SALISBURY, Md.- The City of Salisbury has created a public art competition called ‘Salisbury Prize’, where local artists can compete to add their art to the River Walk Games Park. Salisbury Business Development Director Laura Soper says the winner will receive $10,000 and a $5,000 stipend for materials, once their work is vetted by the city and the arts committee.
“Once the internal group looks at it it will go to our newly formed public art committee. They'll vet it on artistic merit. They'll look at all the project details and help vet it through that and after it does that the top three proposals will go towards community voting, in which we’ll have the winner enter agreement with them,” said Soper.
Soper says the artists has all of the artistic freedom.
“We wanted to keep it open to all sorts of visual arts to see what come out of it, so whether it's a sculpture light based work mural somewhere, we wanted to keep it really open so we could get a lot of creative ideas," said Soper. “It is up to the artist, there is no specific spot in the Riverwalk games park where it needs to go so again, we want to keep it open to all creative ideas.”
Soper says it’s important to engage the community on public art.
“I think it’s important to engage the citizens because public art needs to be vetted by our public community, so we really wanted to keep it in an open process so that the community felt like they had input in the art that they’re seeing implemented,” said Soper.
Soper says public art can add character to a community.
“Help make a community feel like a community you know as you're walking through downtown you know you pick up pieces of art that you know you may not have noticed before, so I think really enjoying artwork. Kind of helps elevate a community a lot,” said Soper.
The deadline to apply is February 29th at 5 p.m.
