A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas

The Pulse of Public Art in Bentonville

• Visit Bentonville • Season 7 • Episode 42

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Join us in a colorful conversation about Bentonville's vibrant public art scene with Tom Hoehn, chair of the Bentonville Public Arts Advisory Committee. Discover Tom's artistic journey, from his spontaneous mural escapades to his leadership role in shaping Bentonville's public art landscape. Bentonville's public art includes over 130 diverse works like "Lakes and Rivers" in the collection of OzArt NWA, a breathtaking 93-foot sculpture that dances with shimmering steel discs. Exciting developments abound from the Trail Pilot app that enhances your mountain biking adventures with art tours to the expanded Bentonville Public Library featuring art loans from OzArt.

Check out the Visit Bentonville Public Art Map here: Public Art Map of Sculptures, Murals & Neon (visitbentonville.com)

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Beth Bobbitt:

Welcome to A New American Town presented by Visit Bentonville. I'm your host, Beth Bobbitt, broadcasting from Haxton Road Studio. And today is a bit of a dream come true I get to talk art with my friend, tom Hone. Tom, welcome to the podcast.

Tom Hoehn:

It's great to be here, and you're one of my favorite people, so I'm really happy to be here for that.

Beth Bobbitt:

This is amazing. So Tom is chair of Bentonville's Public Arts Advisory Committee, very active in the community, has had different executive roles with Walmart, kodak Michaels Contributes to Bentonville Film Festival and you are, of course, a creator in your own right. You've worn many hats, but today we're going to be talking about public art in Bentonville. It's funny. The last time I saw you there was some scaffolding involved and you were holding a paintbrush, and so this is really a passion for you, hands onon.

Tom Hoehn:

It was fun. It is great to be involved in such a dynamic city that is investing in public art and, with that particular thing where you mentioned, you pulled up and you saw me actually sleeves rolled up and painting. There was an artist, Paige Dirksen, who was making a mural, and I just rode my bike up and said I have skills and I came with paintbrushes she really and so she put me to work and it was great.

Beth Bobbitt:

That's the kind of town this is. It's amazing that just collaboration and community you can stumble upon. So first, can you tell us a little bit about how you became involved in the committee and what the vision is for Bentonville?

Tom Hoehn:

Sure, sure, sure, I'm happy to. I could talk about this all day, but we won't have a podcast that long, so don't worry audience about that. You know, a number of years ago there wasn't even a group of committee of public art, and it all started when a local hotel was being built here, the 21C Museum Hotel, which is somewhat art and museum, you know, or art in a hotel put together.

Tom Hoehn:

And they had a stunt with these pink snail sculptures that they put around town. And there's a 12 foot snail pink snail on the courthouse lawn and everybody thought that was cute. And there's actually some letters in the paper that, like who put these in there? These are weird, whatever. But the city kind of said like who gave permission to do this? And they realized, like we don't have any guidelines or rules or whatever. We better do something because someone could put anything up there if you don't have rules and guidelines. So this committee was formed and they asked for citizens to join. It was a public notice. My wife saw it. She said you should run for this or just, you know, put your name into this and your slogan should be more pink snails. And it was just really those were heady days. So many cities and I come from the Northeast, originally upstate New York and there would have been a public art committee for 100 years.

Tom Hoehn:

And it would have been staffed with people that have been there forever and clicks and things like that, and this was like we're building it from scratch. And it was like how do we secure some funding? How do we get artworks, do we? How do we write an RFP? How do we evaluate things? So it really was starting from nothing and very very proud of you.

Beth Bobbitt:

Know what it has become in the city? Yeah, and it, I mean it's channeled through city council, right?

Tom Hoehn:

Yes, so the it's made up of, you know, ordinary citizens, mere mortals like myself you know, and um, there's six or seven of us on this committee and then there's a few ex officio members, which are other people that have a voice in terms of advising and providing counsel, but they don't have the vote on this committee.

Tom Hoehn:

Um, those are represented from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Momentary Oz Art NWA, which we'll talk more about in this podcast, and, of course, Visit Bentonville. You know great, great partners of ours. And then any work that we do, we focus on works that are on public property, not public art everywhere, but just the art that is on public property, and anything that we do has to go through city council for approval. Or if it's in a park, it has to go through the parks and rec committee as well.

Beth Bobbitt:

Yeah, and obviously you don't need to sell me. But in your mind, why is public art so important for a thriving city?

Tom Hoehn:

It's funny you say that because like you may be like art. Yeah sure it should be everywhere it's a no brainer, but it's not to everyone in the city. Has any city, has, you know, a zillion priorities and what do you focus on? So we learned right away that I need to, and we need to speak in the language of the city that they understand, like what is the value of public art?

Tom Hoehn:

in a quantifiable way, and we worked very hard to find stats and data and put together a whole strategy about. This is how we want to approach public art in the city of Bentonville and, as you were looking at, the myriad of priorities from sewer systems and roads and electricity and the other good stuff that makes a city run so we came to the city and presented data to speak in the language of business and value, and I'll give you a couple of stats that we shared at the time. There was a study that showed if people have a cultural attachment to their city, the GDP of those cities is actually 7% higher than other cities actually 7% higher than other cities and also that the creative economy in the state of Arkansas is the third largest employer in the state. That was like a shocker, for me yeah exactly.

Tom Hoehn:

Surprise, you know. And then then the creative industry in Arkansas generates $927 million in personal income for Arkansas citizens. So when you start in and that was just three of probably 20 different facts and stats that we put together to make the case let alone, it's just it adds to the quality of life and especially as you're trying to attract and retain talent for some of the large companies that are here, or small companies here as well, you want to have those kinds of amenities, and art is one of those, just like parks, just like bike trails yeah, right, wow, I mean that's, that's profound to think about and, of course, all

Beth Bobbitt:

the ways that you can't quantify, you know, emotionally, mentally, so are you surprised that? That's that about the creative economy, absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah, cool, but I love it. So, with this podcast, we will also include an online public art map, which does exist and is, I'm sure, always being updated, but can you give us a bit of an overview about what that currently looks like in terms of, you know, the total works, the variety of medium sizes?

Tom Hoehn:

You are absolutely right, it is constantly changing. That's a good problem to have, but to keep it up to date is a challenge, and we do a good job at that, and so does Visit Bentonville on their site as well. Currently, we're weighing at somewhere between 130, 140 works of public art in and around town, which, for the city the size of Benton, we really punch above our weight in terms of public art, and that's made up of sculptures, murals, photos, quilts.

Tom Hoehn:

You know, a giant crocheted apple, you know whatever all kinds of things, and the largest weighs in at 93 feet long, which, coincidentally, is the same length as a blue whale.

Beth Bobbitt:

There you go. Fun fact Just throw that one in there. I love that.

Tom Hoehn:

Sure.

Beth Bobbitt:

How do you find the works Like? What does that identifying process look like Sure?

Tom Hoehn:

It is a variety of ways that we do this. Sometimes we commission a work if it's very specific and we have an artist in mind. More often than not, we do an RFP, a request for proposal, and we'll write a creative brief, which, by the way, when we first started out, we didn't have anything like that. And like, how do we tell people what we want? Like, we need a creative brief? Okay, what's in a creative brief, you know, and so we hammered one out and we're much better at it now than the first one. I won't say that and we will issue that in a call for artists. And one of the things that I love about where we are at now in the, in the number of years that the public art advisory committee has grown and done more work, is the caliber of submissions that we get for an RFP has dramatically improved. Submissions that we get for NRFP has dramatically improved, and the last one we did had submissions from 13 different states and three different countries.

Tom Hoehn:

So that was not the way it was when we first went out the gate, and actually that one was actually won by a local artist. So we represent well here locally as well.

Beth Bobbitt:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, when you are becoming an arts destination, other artists take note of that and want to be a part of this.

Tom Hoehn:

So it's kudos, and I should add that we often work with private entities and that's really at the heart of this whole strategy and why it works so well is that 130, 140 works that I mentioned are not all coming from the Public Art Advisory Committee, and having a really good structure on how public and private entities and art work together is really the secret sauce of what's making this place so vibrant with that. So you ask how do you find works? Sometimes it's a developer coming to us saying, hey, I would love to put something on the side of my building. Do you know artists?

Tom Hoehn:

Can you help us connect some dots and we will be happy to do that.

Beth Bobbitt:

Yeah, yes, partnerships, I'm sure, are very, very important in this game, so I'd love for you to tell us about some maybe unexpected or favorites recent works that you want to highlight, or any behind the scenes of some of these.

Tom Hoehn:

You're really saying like who's my favorite kid?

Beth Bobbitt:

Yeah, it's impossible, yeah, it is.

Tom Hoehn:

There are so many, but I'll drop a few on you. I guess Probably the biggest one and it's come up within the last year, year and a half is that one that I mentioned earlier. That's 93 feet long, it's called Lakes and Rivers and this is from OzArt NWA, which is a local private art group that their mission is to infuse art into the community in sometimes surprising and unexpected places.

Tom Hoehn:

And they bring international artists, local artists, all kinds of things in a variety of disciplines. And this one is it's a sculpture made of two. It's about two massive small mouth bass fish which can be found in Arkansas rivers. It is made up of 268,947, to be specific, one-inch steel discs that are mounted on little posts so they shimmer in the breeze and when the sun is shining in the morning because that's the way it's facing it's facing east, so when the sun shines on it it just lights up, and when there's a slight breeze it just undulates. And it is so beautiful and I've been walking down the street and we have so many visitors coming to bentonville and people will look up at the just stop in their tracks, like what is that?

Tom Hoehn:

absolutely and I and I gotta tell you, I've heard conversations like oh yeah, that's an led display yes, people think it's digital art.

Beth Bobbitt:

There's all kinds of theories.

Tom Hoehn:

Somebody there, somebody actually told me oh yeah, that's water it kind of looks like water, but I love that. Yes, and it's great and it's really great to see that thing. So when you come to Bentonville that's a must-see.

Beth Bobbitt:

Do you happen to know the best location to get the best view of that?

Tom Hoehn:

Actually there's like two different views. One is just right below it, so you can actually see it and experience it. And you can actually hear it if you get close to it, because the wind is blowing and you hear these little you know, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle kind of thing, and it's just. That's a kind of it was an unexpected surprise actually, but almost like a block away, looking in on Main Street, it would be looking towards it. You really get a full view. Or if you go up to the sixth floor of the Ledger Building, the world's first bikeable building.

Tom Hoehn:

you could look down at it from that way and that's a really great vantage point. So it's like so big you can't miss it. So three different vantage points there, and none of them will disappoint, believe me Good tip, thank you.

Beth Bobbitt:

What else?

Tom Hoehn:

Let me just share a fun story. This is maybe another personal one where I rolled up my sleeves again. It's a. It's a work called Critical Trash, and there was an artist that was here in Bentonville, david Anagastie is how you pronounce his name.

Tom Hoehn:

His artist name is, and you can find him on Instagram is A-Hole Sniffs glue Not my word, but it's A-H-O-L-S-N-I-F-F-S-G-L-U-E, and he is a Miami street artist who has this signature, iconic kind of like eyeball kind of look and it's like a graffiti artist and he will graffiti on trash and found objects around the town and just leave them there and people find these and it's like a treasure, like oh I found it and then they post it on social media.

Tom Hoehn:

So it's kind of like art meets geocache. And he did a collaboration with Rafa, the bike apparel company that's based here, of that same design, and he was brought here for a People for Bikes event, a summit, and which is a local bike organization, actually headquartered in denver, but they've got a branch here, and he was giving a talk about how cycling kind of saved his life, because he used to drink and do drugs and he's the first to admit it, and getting on a bike kind of like saved his life, and so that's how that all came to be.

Tom Hoehn:

So he was in town and I was talking to him and he was like dog, there's no trash in this town.

Beth Bobbitt:

What a good problem now.

Tom Hoehn:

So the more I talked to him, I was either dude or dog the whole time.

Tom Hoehn:

So, dog, there's no trash in this town. So we're sitting on a bench and I said, let's do something. This is like five o'clock on the first day. He's here in the end of the day. And he said, dog, I'm in, dude, I'm in whatever. And so within two hours we had scoped a location and got the approvals for the location and he goes. I use this special spray paint and if you're a graffiti artist you may know it's called montana 94. A certain batch of paint it's got. You can control the aerosol spray. So it's not like getting Krylon or something you know, or Rust-Oleum at the hardware store and it gives you more control. I had two different troves of people of that paint here in town and he was just astonished. He's like what kind of town is this? And so that was a Monday at five or you know, till seven, and then Tuesday morning at eight, 30 in the morning we were there with our coffee and spray paint and started painting and it was just so fun and he had a ball and he just was.

Tom Hoehn:

he had a great experience in Bentonville and it was actually a dumpster enclosure, that's why it's called Critical Trash and it kind of fits with his vibe of doing found art on objects like that, and that's right downtown. So if you're going to the Lady Slipper or First, Seed, so it's still there. Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's going to be there for a while.

Beth Bobbitt:

And it's pretty massive.

Tom Hoehn:

And then the public engagement of people, like as we were painting this with any kind of mural was just so great, and he thoroughly enjoyed his time in Bentonville, and we did as well.

Beth Bobbitt:

That is so great.

Tom Hoehn:

And then I should mention the one you brought up earlier at the beginning, at the outset, which is the mural that artist Paige Dirksen did. She was commissioned by a local cycling organization called All Bikes Welcome and their mission is to build more racial equity and gender diversity in cycling and they offer free and very low cost kind of outdoor programming and things like that.

Tom Hoehn:

Great organization it is it is, and one of many bike and cycling organizations to get everyone out there and on a bike, and so they commissioned this mural and it's all bikes welcome and bikers are welcome, and this had community engagement as well and it had big, bold colors and big fields of color. So it was easier for, like, anyone to contribute, like, stay within the lines, color within the lines. You know, here's a paintbrush and have at it and and I mentioned I, I, I helped, paige goes just very therapeutic, you know it's it's uh, uh, in an under an overpass, on a trail and there's a little babbling Brook going right by there and it was a breeze going by. It was a perfect day for painting and it's by our Kohler mountain bike preserve, the South entrance of that. And, and the community was really engaged, there was a whole girl scout troop that showed up and they were working on their art merit badge, I think right and uh

Beth Bobbitt:

and and actually you were painting yeah, right, yeah, and my daughter was a part of that girl scout troop and I I love that. You know that organization and page specifically invite community to be a part of it. I mean, that's the whole idea, is the connection you get through art and you know that could be in looking at it. But it's also active and so I think that, yeah, it's great when you have some sense of ownership and you're invested.

Tom Hoehn:

And actually that's one of our key pillars in the public art advisory committee is community engagement. Others have art for you know they love it, they want to enhance their space, whatever. But we want that, of course, but also the more we can get the community involved in the either creation or evolution of the work. We did one last year for the sesquicentennial of Bentonville 150th anniversary and there were apple orchards here and apples figure prominently in the history of Bentonville. So we have this giant sculpture of an apple. But we went to an event First Friday it's called and we had a booth and we said give us one word of what Bentonville means to you. And we had hundreds of people. They really were thinking hard and really committed to doing this. So on, this giant apple shaped sculpture is in front of city hall, but if you look at the back of it there's all these like apple seed shapes and each one has one word of what that means to people. So this was truly made by the community yeah, I love that.

Beth Bobbitt:

We've got to check out these sites and we will link to the map, because I think it's just 130 to 140 artworks is incredible. So I'm hearing a little bit about this Trail Pilot Art Tour.

Tom Hoehn:

Can you talk about that, sure sure, trail Pilot is a new app that uses GPS technology and earbuds essentially, and it was made for mountain bike trails, so you can actually be riding your bike, plugged in with your GPS and your earbuds, and it'll tell you. You got a turn coming up sharp left. Watch out for the bigger rock. You know that kind of thing.

Tom Hoehn:

And it really helps you navigate these trails and this is a startup. Um trail pilot is the company that makes the app. You can find them online and, uh, they're doing very well. Actually, park city utah just picked it up as well to do their trails as well and they were surprised because they found that people are actually listening to this before they come to Bentonville. So when they come here for mountain biking, they know which trails to go to and how to hit them hard right from the outset. They're not exploring and trying to figure that out.

Tom Hoehn:

And because our art scene is so vibrant, they wanted to add an art tour. So we have scoped out a nice ride through town. It is not extreme. So any skill level of biking you know bike skill can go on this bike ride and essentially, you can use this app and plug it into your earbuds and go on a nice ride all around town and you'll probably see I don't know 50 works of art, you know, in a few miles. And this app will be available within the next couple of weeks. So it's really imminent.

Beth Bobbitt:

We're on the finishing touches we have to do some uh we had a big storm here, memorial day this year and it kind of changed some of the trajectory of some of the trails and the works.

Tom Hoehn:

So we're updating it now and if, if my voice is not annoying in this podcast, I'm just giving a spoiler alert my voice is the narrator.

Beth Bobbitt:

I love, love it, of course. So it really is like.

Tom Hoehn:

Here's this artwork, but a bit of the backstory of each one, like some of those stories we just told about lakes and river and critical trash and things like that.

Beth Bobbitt:

Oh, that's so exciting and it will be free.

Tom Hoehn:

Oh yes, Yep.

Beth Bobbitt:

Amazing. The other thing I wanted to just tease out a little bit my Instagram stories have been filled with Bentonville Public Library expansion updates and I'm seeing some art. Was the Public Art Advisory Committee involved in any of that?

Tom Hoehn:

Exactly and again, public-private partnerships. So, OzArt has loaned six works of art that will be on display when the public art or the expansion opens, which, depending on when this is broadcast live, the library should be open by then, Please go in and check it out.

Tom Hoehn:

It is absolutely stunning. I had the privilege of touring it last night, as a matter of fact, and half of those works are in place. Four out of the six are in place right now. The other two will be coming in momentarily and OzArt has loaned six works of art in this and to put within this expansion, and then over time we will work and have worked with the library on many different art projects and they're keen on the community engagement aspect as well.

Tom Hoehn:

So they've got literally gallery walls that will be filled with public art um over the. So it gives us a nice venue and a repeating place where we can do that we are so lucky so greeting nooks, maker spaces, children's story hour places. It's in the places just bathed in light. There's just, you know, floor to ceiling windows all around and it just is a beautiful, beautiful addition to the city yeah, that'll have to be a follow-up podcast.

Beth Bobbitt:

We'll have to get them in here to talk about all the things, okay. Finally, we always end with a question, not necessarily art-related, though you can infuse. If you could curate your dream day in Bentonville, what would that look like? What would you do see eat?

Tom Hoehn:

All right. So maybe I'm spoiled because I live here, but I know it's what drew me here and what has kept us here for 13 years, whatever 12 years. I would recommend that you just have a very easy day. You let the day unfold in front of you in this new American town.

Tom Hoehn:

I would start off early, get a cup of coffee and go sit in the square we have a square right in the heart of Bentonville and watch the city come to life. People will see you and they will say hello. Sometimes they'll say how you doing and they wait for an answer because they really want to know how are you doing. And you'll be able to pet a dog because somebody will be walking a dog by you and they'll want to say hello to that kind of thing. So it's really just a nice way to see the city kind of wake up and come in front of you and then obviously walk around town and see some public art. I'm somewhat biased about that.

Tom Hoehn:

Use the Visit Bentonville art map for that. Then you can either walk or rent an e-bike. I would suggest to ride over to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and I'm sure this has been talked about in this podcast before, but this is a gift to America not just.

Tom Hoehn:

Bentonville, but America. It is a half a billion dollar building that's being expanded even as we speak. It's only 12 years old right now. It's got a $2 billion art collection and it's free admission for everyone forever. So spend some time at Crystal Bridges and I would grab dinner at one of the many restaurants around the square. I love the variety of restaurants that are there and they're not chain restaurants. They're individual restaurants.

Tom Hoehn:

It's hard to pick just much like the public art favorites. It's hard to pick which restaurant to go to, and then after that I would grab an after-dinner drink. There's like three cocktail bars in town which did not exist like two years ago and two of them were just opened within the last two months. So this is really cool. So Lady Slipper, which is totally stocked with Ozark, there's like a Hindi Wildie painting that is massive. It's got to be 14 feet square.

Tom Hoehn:

It is mind-blowing. Hard Water is another one, and then one that has just opened is Loveless. That's a vinyl cocktail bar with thousands of albums and they curate vinyl songs all day long, all day long. That makes for just kind of a chill day you know, but you see a lot and it's visually interesting and you get to experience, you know a lot of what Bentonville has to offer.

Beth Bobbitt:

Yeah, that's a different strategy. I love that you can just see what happens and watch things unfold. And thank you, Tom, for being so generous with your time and sharing a little bit more about public art in Bentonville. Where can we go? You mentioned visit Bentonville for the public art map. Where can we go to find out more about the committee itself?

Tom Hoehn:

Actually the city has a website. You just look for Bentonville public art. It'll show up with Google and bring you right to that thing and you will see in there you will see our strategy that we put out together. And actually we just had a group of city planners were here at a convention and they wanted to learn about public art and we gave a talk and the people from kansas city, tulsa, um, st louis were all here and they were just blown away with the approach that we've taken and we gave them lessons learned, best practices, so on and so forth. Like here we need more Go, take this, use it yourself, and also samples of the work and things like that. And also it should be noted that we've got two open positions coming up, couple of terms around, so people want to apply.

Tom Hoehn:

So remember more pink snails, that's a great slogan.

Beth Bobbitt:

Thanks so much, tom. And don't forget Visit Bentonville is here to help you navigate things to do, where to eat and stay and what's going on in our new American town. Give us a follow on social media, sign up for the newsletter and check out our website at visitbentonvillecom. Thanks for listening.