New London has a noisy history with public art -- which is a good thing, because art is supposed to provoke thinking, feeling and expression.

Public art appears where people routinely go about their work and play. Instead of visitors to the art, as in a museum trip, the art repeatedly visits with people in their milieu. Like seeing the Whale Tail while catching a bus downtown, people react over and over.

In many cases, public and locally donated funds help pay for public art, giving passersby an even deeper sense of ownership and the entitlement to air their opinions.

Public art exists at all times of day and night, over many seasons of weather. Because it is always, always there, it comes to define the nearby space, like the supersized, classical semi-nudes turning their backs on drivers who pass Hygienic Art on Bank Street.

Public art grows on people, unless it doesn’t, in which case the law of inertia usually sets in. Removal costs money and might offend those who erected it. So it stays, fading back like wallpaper. That is unless, like the Columbus statue that unceremoniously departed the corner of Howard and Bank streets, its presence strenuously upsets more people than its removal would. In such cases, even removed public art serves its purpose of inspiring a conversation about how the community sees itself and its values.

Art leaves as many impressions as there are people looking at it, multiplied by the changing responses of those same people over time. For some the nudes were a bit much until a person had seen them hanging around in the same pose for months. Familiarity breeds familiarity.

The loftiest ambition for any public art project is to reflect the spirit of the place and its people to themselves and outsiders. With the motive of “bringing communities together to achieve racial justice through art,” the southeastern Connecticut PARJE (Public Art for Racial Justice Education) movement organized after the killing of George Floyd. PARJE has sponsored murals and hopes to inspire art throughout the region.

The planned 30-foot bronze and steel sculpture “Infinity,” intended for a granite outcropping just west of Ocean Beach Park at the entrance to the Thames River, also has a goal of describing the community to itself and visitors, according to the artist, Renee Rhodes, and her supporters.

The impression aims to be monumental because of the female figure’s height while graceful and airy in its bulk. Holding aloft the figure-eight symbol for infinity is meant to convey New London’s “history and promise,“ and serve as a “beacon of hope to the world.”

It is a delicate task, defining a community to itself and inspiring it with its own past and future. The supreme challenge for the artist goes beyond sculpting grace and beauty to daring to grasp a city’s specific self-vision and inspire a universal reaction among people who don’t know the place but get the message.

Great art dares. Great public art has to reach even further; it can’t stop with what the artist alone believes or it risks losing touch with the vision it taps into. The solution to that dilemma is to test what the people themselves think of the image that is intended to communicate their city, past and future.

Rhodes has assembled an impressive group of supporters, including many who have made a second (unpaid) job out of advocating for public art. She has behind her A. Vincent Scarano, president of the Hygienic Art board, Linda Mariani, attorney and art collector, and Keith Turner, longtime board member of the Southeastern Connecticut Cultural Coalition. The Hygienic can lay claim to being New London’s original populist art project; Vinnie Scarano was there at the founding and has been ever since.

Yet, as the Infinite Possibilities project begins its campaign to raise $2.5 million to fabricate and place the sculpture, I hope the group will not stop checking their progress against their non-financial goals: What does New London look like, as personified by the sculpture? Will everyday people who think they don’t know much about art recognize their city? Do they get to weigh in?

Public participation in public art projects gets noisy, yes, but it’s constructive noise. Lack of opportunity to be heard early on in the project can leave people, well, uninspired.

Renee Rhodes has been given an opportunity with much riding on it for New London.

Lisa McGinley is a member of The Day Editorial Board.