!) and by encouraging public art. The Backfence folks seem a bit on the fun and quirky side. For example a bumper sticker they distribute, and which adorns the back of my daughter's Chrysler, reads "Make Vista Weird".

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Here are pictures of just a part of the public art: sculpture, murals, painted utility enclosures, artistic takes on public necessities like streetlights, bus-stops, and bike racks and more.

Rome has done some of this same sort of thing.

• Mike Burton's beautiful painting on the wall of the building next to The Foundry.

• The statue of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson.

• The statue and surrounding plaza dedicated to Adm. Tower.

• The firefighters memorial that incorporates the archway from the Mountain City fire hall.

• the temporary "Heart" art each year.

• the temporary piano installations we had one time all around downtown.

• the Rome Knitterati installations along Broad Street

• veterans memorials at Myrtle Hill and along the river at the Forum.

• Buddy Mitchell Plaza and fountain

• Etc.

But I'd really like to see much more. My friend

Michael J. Burton

has proposed more public sculpture and murals for Rome for fifty-plus years. It's great to see us beginning to see that happen. The River Arts District is another opportunity for that sort of thing. And the proposed moving of the Confederate memorials to a more appropriate location may give an opportunity to commemorate other parts of our history in public art, such as the sit-ins on Broad and other civil rights history, the textile industry in Rome, Rome's past leaders in medicine, arts, literature, women's rights, education, etc.