Fred Kemmerer, an East Weissport native and lifelong automobile enthusiast, proposed a project to Weissport Borough Council this week.

Kemmerer, who grew up in Weissport and lives in Lehighton, writes columns for car magazines, such as Hot Rod magazine and Mustang Monthly.

Through some of the artwork he had viewed in the magazines, he developed an idea to spruce up the borough.

“In what the magazine had used as a back drop for a photo depicting a hot rod was a bridge with graffiti painted on it; I know many people don’t always view graffiti and think of it as artwork, but this was different.” Kemmerer said.

The Global Angel Wings Project was created in 2012 by artist Colette Miller on the streets of Los Angeles, aka, the city of angels. They were painted to remind humanity that we are all angels of the Earth. The wings she paints in a graffiti style are human sized interactive public works of art. The painted wings become art that people take photos with and thus become part of the artwork.

The first pair she created was just street art, however, the response was immediate. Since 2012 Colette has painted wings globally; from Kenya, Australia, England, Japan, France, Cuba, Mexico, China, and of course several cities in the United States. Though some works are commissioned and others gifted, the wings themselves are free to the world.

Miller is known for painting the angel wings in often lower, socioeconomic or deprived areas as a reminder that wings are like hope, and visually transform a neighborhood block, or an unkempt field.

Kemmerer brought up the idea of using Weissport as a location for Miller to paint her famous winged artwork, suggesting an area where the bridge in the borough runs overhead on the Lehigh River.

If not this location, a secondary area canal-side was suggested, due to the borough owning and maintaining the area near the canal, rather than the bridge owned by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

“It would be a waste to have PennDOT paint over the artwork after the fact,” said Kemmerer. A third possible location was near a baseball field in the borough, that isn’t currently being utilized, but is continuously maintained for grass-cutting purposes.

Councilman Thomas Ketchledge said that he “doesn’t oppose the idea at all because it may influence youth positively, deterring someone from using drugs, or could possibly keep someone headed down the wrong path from making poor choices because art was available as an inspiration or an alternative.”

Other Council members agreed.

Kemmerer has to do a bit more fact finding to determine who owns the bridge to see whether or not that location can be used for such graffiti art or whether the alternate idea near the canal is a more foreseeable prospect, although a bridge is what the wings have traditionally been used as canvas for Miller.