Seven artists chosen for Detroit Lakes utility box art wraps

Detroit Lakes, Minn. (KDLM) – The artwork of seven artists have been chosen to adorn seven different public utilities box in Detroit Lakes.

The public art project push is one of the first initiatives of the city’s new arts and culture commission whose mission is to create additional community, cultural and economic benefits for the city by promoting art through a variety of different mediums.

Proposed Utility Box Art – Detroit Lakes by Michael Achterling on Scribd

Amy Stearns, a member of the city’s arts and culture commission and head of the artistic nonprofit Project 412, said the commission received 79 submissions, which made selecting the winners a difficult task.

“It was a jury process, it was a blind jury, so you didn’t know who the artist was, all you saw was the artwork,” said Stearns. “And the arts and culture commission were the jurors and they ranked each piece, there was a scale, a sliding scale, and the top ones were the ones that were selected.”

She also said, in addition to the artwork wraps for the utility boxes, some murals may begin popping up across the city, which is a statement in how quickly Detroit Lakes residents and officials have embraced its newly augmented artistic push.

“You know when you visit different communities, communities that are reinvesting in themselves, communities that care what their downtown looks like, or their beach looks like, those are the communities that are going to thrive,” she said. “Detroit Lakes is already doing a lot of good things. I mean just look at the gorgeous flower boxes that are around town. Those are fantastic. And how our community is coming along is just wonderful. We’d just kind of like to involve more people and get more color going throughout the community and it’s going to be really fun to see how it goes for the next couple of years.”

Utility Box Map – Detroit Lakes by Michael Achterling on Scribd