So even before this sort of major staff interest in building that arts program, there had been a sort of embryo arts program that the state itself had started. But this one particular individual and, and of course I, you know, I’m also very keen on the arts and that’s another of the things that I’ve played a big role in locally in the, in our local arts scene. So I was very encouraging of this. So we, we built this quite major arts master plan in which we didn’t, we didn’t define fine in detail what we wanted for each exhibit, but we created a theme, we sort of suggested a theme to which artists could submit work that seemed to fit the theme. And fortunately we had a couple at the time who were very interested in, well they, where, where it started with them was that they came to us one day saying there’s no, you know, here’s this amazing place and you, you drive up to it and there’s absolutely nothing that says you’ve arrived at this amazing place. There’s no no big sign, there’s no, you know what, what There’s no art thing. So there was a big competition with about, and this is, you know, you’re looking at 25 years ago now with about a $3 million budget, you know, big, big budget, 3 million in today’s money and about, I think there were over a hundred applicants for it. And anyway, landed up with a set, a a a group of full-size bronze elephants, which now adorn the entry as a long entryway up into the North Carolina zoo.
