Turning the past into a future.

As much needed conversations about the role of preservation efforts begin, the C-J's Diane Heilenman highlights how New Albany's historic surroundings can be used in pursuit of a more viable, creative future. The New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project pays homage to our past but refuses to dwell in it, instead choosing to celebrate contemporary art and culture as a vital part of the city's public life, the same as it was centuries earlier.

What happened so many yesterdays ago is interesting and informative. How that knowledge will be interpreted and recast as a part of tomorrow is the reason we work and invest. It's instructive then that Heilenman, as perhaps the area's best known art and culture commentator, was drawn to the most modern of the various media thus far proposed for the project as the lead in telling the story.

Ebb and flow, indeed.

HEILENMAN: The Rising: Art project tells the story of New Albany

Sometime in late April, the Ohio River will flood the front wall of the new YMCA building at 33 State St. in New Albany, Ind. It will continuously rise (and ebb) for at least a year — but leave your snorkel and fins at home.

The “Flood” will be a large-scale video production on the building's facade created by noted new-media artist Valerie Sullivan Fuchs of Shelby County, Ky.

She is one of the first five artists selected for the New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project, which will eventually place 20 works around downtown that will tell the story of the city's history, in time for its 2013 bicentennial celebrations.

* image courtesy of the New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project and Valerie Sullivan Fuchs