The West Windsor Arts Council and the Historical Society of West Windsor, New Jersey, is hosting the mARTian Project sculpture design contest , which is tied to the 85th anniversary of the Orson Welles radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds in October 2023.
Grovers Mill, an unincorporated community located within West Windsor township, was the site of the fictional invasion. (Grovers Mill is mentioned nearly two dozen times during the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast.)
People of all ages and skill levels are encouraged to imagine what the Martians would have looked like. Entries are encouraged to take inspiration from the audio description given byWelles on October 30, 1938, but also give an original and friendly spin to how these Martians are depicted, according to New Jersey Stage.
Martian designs will be collected until September 9, 2022 and then a public vote will be held to determine which design will be sculpted as the official mascot across town.
The winning design will be used to create blank, fiberglass sculptures, which will be given to local artists to decorate as part of a separate design contest that will be released in the spring of 2023.
The winning sculpture designer will receive a cash prize of $500. Details and full parameters of the mARTian Project contest can be found online at WestWindsorArts.org.
The winning design will be announced on October 30, 2022 at the Schenck Farmstead in West Windsor. The event will also feature a talk by A. Brad Schwartz, author of “Broadcast Hysteria.”
The town had a similar sculpture drive five years ago for the 8oth anniversary of the broadcast.
There is already a monument in Van Nest Park, in the heart of Grover’s Mill, and The War of the Worlds-themed Grover’s Mill Coffee House in the Southfield Shopping Center.
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