This fall, Chapel Hill’s public transportation is getting quite a bit more colorful.
Five bus shelters in Chapel Hill and Carrboro will soon be adorned with spraypainted stencil designs by Ingrid Erickson, screen print posters by Ron Liberti, neon tapework by Mary Carter Taub and other installations and con by local artists. The bus stops slated for artistic upfitting include Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at Stateside Drive, South Columbia Street at UNC Health Sciences, Carrboro Town Hall — as well as the Park & Ride lots at Eubanks Road and Southern Village.
These installations are part of a larger, year-long collaboration between Chapel Hill Transit and the Town’s Office of Community Arts & Culture aimed at enlivening the daily commute and bringing art into the community’s everyday life. Called “Art + Transit,” the project includes the Banned Books Art Bus, which features work by local artists and inspired by books that have been censored or banned and is currently on the road around town. The collaboration also includes a forthcoming project to leverage downtown bus shelters to tell the story of the Chapel Hill Nine, the nine black students from Lincoln High School who ignited the Civil Rights movement in Chapel Hill by sitting at the Colonial Drug Store counter.
Brian Litchfield, Chapel Hill Transit Director, says that the Art + Transit projects help advance some broad goals, noting “We understand that the Town Council and community value vibrant spaces, connected transportation and the arts,” said Brian Litchfield, director of Chapel Hill Transit, in a press release. “The Art + Transit projects check all of those boxes, as well as highlight the ways Town departments work together on creative projects.”
And how much of our tax dollars will go to this “beautifying” project? Why should the bus shelters look nicer than the people (mostly the students at UNC) who stand around in them gripping about how little attention the town pays to UNC_CH?