A juried outdoor sculpture competition, sponsored by the City of Radford’s Tourism Commission, is accepting entries through Oct. 1.
The competition is open to all media and includes a $1,000 honorarium to each selected artist. Three to five entries will be accepted for display throughout the city’s business districts as well as at the Mary Draper Ingles Cultural Heritage Park located on the grounds of Glencoe Mansion, Museum & Gallery and the Radford Visitor’s Center.
Deborah Cooney, Radford tourism director, says the last competition in 2016 attracted outstanding artists from five different states.
“The on-loan pieces gave our new public art program the kind of exposure that led citizens and business owners to ask that we expand the number of works and include pieces in the commercial districts.”
As a result of the first exhibit, Cooney said, the son of international artist and Virginia native Dorothy Gillespie loaned one of her metal sculptures to Radford.
An additional piece of bike art called ‘Flying High’ was donated by Tom Wilkinson and placed on Route 76, a cross-country bicycle route that runs from Missouri to Yorktown, Virginia. That donated sculpture embraces the ageless excitement of epic journeys through bicycling and helps welcome bicyclists as they travel through the City of Radford on Route 76.
“We feel fortunate to have local, state and national support to move this program forward,” Cooney said. The competition is being made possible through grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Radford Visitor’s Center, and there is no entry fee.
The theme for this year’s exhibit is “Locomotion—Art for All Seasons” and centers around the importance of the river and rails to the city’s development.
Jurors include Radford University’s Dr. Steve Arbury, director of the Art Museum system, and Susan Lockwood, a resident and award-winning photographer.
Sculptures will be on on-loan from October 2018 through December 2019. Brochures with entry rules are available by emailing info@VisitRadford.com.
