By painting four winning designs from street art competition, community turns Olde Town Market intersection into celebration of Lompoc

By Janene Scully, Noozhawk North County Editor | @JaneneScully |Published on 08.22.2015 8:15 p.m. Four crosswalks received creative touches Friday in Lompoc. This summer’s final Olde Town Market — with a theme of celebrating Lompoc — included the unveiling of the city’s first creative crosswalks at the intersection of H Street and Cypress Avenue. Using stencils, workers spent five hours Friday afternoon turning the boring black asphalt into canvases for art with four designs selected after a competition earlier this year. “The excitement, the energy here tonight is just unparalleled,” said Ashley Costa, executive director of the Lompoc Valley Community Healthcare Organization. “It’s new. It’s unique. It’s the first in our area, the first in Santa Barbara County, of course, the first in Lompoc so we’re making history.” The Healthy Lompoc Coalition received a grant from the Santa Barbara Foundation to hold a Creative Crossings competition, and selected four designs created by Lompoc residents. With the pilot project becoming reality, Costa hopes donors will support funding more crosswalk conversions. “I think it will be a lot easier to convince funders that this is a valuable, easily executed project,” she added. The project, aimed at dealing with obesity and physical inactivity, also was supported by the City of Lompoc, the Lompoc Valley Arts Council and the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau. The four winning designs by three artists — Dionne Lugue, Marlee Bedford and Devyn Adams — represent the local arts and culture of Lompoc: trailing flower vines, painting tools, grapes and glasses, and Native American-inspired paintings. Lompoc businesses helped complete the crosswalks, with Armorcoat Painting Co. doing the painting and New Lows making the stencils and creating the 300 tote bags that were snapped up in the first hour Friday. Designs are original artwork and were limited to the safety colors of yellow and white with black asphalt as the canvas. The new crosswalks still meet traffic and safety regulations, officials said. Olde Town Market is an annual summer event series presented by the Lompoc Valley chamber, and it showcases local community attractions each Friday evening in July and August. Healthy Lompoc Coalition is a multisector stakeholder group created by the Lompoc Valley Community Healthcare Organization in response to the growing problem of obesity and physical inactivity in the area.