Next month a fleet of five freshly-wrapped downtown electric shuttles will be rolled out to the public for the first time.
Each shuttle will be completely covered in an original design created by Chattanooga artists.
Five artists' designs, one for each shuttle, were selected in April as part of a new design competition sponsored by CARTA, the River City Company and Public Art Chattanooga.
The complete mobile public art fleet will be wrapped and ready within the next few weeks in preparation for a special event on Thursday, June 9, at Miller Plaza to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the River City Company.
The winning designs were created by local artists Rondell Crier, Jaimie Davis, Karent Estes, Daryl Thetford and Clair Vassort. Each artist submitted graphic design concepts that cover the full passenger and drivers side of the shuttle buses, from top to bottom including windows, as well as the front and rear of the bus.
The winning designs are being printed in large panels, or tiles, that are 99" x 273" each. Six tiles are printed to cover one side of the vehicle.
Each tile contains just a single section of the complete design. Sections are color-matched to exact specifications so the touching edges are perfect and the design appears seamless when applied to the bus exterior.
The designs selected for each bus are completely diverse in subject matter as well as design execution. Thetford's intensely detailed photographic-based, layered design is a stark contrast to the muted and natural tones of Vassort's fiber-arts based composition. Two of the shuttles have already been wrapped and one has been spotted on downtown streets.
National Print Group in Chattanooga does all of the CARTA shuttle and bus wrap printing, which are primarily advertising campaigns for malls, hospitals, insurance companies and other companies.
The company works with trucking and mass transit fleets all over the country, but production manager, Alan Ali, said they have never produced a non-commercial campaign that was just about the art.
The project is part of a new public art initiative called Art In Motion which will keep the fleet on the streets for two years.
