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Arts Madness? Winston-Salem's Otter Mural Reaches Finals Of National Contest

The Sides Road Water Tank in Winston-Salem. PAUL GARBER/WFDD

There are no North Carolina — or even East Coast — teams to root for in this year's men's NCAA basketball tournament. But Winston-Salem has public artwork that has made a national finals.

It's a southeast showdown between Athens, Georgia and Winston-Salem, the last survivors in a field that once stood at 85 contestants vying to claim the country's favorite municipal water facility. Online votes from the public are being accepted through Sunday.

The local artwork is a colorful mural featuring an indigenous river otter that graces the side of a water tank on the city's southside. Otters are native to the Yadkin River, the main source of water for the region.

The mural was created in 2018 and is visible from Peters Creek Parkway. The opponent in the finals is a water reclamation facility for Athens and Clarke County, Georgia.

The bracket-style competition is sponsored by a professional organization called Engaging Local Government Leaders. The final award is named for Leslie Knope, the fictional comedic character from the TV sitcom Parks and Recreation. 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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