Burlington Bears Its Art for Cots
This coming May, Citizens Bank, The Burlington Business Association, The Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Church Street Marketplace are at it again.
Many remember the 2010 tourist season when visitors to the Burlington area enjoyed a creative outdoor art exhibit featuring nearly 40 painted cows dotting the region.This time around though, organizers won't be putting cows on display, but bears. Each bear is sponsored by a local business or organization who can choose its own artist or design for the bear.
“Burlington Bears its Art” hopes to build off the success of “The Cows Come Home to Burlington.” Like the cows, each bear will be artfully ecorated and placed around Burlington and the entry points of Chittenden County, creating an large scale exhibit that can be both traveled to and walked through.
“This is a great project, a win for everyone involved,” said Kelly Devine, Executive Director of the Burlington Business Association. "The Bears will drive tourism, support local artists, promote businesses and give back to the community. Its economic vitality at its finest." Devine also noted that similar to “The Cows Come Home to Burlington”, which raised $10,000 for the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger, part of the proceeds from this auction will benefits COTS (Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter), Vermont’s largest shelter and service provider.
35-40 bears will soon begin to be manufactured by the same company that made the cows. By March, these “blank canvases” will be delivered to the artists chosen to paint them. The artists will have about a month and a half to finalize their masterpieces and the bears are set to go on display May 10. Tourists and Vermonters alike will have a chance to view the bears on Church Street and at rest areas and various Burlington locations and businesses until October 11.
For more information, or to sponsor a bear, contact Matt McMahon, regional marketing and tourism director for LCRCC, at 863-3489 or matt@vermont.org. You can also visit the event’s media sponsors WOKO, WCAX and the Burlington Free Press for more information, news and stories.
