The New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project needs your empty beer bottles at Bank Street Brewhouse on Saturday, March 20.

Press release

New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project

February 20, 2010---- The New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project is a multi-year outdoor exhibition of twenty temporary sculptures that interpret the rich history and heritage of New Albany, IN. In the spring of 2010, five temporary sculptures will be installed in highly visible locations in the downtown historic district. Each subsequent year, five new sculptures will be unveiled, culminating in 2013 with New Albany’s Bicentennial Commemoration.

This project is a partnership between the Carnegie Center for Art and History and the New Albany Urban Enterprise Association. It is directed by Julie Schweitzer Studios, with major funding provided by the Horseshoe Foundation of Southern Indiana. For more information or to get involved, e-mail Julie Schweitzer, Project Director, or call 812-944-4986.

As part of the New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project artist Leticia Bajuyo is creating an interactive sculpture for display at the New Albanian Brewing Company's Bank Street Brewhouse.

On March 20, 2010, at noon, Leticia Bajuyo will be on site at the Bank Street Brewhouse to give a presentation about her work and the project.

The piece she will create is informed by the history of taverns and breweries in New Albany and dates back to 1830 with stories of homespun attitudes and community support, as explained on the project's FaceBook page, and web site.

In recognition of this, the primary materials of the sculpture are locally collected, used beer bottles. The collected bottles are used to create a work influenced by the Lite-Brite™ toy; these bottles serve as pegs on the front wall of the sculpture, but unlike a Lite-Brite™, these pegs do not create a stationary pattern. Here, images of New Albany’s brewery logos, projected from the inside the sculpture, change through viewer participation. Furthermore, the sides of the sculpture are constructed of bottles between plexi-glass walls. Sitting on shelves, these rows of bottles reference both the song “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and Tom Marioni’s social sculpture from 1970, entitled “The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art."

Attendees at the event on the 20th will be "paid" in New Albanian Brewing Company “scrip” for clean 12-ounce empties with labels removed. Attendees can redeem the “scrip” (25 cents per empty) as coupons toward their food and drink purchases. Lite-Brites™ will be available onsite to stimulate your creativity along with your appetite. Please join us with your empties and become a part of New Albany’s brewing history.