Guitars are popping up all over downtown Waukesha.
Volunteers returned the 10-foot tall guitars from last year’s GuitarTown project from their indoor location to their outdoor resting place on Monday for the spring and summer. Those guitars are part of an outdoor walking tour in downtown.
And on Wednesday, the 15 new large fiberglass sculpture guitars that will be part of GuitarTown 2013 arrived from Nashville, Tenn.
The professional and student artists at local schools picked up their guitars at the Leather Restoration Company in downtown Waukesha.
The artists will now decorate their oversized guitar before it is clear-coated and unveiled in June during the opening weekend of Friday Night Live, a summer music series in Waukesha.
GuitarTown, a community arts project in collaboration with Gibson Guitar Corp., also includes artists decorating 24 regular-sized Gibson Les Paul guitars. The artists painting those guitars picked them up at a public reception a couple weeks ago.
After being painted, the playable guitars will be sent to Gibson where strings and other related hardware will be put on before they, too, are returned to Waukesha to be on display in local businesses.
The project, which raises money for local charities, celebrates the late Les Paul, a famous musician and inventor who was born in is buried in Waukesha.