Houston artists Shane Allbritton and Norman Lee have been chosen to create the $750,000 Fallen Five Memorial at the Tennessee Riverwalk.
The City Council is set to approve the contract wi the Re:site firm on Feb. 20.
The city and county have pledged $250,000 toward the project that will be installed at the Amnicola Marsh site.
Three semifinalists were announced earlier to create concept designs for the permanent memorial to honor the five service members who were killed during the domestic terror attack on July 16, 2015.
"Almost two year ago, Chattanooga was forever changed," said Mayor Andy Berke earlier. "And since that day, we have come together in a variety of ways to honor and remember our Fallen Five -- from the murals on McCallie Avenue and the monument on Lee Highway to events like the Heroes Run. This memorial will add to all the ways we pay tribute by creating a special place along the river to pray, reflect, and honor our Fallen Five and their families.”
After a request for qualifications process, Public Art Chattanooga received more than 50 applications from across the country of artists who wanted to help Chattanooga memorialize the Fallen Five. The semifinalists also included Gordon Huether and Gates + Associates and Howard Meehan and William Freer of Firefly Studio.
The three semifinalists later submited concept designs, incorporating one or both site options along the Tennessee River for the final memorial.
“Hamilton County is pleased the selection process for the Fallen Five Memorial has been narrowed down to three excellent candidates," said County Mayor Coppinger. "We believe their designs will not only pay tribute to the fallen five but will also embrace the essence of the Riverwalk where the memorial will reside. Visitors will be able to properly honor and respect the heroes from July 16, 2015.”
"Creating a memorial that incorporates aspects of remembrance and the healing needs of a community can be a challenge,” said Katelyn Kirnie, director of Public Art Chattanooga. “We received an incredible amount of applications from talented artists, and the artist selection panel has selected top candidates that I know will fully consider these important spaces and create a meaningful memorial for our community.”
With donations from the Chattanooga Heroes Run and Erlanger, the Fallen Five Memorial Fund was launched in 2016. The proceeds from the Heroes Run and donations from the community will also go toward this fund, which is hosted at the Chattanooga Community Foundation.
Shane Allbritton and Norman Lee, artists and co-founders of RE:site, "explore notions of community, identity, and narrative within the context of public space. RE:site creates dynamic, multi-layered works that exist somewhere between art, architecture, and landscape. Shane and Norman begin their process by asking questions, exploring alternatives, and experimenting with new materials and methodologies. They draw on a site’s cultural landscape to generate strong narrative concepts, which resonate with a community's local meanings, but also transform and transcend the familiar."
About Shane Albritton:
With a degree in fine arts and 20 years of extensive work designing interpretive spaces and interactives for numerous museums and visitors centers, Shane bridges the disciplines of visual communication, art, and experience design. Her collaborative work spans a range of projects from comprehensive environmental graphics to art installations, including large scale murals, donor recognition systems, wayfinding, media design, suspended art, sculpture and painting. As a visual storyteller, Shane is interested in creating integrative public art that uses narrative placemaking to enhance the quality of civic space. Her work has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Bellingham Herald, Texas Monthly, GD USA, SEGDdesign, Icograda, the Houston Chronicle, Houston Press, Fort Worth Star and Texas Architect. Shane was recognized by the prestigious CoD+A awards for her piece Memory Cloud, as a "Top Project for 2013.”
About Norman Lee:
Norman began his career as a designer of interpretive environments. In 2003, Norman was named a finalist in the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition. In the largest design competition in history, his concept Votives in Suspension was selected from an international field of 5,201 submissions representing 49 states and 63 nations. Norman has also been honored with a SEGD (Society for Environmental Graphic Design) Jury Award for his work on the Billboard Earthbag Project, a concept to reuse commercial billboard vinyl towards the construction of temporary disaster relief shelters. His piece Memory Cloud was recognized by the prestigious CoD+A awards as a "Top Project for 2013.” Norman holds Bachelor and Master degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied art history, psychology, and museum studies. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Appeal, SEGDdesign, USA Today, Architectural Record, Art in America, ARTnews, Imagining Ground Zero, and Texas Architect.