Bronze sculptures add 'human' element to downtown promotion

VINELAND — Promoting a downtown is an endless struggle, but the Main Street Vineland District now has a body of volunteers it can count on for the next six months.

They’re all a bit stiff, but that’s bronze statues for you.

The district took $10,000 from two grants to borrow a set of life-size statues, all bronze, from the Seward Johnson Atelier in Hamilton. Before you break out dictionaries, “atelier” is a nice French way to say “studio.”

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Russ Swanson, the district’s executive director, got the idea at a conference this spring. The money covers the cost of transporting and setting up the statues for a roughly six-month stay.

The statues arrived on July 25 and were immediately set up on five contiguous blocks of East Landis Avenue.

The painted statues are meant to appear lifelike. One called “Solo,” of a man playing a trumpet, may be the best at pulling it off. “Solo” is outside the Landis Theater on the 800 block.

“Numerous people have said they’ve driven by the trumpet player on Landis Avenue and thought it was a real person,” Swanson said. “One guy was like, ‘I couldn’t believe what idiot was standing outside in the rain playing the trumpet.’”

The bronzes have to go back to the arts nonprofit, but the district has them through Jan 31, 2024. And between then and now, the idea is to tie them into as many events and programs as possible.

“In other words, we didn’t just bring them in, plop them down, and let them sit there,” Swanson said. “We’re going to have a lot of events and programming around them.

“As an example, just to start, three of them are in front of the murals we did under our Urban Canvases on the Ave project,” he said. “And we’re continuing to do. We have a fourth one underway. … But this is a way that we’re activating the murals.”

On the avenue's 500 block, a bronze called ‘Los Mariachis’ was placed in front of a Mexican-themed mural. The statue is of two mariachi players playing music in Mexican attire.

“So, when there’s an appropriate Mexican holiday coming up - I think there’s one in October – we’re going to try to hire a real mariachi band and ask our Mexican restaurants to all offer lunch and dinner specials for a couple days,” Swanson said. “And really, celebrate the mural and the sculpture as it ties into the business community in our downtown fabric.”

The sculptures are located as follows on East Landis Avenue:

∎ 800 block, “Solo,” in front of the Landis Theater

∎ 700 block, “Stormy Weather,” a woman struggles with her umbrella, U.S. Post Office

∎ 600 block; “Yuck. Go fetch,” a man and his dog, at the Landis Marketplace Building; and “Just a Taste,” two children eating ice cream, near the Downtown Clock and Celebrate Food mural

∎ 500 block, “Los Mariachis;” and “Embracing Peace,” a sailor and woman kissing, at the Boulevard and Landis Avenue, near the Military Mural.

While they're in South Jersey, the statues might be tempted to visit area kinfolk.

Another Johnson work, "Sunday Morning," shows a couple reading a newspaper on the lawn of Cherry Hill's library.

And Haddonfield has "Weekend Painter," the sculptor's depiction of a man, paint pot in one hand and brush in the other, touching up a window frame at Kings Highway and Haddon Avenue.

The funding for the Vineland statues came from the Cumberland County Cultural & Heritage Commission and the Neighborhood Preservation Program for which the city receives state money.

Joe Smith is a N.E. Philly native transplanted to South Jersey 36 years ago, keeping an eye now on government in South Jersey. He is a former editor and current senior staff writer for The Daily Journal in Vineland, Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, and the Burlington County Times.

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