SITE Exhibit at Chatham Community Library in Pittsboro during April

Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 20:55:50 -0400
From: Diane Pettus
Subject: SITE Exhibit at Pittsboro Community Library

*Library Cases Tell the Story of SITE *

*Pittsboro, NC – 1 April 2014 – *During the month of April, Chatham Community Library is hosting a lobby display that overviews an exciting new environmental sculpture program at Central Carolina Community College, Pittsboro Campus.

Named *SITE, for Sculpture In The Environment*, the program is a collaboration of town and gown, artists and arts enthusiasts, community college leaders, teachers and dreamers, professional designers and beginning students. All are eager to blend disciplines in the design and placement of unique, sustainable, environmentally significant, world class sculpture. And the park-like setting of the CCCC Pittsboro campus is the perfect spot.

Visitors to the library display will look into the faces of fellow discoverers, follow the excitement of SITE’s first year, its community workshop and design charette, and meet SITE’s first artist-in-residence, Michael Roy Layne. They will also see the first drawings of sculpture proposed, one to be constructed during the summer of 2014.

SITE Co-founder Diane Pettus says, “SITE is designed as an ongoing community college program that will bridge the disciplines of sustainable technologies, sustainable agriculture, and the fine arts into thought-provoking gems of beauty, quality, purpose, and sustainability.”

Anne Granath, member of SITE’s steering committee, adds, “The SITE program is also a bonus for students pursuing a fine arts certificate at CCCC. Through hands-on involvement with environmental sculpture, student portfolios will expand in depth and quality for submission to four year programs.”

SITE Sculpture In The Environment

*  Introducing a new CCCC program for the growth of art and education in Chatham County*

This new artist-in-residence program in sustainable environmental sculpture has been initiated on the Pittsboro campus of Central Carolina Community College (CCCC).

SITE is a growing group of artists, teachers, students, volunteers and CCCC leaders who are joining to broaden the arts in Chatham County by donating time and money to develop a CCCC environmentally sustainable art program on campus. This unique artist-in-residence program emphasizes the environment, community collaboration and artistic excellence.

CCCC Pittsboro is creating a solid base for students pursuing AFA and AAS degrees with strengthened university transfer portfolios that showcases the college’s strong courses of study in fine arts, sustainable agriculture and sustainable technologies.

2014 is the debut year for SITE with Michael Roy Layne as its first artist-in-residence. Dr. Layne is a renowned North Carolina environmental sculptor and landscape architect who earned his PhD from NC State. His thesis was “Supporting Intergenerational Interaction and Urban Public Land.”

Under Dr. Layne’s leadership, on January 23, 2014 SITE hosted its first workshop on the CCCC campus at the Pittsboro Community Library. A mix of students and citizens identified potential sites for sculpture on campus, proposed objectives and some conceptual ideas. On February 8th a design team of 10 educators, sculptors, architects and students combined ideas and concepts into models for site-specific sculpture designs for the community college campus.

With these recommendations, Michael Layne and Edwin White, both internationally exhibited sculptors, will combine these ideas and concepts into a professionally designed model to be approved by the community college system board of trustees and to be built over the summer with student and community participation.

This spring CCCC sculpture instructor Phil Ashe and his students will create a bamboo sculpture on the Siler City CCCC campus.

SITE is being funded by grants and donations. It is felt that this endeavor will have a lasting contribution to the CCCC art program and to the recognition of the importance of art and artists in Chatham County.

*This project received a Chatham Arts Grass Roots grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, an agency of the Department of Cultural Resources, and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art**.*

*March 2014*

*SITE* is a *CCCC* program.

*SITE Committee*:

Diane Pettus, chair, public relations          919.542.7014

Edwin White, chair, sculptor                      919.742.6154

Louise Hobbs, chair, art educator             919.542.6162
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Judy Butt, community organizer
919.942.6576 

Rita Spina, visual artist