This story has been updated.
A western Kentucky nonprofit hopes to bring public art to one of Paducah’s Southside neighborhoods – but they want residents’ input first.
The Paducah Historical Preservation Group, formed in 2022, is looking to facilitate a project to bring public art to Southside Paducah. They're hosting a town hall meeting this week to gauge community interest in public art being installed on Walter Jetton Boulevard, off of Kentucky Avenue, near downtown Paducah. It’s set for Thursday, March 14, at 6 p.m. in Nehemiah Christian Church, and a reception will precede the meeting.
Rhonda McCorry-Smith, an advisor with the nonprofit, said she thinks adding public art could have an impact on the neighborhood.
“Well, a lot of people just pass art on the street. They'll see the cat, the painted cows or the horses, the spotted horses, and they think ‘how pretty,’ but it's usually a representation of the community,” McCorry-Smith said. “It will hopefully move the Southside forward and show it in a more positive light. So it's a chance to express yourself in a positive way as a community and be proud of it.”
PHGP has previously led efforts to deepen the western Kentucky city’s sense of place like the Paducah African-American Heritage Driving Tour – a guided tour of Black history sites in the McCracken County seat that can be done from a passenger seat using a brochure.
McCorry-Smith said potential subjects for the art piece could include local historical figures and events, a current depiction of the community or its residents or even something more abstract and futuristic. She said the group is open to ideas from the community.
The piece – whatever medium it winds up being – would go somewhere in the median on the street.
This project is connected with the City of Paducah’s Southside Neighborhoods Initiative. The Paducah City Commission has listed beautifying Southside and empowering and engaging with its residents as one of its priorities in recent years. McCorry-Smith said that the funding for the potential art’s creation will come from grant funding received by City of Paducah, which she said could be $10,000 or more. Those funds could be used to pay a local or regional artist to create a piece and provide for its materials and installation.
“We think [there is] enough talent in Paducah or the immediate region to cover this project, but if we have to, we'll go from California to New York,” she said.
