Kellams: This is Ozarks at Large.
There's an old adage: if you don't like the weather in the Ozarks, wait a minute. It'll change. Well, the downtown Bentonville landscape isn't quite that dramatic, but wait a few weeks.
One change happening right now is the addition of more public art. There are pieces linking together what the city calls the Quilt of Parks. Some of the newest additions are sculptures created by Linda Nguyen Lopez, a professor at the University of Arkansas.
Lopez usually creates work for indoors, making multicolored artifacts out of ceramics and porcelain with fur—and I’m using air quotes here—hanging down. They're playful, inviting, and introspective, conjuring perhaps, for some, a connection with Sesame Street, Snuffleupagus, or an alpaca.
Her work Infinite Slow Skies can now be seen just outside the main entrance to the 21c Museum Hotel. This month, she was standing beside the art with Chad Alligood, curator for the public art included in the Quilt of Parks. He says working with Linda and the other artists for this endeavor is a chance to connect artists and passersby.
Alligood: As a curator on this project, we have opportunities to place sculpture outdoors so that it can be interacted with by people, members of the public. Those specific opportunities have dimensions, and they have placements with respect to vegetation and traffic.
So as the curator, my job is to decide, okay, we have a specific opportunity with specific dimensions, and then to go through my Rolodex, my contacts, and say what artists might be a great option who could take this opportunity and really run with it and make something beautiful. And that’s when I make the call to somebody like Linda. That’s how it goes.
Kellams: This is going to be seen by, you know, over time, hundreds of thousands, if not millions. What do you think about that?
Lopez: Yeah, that is—
Kellams: Have you thought about that before?
Lopez: I mean, yeah. Well, so I make things out of clay normally. And so knowing that that object is going to live for hundreds of years, and now working in bronze and knowing that those materials are really long lasting—they’re going to outlive me—so to bring them out into the public for even more people to see for a long duration of time, it’s exciting. It’s also scary. But for me, it feels like giving the access and allowing that entry point to art is really exciting.
Kellams: And I want to ask this of both of you. One of the things I love about public art is surprise. My art in my house—I know it’s there. You turn a corner, especially if you don’t live in this town, and it’s like, oh, what is that? Isn’t that exciting?
Alligood: Yeah, it is. It’s one of the great things about living and working in Northwest Arkansas right now—there is this constant newness, especially when it comes to public art and art in public spaces. You show up in a place that you think you know, and the next week it’s transformed. It’s challenging also in some ways because with change comes some personal challenges and challenges we face as a community.
But I think that one of the things that public art can do is create those moments of reflection in public space, the chance to unite around something of beauty. Beauty is something we know is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s something that we can have a conversation around.
In the case of Linda’s work—these beautiful large-scale bronzes—they have saturated color inspired by the Arkansas sunset. They are abstract forms. They’re sort of blubby and nubby in some ways, but they also make reference to things that we recognize in our daily lives.
It creates the space for community members to say, “What is this?” To have that moment of surprise and delight, which I find so beautiful in your work, Linda.
Lopez: Thanks, Chad. Yeah, I think for me, you know, working abstractly has been my entire career. And for me, I’m always thinking about how to surprise the viewer with seeing something that may be somewhat familiar, but yet still abstract enough that they can stand back with curiosity and to empathize with the piece—to think of it as maybe being playful or alive and activating a space.
Kellams: When I first—the first time I saw one of your pieces, and it’s to this day, this moment—I personify them. I give them, if not names, I imagine their personalities. And I think they’re—I don’t know—they seem almost livable and huggable.
Lopez: Absolutely. Everyone should hug one. Well, you know, my entire practice is based off animating the inanimate and really taking the time to think about the histories that objects carry, empathize with them, be curious about the past lives they’ve lived and the things they’ve experienced. To me, every one of these objects is alive and carries a history.
I really try to think about being in Northwest Arkansas. I am now an Arkansan and really kind of embracing understanding the landscape. You see that in this work, too—the idea of these objects living within a landscape.
Alligood: So Linda’s painted bronzes are situated within these beautiful hunks of Arkansas stone that were quarried out of the ground just a few miles from here and placed in space by Ron Troutman, who’s a local rock expert. The surfaces are painted by Lucas Strain of Allied. This is artwork that is taking a route with regional materials and people and ideas to create something new.
Kellams: I love the title. And does the title come easy?
Lopez: No. Titles—up to the last minute for me to make a decision on a title. It’s like naming a child. That is the name of that object or objects for its lifetime. And so for me, I usually come up with a list of titles, and it’s really not until the piece is finished that I can make a decision about what it’ll be named.
So Infinite Slow Skies to me kind of embraces that idea of these objects living a long period of time and seeing many, many skies and seeing many, many people. But also allowing these objects to embrace the slowness of the skies. So just thinking about the idea of time and the compression of time, but also the expansion of time, its histories, everybody that’s touched it, everybody who will continue to touch it and see it and absorb its energy.
Kellams: I love that it’s outside the main entrance of a hotel because this is, you know, by nature, a transient population. And maybe it’s late at night and you’re coming in after the nightcap, or maybe you’re coming out and you’ve got to get to XNA ten minutes ago. And I think Infinite Slow Skies does give you the chance to reflect, whether it’s under the stars or as you’re hustling to the Uber.
Alligood: I agree with that. There is this moment where people are sort of into and out of the hotel. But also keep in mind, we’re right here against Lawrence Plaza, the splash pad that people love and they bring their kids to. This is the path from the Bentonville Square down to the trail that goes to Crystal Bridges.
So this is kind of an intersection between that visitor community and the local community as well. They see it from all sides. It’s at this intersection point where you can see it all the way around. Absolutely. And I think that’s really beautiful as well.
Kellams: And I think a lot of people have seen the phrase Quilt of Parks. For those who have seen it but don’t quite know what it is—
Alligood: Yeah, so the Quilt of Parks project is this project by the city of Bentonville to connect these outdoor public spaces in downtown Bentonville so that they can be traversed via bike or on foot. Creating basically a zone where you can sit and have lunch, where you can take your kids to the splash park, you can walk to the farmers market on the weekends. Everywhere along the way, it’s very friendly to the commuter or the pedestrian. And that’s what this project is all about—creating beautiful public spaces for art and for landscape.
I love these natural native plants that you see everywhere. We’re seeing right now these blooming black-eyed Susans that are just gorgeous. Having that as a part of public space, I think, is so important.
Speaker: Linda, is it ever difficult to give up a work you’ve created?
Lopez: No. I actually love getting the work away from me. I mean, I am a maker. I’m a crafter. I want to continuously make. And for me, getting these objects out to other people feels like what I need to do. It makes me feel like I’m doing something and not just creating for myself, but allowing other people to see this other world that I’ve created and to maybe just change a perspective—allowing someone to slow down and kind of see the things that are around them, even if they think they recognize them, but try to just step back a moment and allow them to see these objects for what they really are.
Kellams: Linda Nguyen Lopez is a professor of art at the University of Arkansas, and her work Infinite Slow Skies can be seen next to the main entrance of the 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Bentonville. Also part of our conversation that afternoon, Chad Alligood, the curator for the Quilt of Parks Public Art project in Bentonville. That conversation took place last month.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
