The Summer Sculpture Residency has gained one final year of funding, but this will not sound the end of student sculpture presentations on campus.

The Summer Sculpture Residency program features sculptures along Seventh Street between the Tarble Arts Center and the Doudna Fine Arts Center. Art students create models and compete to be chosen to create their sculptures for the program.

However, for the last year of the program, six Eastern alumni will compete to have their sculptures featured along Seventh Street for Summer 2013, sculpture instructor Jeff Boshart said. Alumni must have graduated from Eastern by May 2013.

Alumni chosen will receive $1,000 for materials, $500 for living expenses, two weeks of free housing and 24/7 access to the sculpture shop in the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

The Summer Sculpture Residency began in 2008, but last year the program did not receive necessary funding to erect new sculptures for Summer 2012. Sculptures featured this year will remain until Summer 2014.

“That’s kind of the last bells and whistles of the sculpture tour,” Boshart said.

Student sculptures will also be a main feature of the proposed North Plaza, Boshart said.

The North Plaza will be a courtyard constructed between the Student Services Building and the steam plant, where a gravel lot now stands, as a part of Eastern’s Master Plan, President William Perry said. The gravel lot is the remnant of where the steam plant extension used to stand before its demolition earlier this year.

The North Plaza will have a walkway running north-to-south between the Martin Luther King Jr. Union and Blair Hall, as well as a circular seating area, said David Crockett, associate director of Facilities and Planning Management.

Surrounding the seating area will be a garden area and space for four to six sculptures, depending on the size of the sculptures, Crockett said.

Boshart said the North Plaza is a good opportunity to provide a place for students and faculty to relax and a place for students to display their creativity.

“It’s sort of a win-win: it will be an interesting space on campus, hopefully people will take the opportunity to walk through there, and hopefully students will take the opportunity to create a larger sculpture,” he said.

One sculpture that is already planned to go into the North Plaza is a piece titled “Grasshopper”, Boshart said. The sculpture was created by a sculpting class and is made from old steam pipes.

“It’s kind of interesting that we are taking old steam pipes and putting them where the old steam plant used to be,” Boshart said.

Perry said there was some talk of turning the gravel lot into campus parking, but he and William Weber, vice president of business affairs, agreed that the space would better serve as a courtyard rater than bringing more traffic into the center of campus.

“I like, as much as possible, for the interior of campus to be a place that nice to walk on and walk through,” Perry said. “Any time we can enhance our built environment with art and sculpture I think we ought to do that.”

A date has not been set for the construction of the North Plaza, Crockett said.

Tim Deters can be reached at 581-2812 or tadeters@eiu.edu.

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