Beach Bugs have begun to crawl into the central business district of St. Joseph preparatory to tomorrow's official launch of the 2016 Public Art Project in the City of St. Joseph. The colorful, creepy, crawly fiberglass statues will be proudly displayed from tomorrow through mid-to-late September and merchants will throw out the welcome mat once again to visitors eager to see the latest version of the long running summer art project.
Branded as "St. Joseph is All Abuzz!" the public art program is placing 20 bumble bees, caterpillars, snails and ladybugs on street corners and along the sidewalks in front of various storefronts after they were successfully painted by a host of local and regional artists to set the stage for the summer season.
The kick-off event gets underway at 5:30pm, tomorrow, Friday, May 20th, on State Street, and the first 400 adult visitors will receive $5 worth of artist bucks that can be spent in any St. Joseph Today member business in the district tomorrow evening. Those free artist bucks are made possible by the underwriting of Abonmarche Consultants of Benton Harbor. Live music will be performed by Summer Reunion from 5pm until 8pm downtown, and the whole family can enjoy a night on the town.
The photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market.com is from a photo session last month at Public Works when I took the bugs' portraits for the project brochure, to give you a little sneak peek at some of the impending arrivals.
