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Roadside Attraction

By Michael Beadle
Three months of hard work night and day. That’s how long it took Grace Cathey to put together her newest StreetSCAPES sculpture now on display at Depot Street in the Frog Level community of Waynesville.

Originally it was going to be an elk. Then a friend suggested she make a frog for Frog Level (so named because the area down a few blocks from Waynesville’s Main Street was once populated by a great many frogs from nearby Richland Creek which would flood after heavy rains). So Cathey went to work, starting with a clay model and then using a couple of one-foot by three-feet metal sheets to form the frog’s backbone. The project took on a life of its own, and the amphibious sculpture grew as she added layer upon layer upon layer.

“All the pieces turn out larger than I drew them out,” she said, though her intention from the beginning was to create an animal that would be big enough to be noticed by people driving by. Lumping a horny toad texture onto its back, Cathey used bolts, washers and metal bits from her husband’s service station. When the sculpture was finally complete, she put on five coats of paint, including rust preventatives and a liquid bronze to give it an algae turquoise color that could survive the elements.

“Toad Level,” as it was named, sits on a pile of rocks and pine straw (soon to be landscaped), facing the newly renovated shops of Frog Level at the intersection of Depot and Commerce streets. It’s become something of a symbol of the community that is recovering some of its luster as the once-proud hub of the town where trains came and went more than half a century ago.

With larger than life proportions (it’s as big as a couch), “Toad Level” has its mouth slightly open and back legs in mid-crawl, looking as if it’s read to leap into some unsuspecting car. Or perhaps it’s a fairy tale frog waiting to be transformed. Cathey can’t wait to see someone stopping for a photo or sneaking a smooch. At $15,000, this toad doesn’t come cheap, but it already looks right at home. Perhaps some generous citizen will put up the money so it can become a permanent fixture in town.

Who knows? This latest piece might bring Cathey yet another People’s Choice Award — she’s won the prize as the public’s favorite StreetSCAPES sculptor three years running. Surely it’s been fun each year to come up with a new animal, and Cathey has pushed herself each year to come up with something bigger and better, but it’s also a grueling experience she compares to giving birth to a baby.

“When you work on a piece like that,” she said, “you sleep it, you dream it, you live it.”

Fed by hometown pride and the urge to produce a quality art piece for the StreetSCAPES exhibit each year, Cathey said the program has helped push her to become a better artist.

This year’s StreetSCAPES exhibit includes eight pieces — the most ever in its four-year history — as well as some new locations, such as the one at Frog Level. From the playful “Oh Daddy, the Sun has a purple tongue” by Balsam potter Brad Dodson to the contemplative “Tenuous Support” by Sylva’s Ron Camp to the silvery steel “Jester” by Brasstown’s Joseph Miller, the exhibit includes a wide variety of styles. And thanks to a $1,000 challenge grant, StreetSCAPES will be able to give two cash awards this year: the $400 People’s Choice Award and another $800 Award of Excellence given by a select StreetSCAPES committee. The program, which is funded partly by the town and through contributions, aims to raise the awareness for public art and sculpture.

According to Fred Baker, Town of Waynesville’s Public Works director who has helped organize the StreetSCAPES exhibit, each year the show has grown in both quality and quantity by being able to draw from the talent of area art schools and college art departments such as the John C. Campbell Folk School, Western Carolina University and UNC Asheville.

In 1999, StreetSCAPES started with five sculptures. The past two years have included six sculptures each. Now, the exhibit has expanded to eight. Each of the pieces can be sold by the artist, and the Town of Waynesville gets a 20 percent commission. At least three of the pieces have been sold by private individuals (including last year’s “Opposition,” by Jennifer Costa), one was purchased by the town (Cathey’s “Bear in mind, it’s feeding time” which won the first StreetSCAPES People’s Choice Award), and three others are on loan by the artists for further display.

Each of the sculptures in StreetSCAPES offers a kind of conversation. The piece presents an expression and the viewer offers his or her own interpretations. It’s that dialogue which makes the artwork so full of possibilities and infinite discovery. Take a stroll through Waynesville to see for yourself.

For more information about the StreetSCAPES 2002 exhibit, call 828.456.3517. Brochures with People’s Choice Award voting ballots will soon be available in downtown Waynesville shops and kiosks.

Here’s a quick look at the other sculptures featured in the 2002 exhibit:


• “Triangulation Tower”
by Carl Billingsley of Ayden, N.C.

Located at the minipark on the corner of Main and Depot streets, the tower is the tallest of the StreetSCAPES at 10 feet. Oddly askew as it stands next to a kiosk in the shade of a flowering minipark, “Triangulation Tower” is a brown metal construction resembling a three-sided cell tower mounted on two smaller adjoining pyraminds. An experiment in geometric design, the tower is a series of beams and angles that create dozens of triangles in two- and three-dimensional arrangements. It’s like one of those tricky math problems where the student is asked to count all the triangles. See how many you can find.


• “Oh Daddy, the Sun has a purple tongue”
by Brad Dodson of Balsam, N.C.

Further up Main Street on the same side right in front of United Community Bank is a humorous pottery piece, a giant tan face of a sun with bluish waves and star-carved bubbles, spiraled eyeballs, a nonsymetrical nose and a purple tongue sticking out as if it had been stained by Kool-Aid. It’s not certain whether the sun is in some kind of trance or if the sun is trying to cast a silly spell on you. Dodson got the idea from his 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter, who suggested that maybe the sun had a purple tongue. A hand-built, stoneware, high-fired piece with Dodson’s signature playfulness, the sun beams with a childlike whimsy that doesn’t carry any inhibitions or hidden meanings, except perhaps to encourage the passer-by to see with the innocence of a child’s eye.


• “Tenuous Support”
by Ron Camp of Sylva, N.C.

In the bench area at the top of the Miller Street parking lot on Main Street, a sphere dangles precariously over a thicket of half-built ladders of various lengths. The sphere has holes, cracks and dents in it, and almost immediately one is reminded of the Earth. Camp, who was born in the coal-mining town of Boonville, Ind., near the Ohio River, and later lived in Boston and Los Angeles, has been a witness to the struggle of politics and ecology. The sphere in “Tenuous Support,” according to Camp, represents a world that’s being threatened, and the ladders, seemingly half-constructed, show how the Earth is held up with uneven support.

“We have a lot of rhetoric,” Camp said, explaining the supporting ladders beneath the sphere. “Lots of climbing but not much ascension.”

A retired architect who seeks solace in gardening, Camp came to Sylva four years ago from Los Angeles seeking a nostalgic return to the comfort he once found in childhood trips to this area. This is his first public art piece.


• “Aegis”
by Jennifer Costa of East Peoria, Ill.

Further up street at the intersection of East and Main streets just outside of Gatekeepers is a tall, brown, welded steel structure resembling a jousting lance standing vertical in the brick walkway. In the center is a kind of cage which protects a small piece of carved limestone about the size of a fist. Costa, a former art student at UNC Asheville who last year presented the striking, triangular piece “Opposition” in StreetSCAPES, once again delivers a work of art that beckons its viewer to take a closer look. “Aegis” means “protection” and refers to Zeus’ shield in Greek mythology. Costa’s intention was to create a piece which draws attention to the limestone as a protected icon open for viewing or a vulnerable artifact capable of being destroyed.

“These ideas reflect how we have these opposing and constrasting views in our society,” Costa explained. “What one person is looking at is not necessarily what another views.”


• “Pyramid”
by James Sherrill of Hickory, N.C.

Across the street from “Aegis” in front of the Waynesville Police Station is another lovely sculpture, this one wooden. It looks like a picnic table that might be transformed into a spy satellite dish. This four-sided structure with slats like a picnic table is the smallest of the StreetSCAPES. It resembles one of those wooden puzzles that can be assembled and disassembled to create different models. Each side is identical with sloped faces pointing toward the center. Four poles on each corner have slanted tops that point toward the center as well. Everything contributes to the center focal point, an invisible peak which is left to the imagination.


• “Jester”
by Joseph Miller of Brasstown, N.C.

Continuing up the same side of South Main Street in front of the newly created parking lot is a striking piece that is devilishly simplistic but wonderfully engaging. A silvery stainless steel tenacle arm rises nearly 10 feet out of the ground and balances a silver ball on its tip like a Disney-animated octopus might balance an apple for a circus trick. Sleek and shiny, the long arm curves slightly at the top as if the silver ball could be flung away with a quick jerk. Miller, who built last year’s seascape “Afloat” for StreetSCAPES (which is still on display), thought up “Jester” from a line on paper. A self-taught artist, Miller is largely influenced by nature.


• “Gas Man”
by Dan Millspaugh of Fairview, N.C.

“Gas Man” makes its home in the infamous place where a few years ago the controversial “Cowlifter” by Jon Dawes had been displayed. “Cowlifter” created an uproar because of its huge, lumbering shape resembling an alien from “War of the Worlds.” Fitting that this year, Dan Millspaugh, who once taught Dawes, should have his sculpture in the same spot. “Gas Man,” a giant faceless man with a silver visor helmet, carries a red gas hose ready to fill up a racecar. Designed for an exhibition to represent the gas man, who is part of the pit crew in a NASCAR race, “Gas Man” was made out of cast aluminum. As Millspaugh explains the process, the model is made out of blue board (the foam insulation used in houses), then cut into pieces and stuffed into dry sand. The molten aluminum is poured directly into the foam and the foam is replaced by aluminum. The pieces get welded and bolted together and painted.

Though the sculpture appears three-dimensional from afar, a closer look shows the aluminum pieces are actually sheets that have been welded together. Only the hands are life-like. The other body features resemble a three-dimensional stick figure. With one foot in front of the other, “Gas Man” appears to move forward and still remains firmly in place.