Drivers rolling through Smyrna are starting to notice something different at the intersections: the boxy metal traffic cabinets that once blended into the curb are now wrapped in colorful, custom artwork. The refrigerator-sized cabinets, once purely functional pieces of roadside equipment, are becoming small-scale canvases for local artists across the Cobb County suburb.
According to CBS News Atlanta, the City of Smyrna and local artists have been turning these traffic boxes into colorful works of public art. Smyrna City Councilmember Rickey N. Oglesby Jr., who chairs the Smyrna Public Art Committee, said in August that the project is designed to ensure accessible public art reaches every ward in the city, not just the busiest commercial corridors, according to the Cobb County Courier. Oglesby represents Ward 7 and serves as the city council's liaison to the Public Art Committee.
The physical work of printing and installing the wraps has fallen to a local company. Signs & More confirmed this week that it partnered with the City of Smyrna to print and professionally install the custom vinyl adhesive wraps on the traffic cabinets, per a post on the company's Facebook page. Vinyl wraps are durable and graffiti-resistant, allowing them to be applied directly to electrical enclosures without interfering with the traffic equipment inside.
Artwork With Names, Streets, and Stories
Several of the wrapped cabinets already carry finished, titled artworks tied to specific artists and intersections. Kristen Ramsey's “You Are Worthy” now decorates a cabinet on South Cobb Drive, while Hayley Vaughn's “Catch a Falling Jonquil” sits at Spring Road, according to the city's Facebook page. Brandon Moultrie's “Catch the Pulse of Smyrna” rounds out the list of pieces identified so far. The city selects designs through a public call for artists and funds the wraps through its municipal public art grant budget.
The traffic box wraps did not emerge in isolation. They are the latest expression of a formal, decade-spanning plan the Smyrna City Council approved this June: a 10-year Public Art Master Plan meant to guide future investments in murals, sculptures, and streetscape enhancements, the Cobb County Courier reported. The plan was developed by the Smyrna Public Art Committee to set structured guidelines for how art gets chosen, placed, and paid for going forward.
From Frog Statues To A Formal Master Plan
Smyrna's public art efforts trace back nearly two decades, to a 2007 series of public frog sculptures. Since then, the program has expanded to include painted crosswalks on King Street, painted fire hydrants along Atlanta Road, and, earlier this year, “The Jonquil Bloom” sculpture near Market Village, per the Cobb County Courier's account of the city's history. Smyrna is known locally as the Jonquil City, and its civic design choices often weave in floral motifs and local heritage.
The traffic box initiative is not the only active public art push in the city right now. Smyrna put out a call for artists in July seeking a team to conceptualize and paint a large mural inside the Smyrna Public Library, with completion targeted for December, the Cobb County Courier reported. A committee of art leaders and city staff is reviewing submissions and will select finalist proposals for that project.
Part Of A Wider Georgia Trend
Smyrna is not alone in turning utility infrastructure into street-level art. In July, Warner Robins launched its own “Adopt a Box” program, converting nine traffic control boxes along major corridors into public art using five-year, weather-resistant vinyl wraps, according to WMAZ. That city funded its effort through local business sponsorships and a state placemaking grant.
Farther north in metro Atlanta, the Decatur Arts Alliance has run its long-standing Decatur Box Project for years, enabling local artists to transform more than 25 traffic signal boxes throughout downtown Decatur into public art, according to the Decatur Arts Alliance. That program gives artists broad creative freedom with few thematic restrictions, offering a regional precedent for the kind of low-barrier public display platform Smyrna and Warner Robins are now building.
Smyrna sits roughly 10 miles northwest of Atlanta in Cobb County and has an estimated 2026 population of 57,798 residents, according to World Population Review. The city's population grew by 28 percent between 2000 and 2012, making it one of metro Atlanta's denser inner-ring suburbs — a growth pattern city leaders appear to be accounting for as they push public art beyond downtown and into every corner of the community.
