LAFTA, city choose sites for sculptures

LAFTA member Chriss Echlin, right, works with Mickey Tower, center, director of parks and recreation for the city of Lampasas, and Garry Spore, parks maintenance technician, to choose sites for new sculptures to be placed in the park in April.

O n April 26, five new sculptures will be

installed for one year in the Hanna Springs Sculpture Garden in Lampasas as part of the ongoing efforts of Lampasas Association For the Arts to expand opportunities for everyone to experience the arts.

In this case, it will be through the expansion of the public sculpture garden in Campbell Park, the site of historic Hanna Springs.

Representatives from the city's Parks and Recreation Department and LAFTA met recently to discuss where five new sculptures would be placed in the sculpture garden.

Mickey Tower, director of parks and recreation, and Garry Spore, parks maintenance technician, consulted with Robin Gradel, LAFTA arts committee chair, and Chriss Echlin, drafter of the original garden layout, to determine the best locations in the garden.

LAFTA is conducting a juried competition to select the sculptures. There are three jurors: artist Bruce Helander, former provost of the Rhode Island School of Design and a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts who has written extensively on contemporary art; and Joe Kagle, a former artist and professor in residence when he was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in the Republic of Georgia.

Kagle is the former chair of the Fine Arts Department at Washington and Jefferson College and the University of Guam and was director of the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center of the Brockton Art Museum and of the Art Center, Waco. Also, Michael Moore, who served as curator and director of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., for 21 years. He was later executive director of the Arts and Crafts Council. He serves as director and chief curator of the Bellevue Art Museum in Washington.

Visit www.lafta.org to learn more about the competition.

Lampasas Association For the Arts is a 501(c)3 organization. For more information, phone 556- 6997 or visit www.lafta.org.