Public Art Project

Radha Patel, Carly Sobolewski, Caroline Hedrick

PCA Public Art Project

The Butler Planner

At first when we were told we have to come up with an idea or plan about public art we can put on out beautiful Butler campus, we had no idea what to do. Caroline started it off by giving an idea of putting a big diploma or graduation hat on campus in which people could study or just “hang out.” Later, we came up with an idea of building a gigantic basketball with a graduation hat on it signifying how important basketball is to Butler as well as academics. The big basketball would have a couple basketball courts inside of it and it would have a wall of fame showing the history of Butler’s men and women’s basketball team. Another idea we came up with was making a big sculpture of a paintbrush that would be leaning against Lily Hall (the building). There would be a pallet on top if the paintbrush located above the roof and there would be tables on this pallet shaped as different colors of paint. On a nice sunny day students would be able to study up there and see Butler’s campus. In the end we decided none of these ideas were extremely appealing because we wanted to come up with something all Butler students would find somewhat useful and is also artistic.

We set out four different criteria for out public art project. The criteria are site specificity, how interactive it is, whether it holds significance to Butler, and how functional it is. As we were going through out list of projects and seeing how the criteria worked with them, we started talking about how we never know what is going on throughout the week and weekend because we either skip over the emails we receive or we do not know because we didn’t notice the banners around campus. We decided there should be some way students can see what is happening on campus; therefore we decided to make the “Butler Planner.” It would be located on the open space between Atherton Union and Jordan Hall, right in front of Starbucks. We chose this area because many people pass this location throughout their day and it is not far from the main buildings on campus. Students could just stop by the “Butler Planner” for a moment and see what is happening on campus.

The “Butler Planner” would have each day of the week on it and under each day it would list the activities going on throughout the campus or even at Broad Ripple. The board would light up once it gets dark. The screen would be black with white lettering and at night the outline of the planner would light up neon blue so it is easy to spot and visible. The Planner would be made out of fiberglass and the books would be made up of stone and painted with shiny paint to somewhat correspond to the fiberglass. The “Butler Planner” would look exactly like out real planner and would have the same design on the front of the cover. The books in the back of the Planner where we can sit and study would be different colors, which include green, purple, red and yellow. The green book has a saying that says “The Butler Way” and a map on it because it is leaning against the tier of books. This map would be useful for anyone who doesn’t know where everything is located on the campus. The other three books have words the Butler students either represent of strive to achieve: courage, respect and values. They are strong words and they would remind Butler student of what Butler University believes in. Also, throughout the lawn we have books that are propped open so students can sit and eat or read. These books would be different colors depending on what color fits best with its surroundings. We decided to add more to the books we could add bookmarks to the books where students can still sit and enjoy the sun and nice weather.

As a group, we loved this idea, which is why we were so passionate about it. We, as Butler students, would love something like this on campus. By working on this project, we accomplished our goal of making a public art display and making is useful to the Butler community. It fits all of our criteria pretty accurately and best of all, we loved this project and coming up with the idea. We actually had fun with this.