Celebrate the Arts in Flower Mound

By Elizabeth Brannon

As we move into summer 2020, we have lots to celebrate related to the arts in Flower Mound.

Chalk the Walk Art Contest will happen on Saturday, June 6, from 9 a.m. to noon at Heritage Park.  Taco and Ice Food trucks will be on site.  Register online at flower-mound.com.

The Visual Journal Challenge started at the 2019 Art Party at the Flower Mound Library and continues today.  Participants are invited to take a journal and express themselves creatively in a personal visual journal – through color, drawings, thoughts, painting, collage, poetry, photography – and then submit that visual journal to the Flower Mound Public Library.  In these unusual times, creativity can be a cathartic and enjoyable way to spend some of your time in quarantine.  For more on the Visual Journals, go to YouTube and search on Flower Mound Cultural Arts.  Currently there are eight tutorials available and each one is informative and entertaining!  Everyone can be a creative contributor to this community project.

The Art Wall in Flower Mound Town Hall has new artwork on display.  The art is colorful and bold and with the Town Hall building being open to the public again, available for people to view and enjoy.  Ekta Gomes is the featured artist of the month, and her paintings are visually stunning.  Her works will be featured through the end of July.  For information on the program, selection criteria, and how to submit art work for consideration, please visit flower-mound.com/artdisplay.

The Art Treasure Hunt is an ongoing challenge for residents.  Flower Mound Parks and Recreation and Keep Flower Mound Beautiful have teamed up to bring you an art treasure hunt! The Flower Moundster, Keep Flower Mound Beautiful ’s environmentally conscious monster, has hidden treasure boxes in some of the Town parks. He has placed some recycled and reusable items in the boxes, and if you’re lucky enough to find a box, you are then challenged to create a unique piece of art from the items inside. For treasure box locations, clues, complete rules, and photos of art from some of the treasure hunters please visit flower-mound.com/treasurehunt.

The Signal Box Art project – was featured recently in this column.  Currently, there are six signal boxes with art gracing the town.  The town plans to add three new signal box art wraps each year.  Details about when the next art can be submitted will be available later this year.  The newest signal box art is amazing and colorful and a great enhancement to the public arts in Flower Mound.  We applaud the talented Flower Mound artists who have shared their works with the town.  It’s worth a drive through the town to view these new canvases of color.

Public Art in Flower Mound – If the signal boxes aren’t enough public art, drive through Lakeside and enjoy the wind sculptures in the traffic circles or enjoy the 20-foot tall glass and metal sculpture called Up We Go, in the central roundabout in Lakeside.

Riverwalk has big and bold public art that provokes thought and appreciation.  Many of the art works represent different perspectives on flowers since we are Flower Mound!

If you come out to Heritage Park for the Chalk the Walk contest, it’s a good time to revisit all the bronze sculptures of animals that made their park debut last year.

Online Art Classes – For the past three Friday afternoons, Krissi Oden, the Community and Cultural Arts Program Manager for Flower Mound, has hosted informative and interactive art lessons.  Krissi has taught about Frida Kahlo, Claude Monet and Salvador Dali.  To help the attendees get into the spirit and have fun, Krissi has dressed like the artist each week.  All are welcome and these one-hour Zoom sessions are free. Krissi plans new classes about different artists this summer.

We look forward to the future of all the arts here in Flower Mound and are eagerly anticipating the return to a more normal way of life so that we can enjoy a variety of arts and artists.

Art thoughts:

“I paint flowers so they will not die” – Frida Kahlo

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece” – Claude Monet

“A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.” – Salvador Dali

Elizabeth Brannon serves on the Flower Mound Cultural Arts Commission.