The Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders is pleased to announce a call for visual artists to participate in the County’s second public art project this year, Art Outside the Box – Beautiful Bench Project.
“Entries for the beautiful bench public art project will support Union County’s ongoing efforts to broaden cultural development through the promotion, coordination, and integration of public art into our communities,” said Freeholder Chairman Mohamed S. Jalloh. “The Freeholder Board is proud to provide opportunities that celebrate creativity, enhance community identity, and encourage cultural tourism.”
The new Beautiful Bench Project is an expansion of the County’s Art Outside the Box program created to help integrate the arts into non-traditional venues and expand, broaden, and diversify public exposure to the arts. Union County visual artists are invited to submit artwork renderings for the County’s Art Outside the Box – Beautiful Bench Project online at ucnj.org/beautiful-bench-project. The deadline for entry is December 18, 2015. There is no fee required to participate.
Three designs will be selected to be attached to benches in front of the following Union Township locations:
- Van Gogh’s Ear Café on Stuyvesant Avenue
- Union County National Bank on Morris Avenue
- Killer Vegan on Stuyvesant Avenue
This call for entries is open to all artists who paint residing in or working in Union County. Local artists are invited to submit renderings of up to three proposed designs for the painted bench. For artist submission(s) that are chosen, the County will provide fiberboard on which the artist will paint the selected design. The top three selected submissions will be awarded an honorarium. The deadline to submit your artwork is Friday, December 18th.
Offered as part of Freeholder Chairman Mohamed S. Jalloh’s Building a Community of the Arts initiative, the Beautiful Bench Project is an expansion of the County’s Art Outside the Box public art program that has awarded12 individual artists the opportunity to have their artwork cover 13 different traffic control boxes in Elizabeth, Linden, Plainfield, and Rahway.
For further details about how to participate, and to learn more about the project, including entry form, bench locations, reference samples, and artist agreement are available online at ucnj.org/beautiful-bench-project or call the Union County Department of Cultural Heritage at (908) 558-2550.