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Across the Triad and North Carolina, ghosts are gracing brick walls.

These visions are of adults and children playing baseball, reading books, studying the solar system and imagining the potential for mankind.

This is the work of Reidsville sculptor Brad Spencer, who has been sculpting with brick since 1989, creating artwork that exhibits ghost-like qualities. His intricate public artwork appears in front of NewBridge Bank Park in Greensboro, UNCG's soccer field and the Natural Science Center of Greensboro, among many other locations.

Aside from brick and clay, Spencer has also been sculpting his community, reshaping downtown Reidsville from a waning tobacco hub into a center for arts and culture.

Using money earned from commissions, he owns an entire city block's worth of buildings, where he's created gallery and venue spaces for regional artists and musicians. In doing this, he proves that artists can be observers and active members of the communities where they live.

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On the floor above his brick studio, the converted industrial loft where Spencer lives is a minimalist Xanadu. It is decorated with sculptures and paintings made by the artist and his friends and contains a casual but well-equipped workout area including an elliptical crosstrainer. It also houses Spencer's collection of antique record and cylinder players in the corner of his living room.

As he operates his RCA Victrola player, Spencer seems as fascinated by this simple machine as if the iPod had never been invented. The enthusiasm he has for the vintage machine reflects his affinity for preservation, a trait that plays a substantial role in his efforts to revitalize the downtown area of his chosen hometown.

"Hearing these songs in the way they would have been heard at that time is important," Spencer says, "as opposed to some cleaned-up CD version of old music." or something like that."

Spencer grew up in Greensboro, the class artist in elementary and high school who impressed teachers and peers with his drawings. But when he began to study painting at UNCG, he quickly learned he was not cut out to work with flat surfaces. He took a sculpting class during his sophomore year, and there, he found his calling.

"Painting to me was the frustration of mixing the colors," Spencer says. "Maybe I was trying too hard to get accuracy in the colors, but it was too much like a chemistry experiment to me, where sculpture was so immediate. You had clay and you had to make a form that made sense, and you're working in a three-dimensional space, and my mind just clicked so much better in that three-dimensional realm."

In his early work, Spencer focused mainly on human figures and horses. He also experimented a lot with scale and movement. He created small bronze statues of horses in fanciful poses, trying to capture a frantic sense of motion.

It was during his studies that Spencer met his future wife, Tammy. She lived on a different side of campus than Spencer, and although she primarily studied math and science, the two of them shared a circle of friends.

"I saw Tammy walking on campus one day about 50 yards away, and I said, 'I like that girl,' " Spencer says.

In Tammy, Spencer found someone who understood his need to create. Sculpting required more room than an apartment would give them, so knowing that a young and struggling artist could not afford much space in Greensboro, the two of them opted for a 2,600-square-foot fixer-upper in Rockingham County.

"It took at least two months to clean it up enough to move in there," Tammy Spencer says.

Brad Spencer calls the time before they moved to Reidsville their "pioneer" days. The house's old glass fuses constantly blew out, the wiring was bad, and the house had no heating or air conditioning system. He says that the first week they moved in, Spencer accidentally stepped through the floorboards.

"We grew our own food; it was the artist's life," Spencer says. "We wanted to see if or how we could live with little money until I could get established as an artist."

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Nearly the first decade of Spencer's career was dedicated solely to the traveling show circuit, with exhibits across North Carolina and even Florida and Illinois. He had no intention of working on large-scale public art until a friend came to him with an idea.

"A friend of mine who was a brick salesman showed me some pictures of some brick sculpture that was being done out West," Spencer says.

The sculptor soon began to work for his friend's company in Pleasant Garden, where Spencer was also given a temporary studio space, as well as a complete sales staff dedicated to getting him commissions. Many of his first assignments involved making signs for housing developments.

To make brick sculptures, Spencer uses a multistep process. Rather than chisel away at walls, he starts out by carving soft, unfired bricks already stacked on top of each other. He then separates the bricks and fires them in a kiln. Afterward, he transports the hardened bricks to the site where they'll be on display and then rebuilds the pieces, bonding them with mortar.

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Making public artwork puts demands on Spencer that he normally wouldn't face if he was creating art purely as a form of self-expression. For instance, he must occasionally find ways to reconcile his artistic vision with the demands of the individuals or companies that commission his work. Deadlines can be stricter, and beyond the design of his work, Spencer must also satisfy the demands of engineers and public-works specialists if he installs one of his sculptures in a city environment. But even then, Spencer believes sculpting public artwork can be rewarding.

"What might be lost in the creativity of actually making the piece, to me, is made up for in the way that it succeeds in making art a part of people's daily lives," Spencer says. "You want it to work on different levels, and I think with my public art, on many occasions, there is interest from people who think they don't care anything about art to people who think art is a big part of their life."

For Spencer, his most challenging ---- and rewarding ---- piece of public artwork can be found in front of Walmart on Peters Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem. One might never consider the mega-retailer a venue for fine arts, but Walmart sought out Spencer to fulfill certain ordinances that would allow them to build a new store within city limits.

"Winston-Salem has what is known as the Big Box Text Amendment, which means big-box stores can't just drop a cookie-cutter store that's just like every other store across the country," Spencer says. "And so, in order to change that and make it more individual, there are things that the big-box stores can do, and one of them is public art."

The piece, "To Build a Community," is an epic, sequential homage to Winston-Salem. With two archways, four wall panels and the 3-D visage of a young girl sitting on a park bench, the sculpture combines scenes of "Creativity," with artists of various disciplines honing their crafts; "Industry," with a man and a woman building a chair; and "Cooperation," with five people holding each other up among others. The tribute to the City of the Arts also features "Location," a view of Winston-Salem's skyline seen from the perspective of a neighboring forest.

"That project was basically nine months of new territory for me," says Spencer, who completed the sculpture in 2006. "It's a good showpiece that can show the good things that can be done with the medium, and it's also given me the confidence to move further with some of the things I did there."

Spencer is now working on two pieces. The first is a three-part sculpture, which will be placed in front of the Rockingham County Courthouse. Two parts are relief panels dedicated to the history, present and potential future of the county that will stand outside the courthouse. The third part will be a free-standing brick sculpture of lady justice in the center of the lobby.

Spencer's second sculpture will be at Market Square, a farmers' market and amphitheater across the street from where Spencer lives in downtown Reidsville.

"It's not just because I'm a local artist," Spencer says of securing the commissions. "It's because I have work in Charlotte, Greensboro, Washington, D.C., Winston and other places around, and some people in county or city government said, 'We should have some of your work here.'"

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All sculptors must ultimately shape the design and function of their work within the space where it's located. Spencer did the same thing with his current hometown.

As commissioned work began to increase in size and become more frequent, Spencer needed a permanent studio space outside of his home.

He soon began to use the money he got for his work to purchase nearby buildings, including a space across the street that would become the R Gallery, an exhibition space that the sculptor used to showcase the work of regional artists. He also purchased a former hardware store and boarding house a block away that he converted into his home and studio, where he now works with his sculpting assistant, Tara Thullner.

Spencer still owns the first property he purchased, and rather than try to sell it, he leased it to a couple from California, Dave Glick and Linda Cook, who converted it into a uniquely metropolitan coffee shop called Backstreet Buzz. They offer live music and art exhibits.

"We really wanted (Backstreet Buzz) to be a place where musicians could come and perform, and they have really stepped that up," says Tammy Spencer, who is director of marketing for Reidsville and manager of its Downtown Main Street Program.

Both Brad and Tammy Spencer believe a cultural-arts scene in Reidsville can revitalize the city and create new sources of revenue in a struggling economy. Live music and art events can attract people from out of town. Also, with new art galleries and craft stores opening around them, Tammy Spencer says, these new businesses are managing to stay afloat in the middle of the recession.

"People don't want to go to the mall and buy the things that everybody else has, so all these small shops and entrepreneurs are benefiting," Tammy Spencer says. "Business is down, but we still have all our shops, and not only that, we've had 16 additional buildings opening up in downtown.

"Meanwhile, Linens 'N Things goes out of business, Circuit City closes its doors, Macy's is having a hard time, and that says something."

With he and his wife taking such an active role in their city's commerce and politics, it might make sense to think that Brad Spencer should take things a step higher and run for a local public office. But it's that level of involvement that makes the sculptor a bit hesitant.

Spencer laughs as he says, "There's a place in public offices for artists, but not me."

Contact Joe Scott at movieshowjoe@gmail.com