The Chapel Hill Town Council authorized a contract with Frahm on the recommendation of the town’s Public Arts Commission at its meeting Monday, kickstarting Frahm’s project.
“The animals are kind of whimsical, and they have relationships to Aesop’s Fables and other children’s fables,” said Jeffrey York, public arts administrator for Chapel Hill. “But they’ll also serve as seating and help define that area so that programs can start being held outside in good weather and people can start hanging out outside.”
Daniel Cefalo, vice chair of the town’s Public Art Commission, said the unveiling date has not been set for the pieces, but the commission is hoping for the late spring or early summer months.
Frahm’s sculptures will be carved out of 40-by-40 inch limestone cubes. In his proposal to the library’s art selection committee, Frahm said the final pieces would allow children to safely perch, play, nestle and read on the sculptures, while serving as seating for adults. The sculptures will weigh about 1,100 pounds total and will require a crane to put them in place.
“The space where the library will be putting these has no seating of any kind,” Frahm said.
“I imagine these things will be used as seating by adults, and as visual representation of storybook characters by children, so they’ll have something to climb on, something to reference for animals from a particular story.”
Frahm was one of two artists selected out of a pool of about 235 interested artists for the library project, York said. The selection process started in November 2013 and each artist was officially selected in February.
“He’s extremely talented. He has been around and his art was in public venues,” Cefalo said. “There was really a nice comfort level in knowing he had had his work in public places.”
