Published August 28, 2024
CAPTION:Scott Finch (left) and April Baham (right) from Percent for Art speak at the commemoration of Here We Go, a new public art sculpture adjacent to Sandel Hall.
MONROE, LA – The University of Louisiana Monroe held a press conference on August 21, 2024, to
commemorate the installation of a new public art sculpture on its campus. The sculpture,
titled Here We Go, was created by Kansas City artist Beth Nybeck. The 12-foot-tall steel sculpture has
been installed next to Sandel Hall on Northeast Drive.
Speakers at the press conference included Scott Finch, the Director of Percent for
Art, and April Baham, Project Manager for Percent for Art, the program whose funding
made the sculpture possible. Other speakers included ULM Vice President for Enrollment
Management and University Relations Lisa Miller, ULM President Dr. Ron Berry, and
Director of the ULM School of Visual and Performing Arts Dr. Nicholas Bratcher.
Here We Go incorporates handwritten responses by ULM students, faculty, staff, alumni and community
members. Participants responded to the prompt “I am going to ______” and were encouraged
to fill in the blank with their future aspirations or goals striving towards personal,
professional, or global impact. Nybeck collected the responses in 2022 and 2023. The
sculpture is created by many stacked layers of text taken from participants’ responses
to the prompt.
Nybeck says she collected hundreds of responses. “The form is a human head which is
indicative of education. Every statement is reflective of a person or many people
who wrote similar responses,” said Nybeck.
“Part of my process in creating public art is creating an element of community engagement.
Instead of having a reflection of just my voice, it becomes a reflection of the community,”
said Nybeck.
"The reason I fell in love with public art was that I want for my own life to have
a lot of inclusion. I think a successful piece of public art wakens us up and gets
us to think about things differently,” added Nybeck.
The piece has been made possible thanks to the state’s Percent for Art Program. For
more than 20 years, the Percent for Art law reserves one percent of state money to
be invested in public art when more than $2 million in state funds is spent by a state
agency for newly constructed or renovated state buildings. The funds for Here We Go came specifically from the Sandel Hall renovation project, which was completed in
2016. A committee of university stakeholders selected Nybeck’s proposal from a pool
of 64 applicants after a call for art.
Click here to view a video of Beth Nybeck describing the sculpture and its installation.
