Power Drills and Banjo Necks

My experience helping an urban designer install sculpture for the World of Bluegrass Festival

Bland Hoke is an exciting young designer who brings a unique background in public art and a love for the outdoors to his cutting-edge urban design. He relies on his signature resourcefulness, utilizing industrial waste as his medium to construct sculptures in efforts to execute a true understanding of contemporary design.

In the fall of 2014, Hoke traveled from Jackson, Wyoming to North Carolina to install Banjostand, a public art installation to celebrate the 2014 World of Bluegrass Festival featuring 50 bands, four music stages, a high-energy dance tent, art and food vendors, youth performances and activities.

Hoke invited Arts Village residents to help him with the project. Along with ten other Arts Village residents, I volunteered to help because I thought building an artist’s sculpture would be a unique opportunity.

Because of Hoke’s liveliness and boundless energy, working under his instruction was not as stressful as I had anticipated, surprisingly enough — I was expecting to to be under a lot of stress when working for an artist. But with his endless visual capacity, he made it easy for his volunteering participants to grasp a visualized idea of what he wanted his sculpture to look like.

From power-drilling disposed banjo necks into a structure, to measuring and cutting off stage templates, the Arts Village residents got to experience what it is like to be a part of a sculptor’s creative playground.