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GREENSBORO — The concrete facade of the parking deck at Greene and Washington streets soon will become much more colorful, thanks to The Cemala Foundation and Burnsville artist Ron Fondaw.

The local foundation has commissioned Fondaw to decorate the six-level deck’s exterior with artistic features that illustrate transportation through the centuries.

Titled “Moving Ahead,” the art is a gift to the city honoring its 2008 Bicentennial, Cemala Executive Director Susan Schwartz said Wednesday.

Transportation and location have driven Greensboro’s development. So, the art will depict and celebrate its past and future, Schwartz said at a news conference attended by art advocates and local leaders.

“We are moving ahead, and that’s the story that art will be telling,” Schwartz said.

Other art projects are moving ahead, too, prompting the Greensboro City Council to declare June as Public Art Month.

“We want to be known for our art, and that is what we are all helping to make possible,” said Jeanie Duncan, president of the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, which managed the deck project with Cemala, the city and the Public Art Commission.

Later Wednesday, outside the downtown Greensboro Cultural Center, installation began on the first of eight bronze sculptures of coffee cups created by North Carolina artists.

The Coffee Cup Collaborative commemorates the 1960 sit-ins, which began at the Woolworth’s lunch counter with a young man’s request for a cup of coffee.

The arts council raised money for and commissioned the coffee cups. Others will be installed in six downtown locations and at the Greensboro Coliseum complex.

An unveiling is tentatively planned for June 29.

Also in the works:

• A Downtown Greenway public art bench will be installed this month in the Warnersville neighborhood.
   
• The public art endowment of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro will install a work by renowned Greensboro sculptor Billy Lee outside the old Guilford County Courthouse this summer.

Fondaw said he plans to start installation of the parking deck art on June 18 and hopes to finish by the first week of  July.

Fondaw was chosen from 91 artists nationwide. He has created more that 40 public art projects and coordinates the sculpture program at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

Each of the deck’s three visible corners will have five multicolored polycarbonate wheels in vertical fixtures that light up at night, Fondaw said.

A frieze of multicolored Plexiglas panels will decorate the top.

The deck’s low pedestrian wall will feature a timeline of ceramic models of vehicles, 10 inches tall. It begins with a Conestoga wagon and includes a steam locomotive, street trolley, tractor-trailer, 20th century cars, and ends with the HondaJet of 2010.

The models will be within pedestrians’ reach. And that’s OK with Fondaw.

“That is one of the beauties of public art – that it is accessible,” he said.



Contact Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane at 373-5204 or dawn.kane@news-record.com