Artful Partnership

Kennesaw State Master Craftsman students create public art for City of Kennesaw

By Kennesaw State University

June 18^th, 2021

Downtown Kennesaw has become an art gallery of sorts in recent years, in part because of a partnership between the city and Kennesaw State University.

Over the past five years, students in KSU’s Master Craftsman program have produced more than two dozen pieces of public art that adorn the City of Kennesaw. Students outfitted Kennesaw’s new Gateway Park with three pieces — a sign to welcome visitors, a shade structure and bench, and a functional and decorative sundial. Students have designed more than a dozen unique manhole covers, casting some of them at the Sloss Furnace foundry in Birmingham, Alabama. This spring, three new pieces by Master Craftsman students were created to display in the city’s Smith-Gilbert Gardens.

Functional, public art

KSU’s College of the Arts launched the Master Craftsman program in 2017. Students soon had their first opportunity to create a piece of public art following a conversation between director of the School of Art and Design, Geo Sipp, and then City of Kennesaw economic development director, Bob Fox, who put forward the idea of creating some seating at the Southern Museum.

Students created two benches that resemble bent railroad spikes, in keeping with the museum’s focus on railroad history. City officials loved the idea and a partnership with the city was born, said Page Burch, lecturer of sculpture and creator of Kennesaw State’s Master Craftsman program.

“We’ve never missed a deadline,” Burch said. “That’s something I’m proud of, because we are working with students on large-scale projects.”

Real projects for real clients

Creating public art is invaluable for students, Sipp said. They create designs and develop cost estimates, build small-scale models and make presentations to groups looking to commission public art. While all of those things could be done on a mock basis in the classroom, real-life projects provide a better learning experience, he said.

Sipp credits Burch for raising the idea of creating a Master Craftsman program at Kennesaw State and leading it to a point where its students' creations are in high demand.

“We’re booked up for the next two years. That's a problem I did not expect when we started,” Burch said.

The popular program attracts students from a variety of art majors. “Many of the students come in with no 3D art experience, no welding experience,” Burch said. “Many are painting and drawing students and have never worked on projects of such large scale.”

Students’ work gaining wider notice

The art that Master Craftsman students created within Kennesaw has attracted notice. Other commissions have included a fallen officer memorial for the Acworth Police Department, and sculptural signage at Aviation Park in the Town Center Community Improvement District. A newly dedicated sculpture at the William Root House Museum in Marietta memorializes enslaved people in Cobb County whose names have been lost over time.

Senior art major Emmy Keenan’s designs were chosen for both the Acworth Police memorial and the Root House memorial sculpture, which she fabricated with fellow students Preston Holladay and Michael Windley.

“I never would have thought that as a 22-year-old woman I would be able to say that I would have three large-scale sculptures that I have helped put out into the world and that two of them are a result of my original designs,” Keenan said. “That’s not something a lot of artists can say.”

Burch said he is grateful for the mutually beneficial relationship between his program and the City of Kennesaw in support of public art and the students who create it.

Kennesaw Mayor Derek Easterling said, “As I walk around the city, I am reminded of how important relationships and collaborative efforts are in achieving what we have accomplished. One such relationship is our ongoing partnership with Kennesaw State University and their Master Craftsman program, which has helped us realize both top-tiered and unique art. Walking path benches, drain-hole covers, a full-scale sun dial in our Gateway Park are but a few of the many art pieces we have benefited from through this program. I am looking forward to the next big collaborative project.”