This year the coronavirus pandemic has forced the city to change the way it has celebrated its art, but for the Salem Public Art Commission the show must go on.
Last month the annual Salem Arts Festival couldn’t meet in person but adopted socially-distanced programming.
Now Salem’s Artists’ Row, located downtown at 24 Derby St. across from Old Town Hall, will be able to open its doors to the public for the 2020-2021 season.
The Artists’ Row initiative is a seasonal program overseen by the Salem Public Art Commission, which provides space for artists and artisans looking to build their audience and grow their business through daily engagement with residents and visitors of Salem.
This year the initiative will welcome back a whole new complement of events, artists, and artisans, including a handful of shops and studios, a restaurant, a brand-new Public Artists in Residence program, and the commission of a large-scale mural along the newly repaired path along the Row.
The inaugural season of the Public Artists in Residence program will be led by local artists Lauren Smedley and Jacob DeGeal, working under the name Creative Blocks. The program will engage the community through pop-up public art interventions throughout downtown Salem.
“Creative Blocks believes art is a tool for community engagement, public participation and local collaboration,” said Smedley and DeGeal in a statement released by the city on Friday. “We are inspired by how people move and engage within their city, but also the things that inhibit that mobility and engagement.
“Our art aims to encourage connection through public dialogue and movement,” Smedley and DeGeal said. “In the past we’ve done this by building low-fidelity neighborhood messaging boards, street art stenciling, and creative feedback loops. We look forward to the opportunity of creating these moments throughout Salem.”
Artists’ Row includes the local restaurant, The Lobster Shanty, and artist shops and studio tenets like Beverly Bees, ShinDig! and Chagall PAC.
Beverly Bees sells bee products directly from the beekeeper, including award-winning raw honey, pure beeswax candles and lip balms, and lotions and salves. Beverly Bees will be making their beeswax candles at Artists’ Row in more than 200 shapes and designs.
ShinDig! is a group of three artists creating upcycled clothes, jewelry and painted items. The group’s style is influenced by graphic design and pop culture using vintage materials to encourage sustainability.
The Chagall Performance Art Collaborative is a community of artists committed to collaborating across disciplines and exploring the ways we experience art. Visitors will have a chance to buy their jewelry, art and take part in art workshops, music lessons, yoga, writing classes and more.
Along with these new tenants and the launch of Public Artist in Residence, the City of Salem’s Public Art Commission has also commissioned the creation of a large-scale mural project, called Unity Path, to adorn the Artists’ Row corridor.
Lead artist Liz LaManche and a team of community members are filling the block with a series of decorative ground and wall art murals signifying inclusion using whimsical, vibrant colors with core elements from a diverse array of communities and cultures representing Salem.
LaManche is a public artist who uses color and symbolic visual language to make city spaces more fun, meaningful and sustaining, bringing people together in a shared experience. She previously brought Salem the popular ground tattoo installation, “Salem’s Connected World,” in 2015.
The Unity Path mural’s initial goal was to include and represent the culture of at least the top five most spoken languages in Salem but through a robust community input design and implementation process, the project grew to include more.
The theme will incorporate mandalas, radially balanced symmetrical configurations of symbols, containing a circle with a center point. Unity Path’s ultimate goal is to create a fun and vibrant space that showcases Salem’s seafaring history and celebrates its creative, diverse, welcoming present.
