All runners are equal, some are just faster than others.Santa Rosa CA, Art Bench Project
Today I started on one of my projects. Since moving to Santa Rosa last summer I came across all of these painted benches throughout the city. I had a feeling that this was a city initiative and tried to look for it online. I found the ArtStart website:
Artstart is an award winning privately incorporated 501(c)3 non-profit educational arts organization serving all of Sonoma County. Our mission is to provide job training, mentoring and fostering life changing breakthroughs by way of a stimulating work experience in the arts for all of Sonoma County youth, while creating public art for our community.
There was no information about the benches or a list were I could find all the benches. Well, a project is born. I will try to document all the art benches in Santa Rosa by the end of the year. I contacted ArtStart and see if they have additional information. You can follow the project here, or scroll to the bottom of the page and look for Santa Rosa Bench Project.
You can help as well! If you live in Santa Rosa and you know a bench that hasn’t been displayed in the slideshow yet let me know! Leave a comment with the location of the bench. Street name and closest intersection would be enough to track down the bench and add it to my project!
4:54 pm on January 25th, 2008
Hi Richard. I love that you’re doing this. I’ll keep my mind open for new benches when I’m in SR. You might consider doing a follow up to this one with all of the beautiful painted Snoopys around town.
Fyi: I need your address so I can send you the prize package from the Vision Board contest.
Congratulations on winning!
Take care
Ed
6:23 pm on February 1st, 2008
Richard, thanks for drawing attention to our beautiful benches! Check out the South A Street Blog for Santa Rosa’s Arts District artists: http://saartsa.blogspot.com/
4:03 pm on May 18th, 2008
Richard
I am summer coordinator for artstart and have been what we call the lead artist on over 100 benches. if you want to talk with me for any reason feel free to contact me via email. our summer program begins june 16th this year and you may want to come check us out and watch 8 more benches being produced in 5 weeks along with many other exciting public art pieces.
one of my dreams is for us to do a bench calendar to hlep raise money for our non profit. hummmmm…..
mary