BELFAST, Maine — Our Town Belfast recently added five new chairs to its Sit Down Belfast project.
Two of the five chairs have been decorated by teenagers with their own creative expressions.
The project started in the spring of 2022 to address the lack of seating in the Belfast downtown area. Eighteen chairs have been installed thus far, 15 last year, and the latest additions of five chairs were added during early summer this year.
"Part of the Our Town Belfast mission is to add beautification projects to downtown that draw visitors that help make it an inviting, welcoming, and really culturally cool place for people wanting to come and visit here," Amanda Cunningham, executive director for Our Town Belfast, said.
Cunningham said the Sit Down Belfast project is a huge success. Plus, the two chairs designed by the young artists are getting a lot more attention.
Fourteen-year-olds Jem Bywater and Kai Kutsy are the creators of two of the five pieces. Both artists are headed to Belfast Area High School in the fall.
Each had unique sources of inspiration for their artwork displayed on the chairs they designed.
Mike Simone, Bywater's stepfather assembled the Adirondack-inspired chair while he thought of ways he could add his creative expressions to it.
"I was thinking about what I could put on a chair, and I looked over, and there was this figurine of Ultraman—that would be a cool design!"
Jem said it was the perfect design for the chair, and he and his stepfather got to work to make it happen.
The other teen artist, Kai, drew his inspiration from science fiction.
Kai’s chair design is likened to an imaginary journey of a cow into a spaceship. Complete with controls displayed on the arms of the chair, in the center of the seat is a drawing of what he imagined to be an abduction hole right out of a sci-fi movie.
The scene, Kai explained, is like an imaginary UFO abducting a cow and swallowing the animal into its abyss.
"One day I was just making tons of designs for what it might be," Kai mused.
These are not the only chair you can see in downtown Belfast designed by up-and-coming artists.
"They are very popular. People take pictures, they pose, they do all kinds of things. It’s very popular for, and I hate to be gender-specific, but men that like to wait for their wives while they are shopping," Cunningham expressed.
Cunningham hopes the project will inspire more artists like Kai and Jem and says she's working to provide more opportunities for public art.
Each of the chairs is individually sponsored by Belfast community members or businesses.