We love art and the people who make it.

In fact, that's the first of our three reasons for creating Uproar:

To celebrate artists. We want to celebrate, support, and welcome participating artists, making you feel like rockstars.
To engage art lovers of all types. We believe ALL people should be able to participate in the arts. Uproar will provide a completely free and accessible arts experience for visitors of all abilities.
To support our community through the arts. Uproar will turn our community into a three-week, interactive arts experience, generating tourism and visitor spending that will support our local economy.

2025 Jurors

Stephen Hayes

Stephen Hayes is a Durham, North Carolina-based sculptor known for his thought-provoking works that explore race, history, and identity. Drawing from his Southern roots, his sculptures often address the legacy of slavery and its ongoing impact on African American experiences.

Hayes’ thesis exhibition Cash Crop has traveled across the country for more than ten years and his piece Voices of Future Past was featured at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. His work is included in the permanent collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, where Stephen is a professor of art.

Elizabeth Brim

Elizabeth Brim is known throughout the craft world for her life-sized, steel replicas of traditionally feminine objects such as hats, dresses, pillows, and flowers; for her expressive and fluid use of the material; and for her facility at inflating steel forms with compressed air.

Her work has been exhibited at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, the North Carolina Museum of Art, The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, which named her as their 2009 Master Metalsmith.

Brim has earned several prestigious awards, including the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, and has been a teaching artist at Penland School of Crafts since the 1990’s.

Thomas Sayre

Thomas Sayre is an American sculptor and painter. He designs and builds public art projects and private commissions all over the world. His current work includes large paintings made with tar, smoke, gunshots, welding material, earth, and fire. Sayre is a founding principal of the multi-disciplinary design firm Clearscapes, alongside architect Steve Schuster. The team designs numerous civic, educational, and museum buildings.

Thomas sculpts, paints, and produces commissioned work. His art is housed in collections across the globe from Thailand to Tennessee. He has exhibited his work in a number of private galleries and public museums, including Cheryl Hazan Gallery in Manhattan and the Contemporary Art Museum and the North Carolina Museum of Art, both in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1995, Sayre received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts from North Carolina State University.

The Uproar Story

The first Uproar Festival of Public Art took place during summer 2023, with support from our municipalities, community organizations, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Uproar featured sixty bold, high-impact, outdoor works of art showcased throughout the downtown communities of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough, and cash prizes were awarded based on public voting and a jury panel of experts.

Uproar was a project four years in the making. Born from a desire to showcase our community through art and the arts, Uproar has become not only the first public art festival of its kind for Orange County, but in the state of North Carolina.