Urban Jacksonville

For the second year in a row Urban Jacksonville was selected as the best blog in Jacksonville by the readers of Folio Weekly. I’m flattered to win this honor two years in a row. I doing something right, so I’ll keep doing what I do.

If this is your first time visiting, welcome. This blog is about the culture and events that permeate the neighborhoods of Downtown Jacksonville. Thanks for visiting and while you’re here, check out five blogs who may take the title next year:

1. Metro Jacksonville – Downtown development, advocacy and improvement.
2. Globatron – contemporary art and culture in Jacksonville.
3. Bike Jax – Jacksonville bicycle culture and news.
4. Paper and Stitch – Not about Jacksonville, but this blog has the potential to break into the National craft blog scene
5. JaxScene – Jacksonville music, art and culture. Daily event listings and photos.

Seriously, if you voted for me, you rock.

Folio Weekly is known for exposing the unsightly underbelly of Northeast Florida political life, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to look good on the outside.

Folio Weekly is currently seeking 10 creative (and local) visual artists to beautify, deface or otherwise adorn some of our outdoor newspaper racks.

The racks will be displayed at the September ArtWalk in downtown Jacksonville, as well as at distribution points throughout Northeast Florida for at least a year. Participating artists will also be profiled in our Sept. 16 Fall Arts Preview issue.

I talked with Maia Ferrell, who came up with the idea, and asked her a few questions:

Introduce yourself and tell how and why you came up with this great idea
My name is Maia Ferrell, and I am the Editorial Art Director at Folio Weekly. We have been sitting on the Ugly On The Inside art contest for a few months. We’d brainstormed different ways to get more involved in the local art community. ArtWalk has been such a success, we figured we might as well start there. Public art and installation art is what makes a every city block unique. I mean, heck, the Brooklyn Bridge just got its own waterfall. I think the glossy jaguars and manatees around town were a great beginning. But I think for myself and the rest of the city, we have bigger plans. We have some pretty hip readers, so I can only imagine the response we are going to receive will be dynamite.

Is this a one time thing or do you plan to do it yearly?
You know, we haven’t really thought that far ahead. We are a weekly, after all. We don’t even know what we are writing next week. But, kicking off fall weather and busier ArtWalks with an Annual art contest sounds pretty fun.

Can the designs be 3-D, a la the half hair-band-lead-singer half-beast in the call-to-artists?
You think my ‘centaur’ looks like a hair-band-singer? Well Christ, I’m glad I can’t enter the contest. But, absolutely. 3-D work is acceptable. We just don’t want the art to cover the window section of the box.

Any words of wisdom to the artists?
Have the courage to be creative. I ripped that off the HBO series “Tell Me You Love Me.” (My roomate has me addicted.) They actually said, “Have the courage to be happy.” Uh … anyways, my advice to the artists is that anything is acceptable. We like new. We are bored of old.

Those interested in participating must submit a rough sketch of their design, using our official template, by July 30. Templates may be downloaded at folioweekly.com and must be either e-mailed as a JPEG file to coverup@folioweekly.com or snail-mailed to Folio Weekly Coverup, 9456 Philips Hwy., Ste. 11, Jacksonville, FL 32256.

Download Official Template