‘Wings of Joy’ art for Solary Park gets City Council approval

More than two years after first being proposed, a much-anticipated art project finally has the approvals to proceed. The planned “Wings of Joy” sculptures at Solary Park was originally discussed with Oviedo’s Public Arts Board in April 2022 and announced in June 2022, and after alterations to the plan and donations to the budget, was officially approved to move forward by City Council during its May 6 meeting. 

“This project has been going on for quite some time,” Melissa Sileo, chair of Oviedo’s Public Arts Board, said. “We’re really ready. We’re excited with the idea of bringing a major sculpture to Solary Park, because Solary is a beautiful new park that the city has.”

The sculptures, which will be made by local artist Diane Boswell, will consist of five pairs of butterfly wings printed on both sides of metal sheets. There will be no body so visitors can stand in between the wings and be the butterfly bodies themselves.

A rendering of the planned “Wings of Joy” sculpture at Solary Park (Image courtesy of City of Oviedo)

“We’ve done great projects in the past — most of them have been murals, we have some watercolor art — but we were really wanting something more grand, and we feel that Solary Park is the perfect place for this project,” she said.

Solary Park as the location for the sculptures made perfect sense for Boswell, as well.

Structural plans for the sculptures (Image courtesy of City of Oviedo)

“The process started [on my] visit [to] Solary Park, which [was] the most beautiful experience,” she said at the meeting. “I walked around, I spent a lot of time there. I appreciated all the architectural detailing of the boardwalks, the seating. It’s beautifully done.

“Immersing myself in that environment made me think about what this should be,” she said. 

While much of Boswell’s previous work centers around trees, she felt the sculpture for Solary Park should be “something very colorful and joyous,” especially as it was being developed during a perilous time that included the COVID-19 pandemic and the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

”Everybody had very heavy hearts,” she said. “It just came to me that it needed to be an emotion [with a] juxtaposition, [that] if you experience it in a moment, or you experience it in a few moments, that you can have some sort of feeling of joy.”

The wings will be from butterflies native to Florida, including the orange-barred sulphur, red-spotted purpose, monarch and the long wing zebra, the state’s official butterfly. They will stand between 5- and 9-feet tall, with the variance allowing both children and adults to interact with the wings, Boswell said.

Dimensions for the proposed wings, and their designs (Image courtesy of City of Oviedo)

While the original cost estimate was $200,000, Boswell and the team behind the the sculptures have lowered it to $130,200, which includes design costs, fabrication, site preparation, landscape modification, lighting design and installation and signage design, fabrication and installation, The project is expected to take between six and nine months to be completed, which would make it finished in time for the city’s 100-year anniversary celebration in 2025.

Funding for the project will come from multiple sources, including $57,540 from a Community Redevelopment Agency resolution adopted in April 2023, a $25,000 donation by Beazer Homes through land development code deviation mitigation for their Aulin Square development and $47,660 from the Public Arts Fund and other donations to the fund. 

The money coming from the Public Arts Fund comes from donations and developers, with no money coming from property taxes, according to Jerry Boop, Oviedo’s Finance Director.

“The community has, essentially, raised the money to put this in,” Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said.

The addition of the sculpture is part of a larger look into incorporating art into the city.

“More and more we see cities investing in public art,” Teresa Correa, Oviedo’s Development Services Manager, said at the meeting. “I like the fact that it’s a free way for people to be exposed to art that generally would not go to museums.

“There is a long list of intangible benefits [of it]” including increasing public engagement and a sense of identity and shared experience, she said, while also providing tangible benefits like increased tourism, revitalization and infrastructure.

“We see more airports, bridges, even highways, investing in public art because that has a huge impact on people, and how people feel,” she said.

The idea of having the wings without the bodies — while it was originally done as a cost-savings measure — also allows the sculpture to be more “Instagramable,” Correa said. 

City staff suggested the flat area by the visitor pavilion at Solary Park as the location for the sculptures. 

“It’s easier to be installed [there], but also, it’s accessible,” Correa said. “It also has some social control, so we thought that would be an appropriate area.”

While concerns about the metal sheets fading over time have been raised, Correa said a similar sculpture by Boswell in Winter Park, called “Tree Whisperers,” has been up for a decade and shown no signs of fading. She also said a protective coating will be on the wings to allow for easy cleanup from possible graffiti or other substances.

Boswell sees the sculptures as a key landmark in Oviedo in the future.

“The hope here is that it could be a meeting place, [people would say] ‘meet me at the butterflies,’” she said. “Or it can serve a purpose of children getting together with their families.

“You can have a group butterfly party, or you can just sit there and contemplate whatever you want to.”