Bowling Green native and internationally-acclaimed sculptor Russ Faxon has been commissioned for an art project at the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center.
The new work will be located at Burr Plaza, a public common area in front of SKyPAC.
Folllowing a news conference on Tuesday, Faxon declined to give details about the sculpture, other than it will be figurative.
"I’ll just say it’s full of energy and movement," Faxon told WKU Public Radio. "Everybody will have a different impression of what that story is, what it means to them. Art means different things to different people.”
Faxon is a graduate of Western Kentucky University who also studied art in Italy.
He’s best known for creating Tennessee’s Korean War Memorialand sculptures of Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
At WKU, Faxon created campus statues of Coach E.A. Diddle, as well as Sergeant First Class Robert Guthrie, who died fighting in the Korean War. The art outside SkyPAC, which is about year-and-a-half away from unveiling, will be free for public viewing.
“So many more people are able to appreciate it and be inspired by it," Faxon said. "We’re affecting other people’s lives by the stories we wind up telling, and we have to continue to grow as people, and the way we do that is through thinking, creative thinking.”
The SKyPAC sculpture is being funded through a $100,000 gift from local businessman Joe Davis, the current chair of Arts of Southern Kentucky. It's the first project to come from the group's Public Art Committee. That group's goal is to tap regional artists to provide free exposure to the arts.
