Exhibition Impact

Top panels, facing north

After surviving over a month of  amazingly harsh weather, the "Art of History" installation is beginning to make it's public interpretive mark. Yet another media outlet has spread the word, this time in the form of a UTC News blog posted on February 4 entitled "UTC Faculty, Alumni, Students Construct Public Art Installation" and available at
http://blog.utc.edu/news/2011/02/utc-faculty-alumni-students-construct-public-art-installation/

This concise blog entry highlights the UTC/Markmaking partnership. Next up is a display in UTC's Cress Gallery that will be mounted in mid-February.

In the February/March issue of Chattanooga Parent the Bluff Furnace installation is featured in an article by Jennifer Crutchfield entitled "The Mystery of the Belching Blasts and the Lost Furnace."

We have also begun to receive substantial feedback on the installation. Mark Making and local community volunteers have been distributing questionnaires about the display to visitors on the Walnut Street Bridge and the Tennessee Riverwalk. To date 140 face-to-face surveys and 30 on-line surveys (via Survey Monkey) have been completed and tabulated. Particularly gratifying was that 78% of respondents “would not have guessed this piece was created by non professional artists;” 97% agreed that this piece “brings attention to the historical significance of the Bluff Furnace.” Not too shabby!