Camille Cox, one of the original co-chairs for the Art in the Roundabouts Committee in the Village of Oak Creek, announced to the Rotary of Sedona Village on Feb. 19 plans to install the first two pieces of art by April.

The plan is for four art pieces to be installed throughout the VOC along State Route 179.

The first of the two art pieces, which was fully funded by donation from VOC philanthropists Rob and Alix Schaefer, is “Village Treasures,” created by artist Reagan Word, will be installed at the Verde Valley School Road roundabout. The second artwork, “Dream Catcher,” by artist Chris Navarro, recently finished its fundraising and is planned for the Cortez Drive roundabout.

Village Treasures is “at the foundry now,” Cox said. “So, we’re waiting for it to get to a certain stage of construction, and then we’re going down with the artist to take pictures.”

Word previously sculpted “Open Gate” at the Schnebly Hill roundabout and the paired “Eagle Dancer” sculptures in the Uptown roundabouts while Navarro has numerous sculptures outside his gallery at Tlaquepaque.

Phase 2 will begin once the art pieces are installed and begin by deciding art for the roundabout on either end of the VOC along State Route 179 at the Ridge Trail Drive and Bell Rock Boulevard intersections.

“In the beginning of the project, we actually polled the community on themes that the community was attracted to and thought would be good,” Cox said. “Those have already been established.”

The next call for artists will be a nation-wide call for ideas meeting the criteria.

“Once we get the ones that meet the criteria, we’ll have a public event,” Cox said. “Last time, we had it here at the library.”

“For those that don’t already know that both of the first two artists that were selected are local,” committeewoman Lenore Hemingway said at the meeting. “They both live right here in the village, which just happened to happen, but it was really neat that they were local artists.”

The committee, which was originally created under the nonprofit Big Park Regional Coordinating Council, is now the umbrella of the Sedona Village Main Street Partnership, a nonprofit organization created in 2024 specifically for the installation of these art pieces.

“When we had the board meeting back on [Jan.] 27, the board said, ‘yeah, why don’t we join in this project with the partnership and collaborate with them and see if we can’t make it happen?’” Rob Schaefer said. “This is a natural project for our club. It involves a community. It involves a lasting contribution and I think you guys are going to like it.”

The Arizona Department of Transportation approved the installation, the Sedona Area Garden Club did the landscape design, the Arizona Community Foundation provides long-term maintenance funding and the Red Rock Road Enhancement Maintenance District will be the final owner.

“RRREMD is a taxing district that was set up [in 2008],” Rotarian Rob Schaefer said. “Their job is to maintain the public areas along 179 and they actually have taxing authority; you pay a little bit on your taxes go to RRREMD.”

The Main Street Partnership has a special fund for the arts’ maintenance.

“RRREMD can’t be holding money, according to their charter,” Cox said. “So that’s how we worked out these structures, and that’s kind of why this project’s taken four years. It’s never really been done before by a non-municipality or … no county sponsorship or anything. It’s just been a group of volunteers and a community that had a desire to beautify our roundabouts, which were designed to have art in them from the very beginning.”

“My husband used to be the supervisor of the RRREMD district through the maintenance,” Hemingway later said. “He saw on the maps for the roundabouts that there was actually a pad designed for art.”

Schaefer said he’s excited to see it come to fruition now most of the hard work is done, like finding the right themes and organizing the funding for the first statues and collaborating with everyone involved.

“We don’t want this to drag out,” Schaefer said. “We want to get out, raise the funds, get artwork installed, declare victory.”

Rotary Youth

Students from around the Verde Valley attended the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards camp in Prescott over Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. This included two international students from Verde Valley School: Christopher Kempelmann from Germany and Ela Kalabusova from the Czech Republic. The three-day weekend included outdoor activities, public speaking workshops and lessons on communication.

“Before I came there, I was a little bit scared of meeting all these people,” Kalabusova said. “I wouldn’t know anybody besides Chris, but my team was so nice.”

She said in the first activity with her group, everyone was kind of clumsy as a team.

“Some people were leading the whole thing, and some people were just standing there,” she said, “and on the last activity, we were a great team.”

The teams were all organized by the international students’ home countries.

“My main takeaway from RYLA was that just being open to people is the biggest factor that people also are open to you,” Kempelmann said.

He said at first, his group was silent, and didn’t talk very much to each other.

“We didn’t know each other, and they were just open minded and extroverted,” he said. “Within like two hours, we were such a great team, and everyone was so happy.”

His favorite outdoor activity was the Goliath’s Wall.

“You couldn’t do it on your own,” Klempelmann said. “So you had to work as a team with your friends to get up there and push them up and also pull them up.”

Zane Dickey, VVS’ director of global initiatives, said the school has 115 students enrolled and he is very grateful for the opportunities like this available to students.