By Brian Trompeter
The Vienna Community Center and Town Hall will look more vibrant in coming months, now that the Vienna Town Council has approved three public-art projects to grace an exterior gym wall, trash enclosure and some utility pipes.
The Vienna Public Art Commission presented the projects to the Town Council at a Jan. 23 work session. The Council approved the following projects unanimously at its June 5 meeting:
• A mural on the exterior south wall of the community center’s auxiliary gymnasium. The painting of a sunrise will be titled “A New Day” and commemorate the Vienna community’s emergence from the COVID pandemic, said Deborah Kennedy, chairman of the Vienna Public Art Foundation, during the January presentation to the Council.
The art commission plans to hire an artist to design the mural, then transfer that image to the brick wall. The commission also may offer local residents the chance – for a fee – to paint some of the bricks and ask local businesses to match a portion of those donations.
• A mural on the brick exterior of the community center’s trash dumpster, located on Cherry Street, S.E.
• Painted utility pipes on the rear of Vienna Town Hall, which would attempt to blend the pipes with the adjacent brick wall and add painted vegetation as well. Art commission members told the Council in January that Washington Gas had agreed to the project.
More work remains to be done, however. The Vienna Public Art Commission will return to the Council at a future date to provide project-design specifics, which will need to be approved by the Council and Vienna Board of Architectural Review.
Town officials also plan to draft and sign a memorandum of understanding with the Vienna Public Art Foundation, the art commission’s funding arm, to clarify project details and spell out the respective parties’ responsibilities.
