Chicago has “The Bean,” New York’s got a lot of “LOVE” and there’s a “Crouching Spider” hovering over San Francisco.
Courtesy of AP Images
There is an entity entirely responsible for the existence of art in the public eye, without which none of these famous displays would be possible. It has faced many challenges, has constantly competed for recognition and is a perpetual subject of debate. It fights indifference, disbelief and strong feeling rather than rational thought, yet it continues to hold strong and leave its mark across the country.
That entity is the arts commission.
City arts commissions are publicly funded programs that came to be in 1935 with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which produced the Federal Art Project under the Federal Works Agency for the purpose of providing new jobs for the unemployed.
According to Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America, author Jonathan Harris writes, “the Federal Art Project explicitly and systematically attempted to offer a different set of social, aesthetic and ideological priorities.”
Unfortunately, the Project faced scrutiny, and was “constantly forced to fight against claims that art was not real work and that artists were not, and could not be, authentic workers.”
According to Harriet Senie and Sally Webster in the anthology Critical Issues In Public Art, “with its built-in social focus, public art would seem to be an ideal genre for democracy,” an asset that would allow the American people to express their cultural and intellectual achievement in a physical form.
However, “since inception, issues surrounding the appropriate form and placement, as well as funding, have made (public artworks) an object of controversy more often than a subject for consensus or celebration.”
But just how important is it to our society to have a visually stimulating environment? Without the effort of arts commissions and public artists, public spaces would lend nothing to its occupants to invite interest, therefore decreasing tourism and the positive fiscal impact that tourism has on the economy.
Arts and the City
Walk into Austin City Hall at 301 W. Second Street and you’ll think you’ve accidentally sauntered into a museum.
An extensive art exhibition covers the limestone walls inside the building. A giant, modern sculpture peeks out behind the corner of the main lobby, inviting visitors and employees in. Electronically projected bugs dance on the elevator doors as each guest walks up and waits for his or her floor.
The aesthetically pleasing atmosphere of the building is a product of the city of Austin’s Art in Public Places program (AIPP), which makes its home on the second floor of the unique structure. AIPP, which oversees the selection, commission, placement and maintenance of works of art in and about the Austin community, was established in 1985, making it the first program in Texas of its kind to be recognized and funded by a municipality.
Photo by Thea Setterbo
According to the Art in Public Places Web site, “by ordinance, 2% of budgets is allocated to commission or purchase art for public sites such as the airport, convention center, libraries, parks, police stations, recreation centers and streetscapes.”
In order to enhance the visual quality of public spaces in Austin, the Art in Public Places ordinance requires that works of art be included in all new city construction projects, including building remodeling, streetscape improvements and park development.
“We always battle the perception of spending money on art as frivolous,” Meghan Turner, a coordinator for Art in Public Places, said. “But that perception doesn’t directly affect our funding, as art is an economic driver in the community.”
AIPP chooses to commission artists for work based on their resumes, just as any other business would.
Photo by Thea Setterbo
Megan Crigger, the administrator for Art in Public Places, personally oversees the artist selection process for every project that AIPP undertakes.
“We commission artists to participate as an additional consultant to capitol improvement projects, under contracts that can extend anywhere from three to five years,” Crigger said. “We have an open call application process for our projects where artists can submit work, but there are pretty stringent selection criteria.”
AIPP has a seven-member jury that evaluates the applicants based on the specific needs of the project. A different selection panel is chosen for each project.
“We try to objectify the review without quantifying the flexibility. Beyond anything, it’s about the quality of work,” Crigger said.
Art in Public Places is currently focusing on several projects, each at varying stages of completion. Some of these projects include the South Congress Streetscape, Lance Armstrong Bikeway and the Caesar Chavez Memorial Project, which will be revealed on May 12.
One Artist's Impact
“A wealth of public art exists, particularly in the United States, which has followed the processes necessary for the creation of art for the public, from the public,” Garrison Roots, large-scale installation artist and professor of Fine Arts at the University of Colorado, said in his book Designing the World’s Best Public Art.
“Public artists enter into consultation with a community, learn about its mindset and generate thought-provoking works and installations in some very public settings.”
One specific example of this type of artist comes in the form of Roger Colombik, a man who has made a living doing what he enjoys.
Photo by Thea Setterbo
“I’m very fortunate that I get to teach what I love to do,” the artist said in-between bites of his green beans Wednesday afternoon.
Papers, books and little bits and pieces of inspiration scatter his office. Pictures of his wife, their family and past travels cloak the walls. In one corner stands a triangular bookshelf holding several tools and various supplies. The cover of his first book, A Quiet Divide, hangs proudly across the wooden door to the room.
A professor at Texas State University, Colombik has spent the past 20 years teaching all levels of sculpture, though his students don’t often get an opportunity to see their instructor at work in the classroom.
“I have to be alone, plain and simple. There isn’t enough room for me in there. I’ll just be in the way of all of their stuff.”
His role as educator, however, is only a part-time job.
His personal studio, a space with plenty of room for the artist’s endeavors, has yielded many notable works of art, several of which are products of collaboration with his wife, Jerolyn Bahm-Colombik. Together, the Colombiks have designed a handful of installations for the cities of Austin and San Marcos, including a piece for the Austin Emergency 911 Response Center, a fountain for the Second Street Corridor District and additions to the San Marcos Activity Center’s sculpture garden.
“Our goal is to build exciting sculptures for public spaces, to transform urban spaces into poetic spaces,” he said.
“Back in early September, the architect for the development reviewed my portfolio, which included fountain-based projects for the city of Austin, and asked (my wife and I) to come up with a water-based idea for the atrium,” Colombik said.
As the only artist from Texas State University to be selected, Colombik’s participation in the venture was greatly anticipated, though the process was a little more tedious than expected.
“After visiting the site, we spent about a month and a half playing intellectual ping-pong with the architect before reaching an eventual agreement.”
Though the new fountain is currently installed in the hotel’s entrance hall, the artists are not quite finished with it.
“We need to redo the platform for the fountain. That’s going to take at least another month.”
Fortunately, for the sake of tourism and community stimulation, public art displays have made a dramatic transition from the basic bronze statues of old to the modern, though-provoking installations seen today.
Colombik holds a strong conviction that public art should not subject its surroundings to a means of statuary for commemoration.
“In small communities, there is too much resistance toward new paradigms in the ways you can celebrate and remember,” he said.
“If someone says we’re going to raise money for public art just to put up a statue of a fireman and a policeman — those things don’t inspire dreaming, thinking or metaphor. Public art should wake up the viewer to the world.”
According to Colombik, San Marcos has been very supportive of his endeavors and the visual interest of public work in the community.
The Struggle for Recognition
Lisa Morris and the San Marcos Arts Commission have a vision.
Texas State University, Prime Outlets and Aquarena Springs are a few attractions that might come to mind when considering a trip to San Marcos. However, tourists might be surprised to know that the city is also home to a large community of artists that is on the rise.
“This is a time of growth for the arts in San Marcos,” Morris said Monday.
Morris, the recreation manager for San Marcos Parks and Recreation, has seen a dramatic change in the city’s priorities in the past few months.
“This is the first year we have been able to generate a ‘Master Plan’ in order to guide the city and policymakers in the development of arts in the community,” she said.
The plan, currently in its first stages of completion, is conducting a community inventory of artists, organizations, existing and potential arts venues and educational opportunities that will promote art as a significant player in San Marcos’s tourism industry.
“We’re not just looking to define the overall ‘art scene’ of the community,” Morris said. “We’re also deciding the best way to utilize the arts.
Photo by Thea Setterbo
The Arts Commission receives the majority of its funding from the Hotel Occupancy Tax, which, according to Texas Legislature Online, “shall be allocated in the general revenue fund to be used for media advertising and other marketing activities of the Tourism Division of the Texas Department of Commerce.”
In the 2008-2009 budget year, the Commission received $60,000 from the tax and $8,500 from the San Marcos general fund. The Commission was also allocated an additional $10,000 for the development of the Master Plan.
Diann McCabe, vice-chair of the Arts Commission, recognizes the need for a stronger connection between the city’s tourism administration and the Arts Commission.
“The ultimate vision of the San Marcos Arts Commission is to help San Marcos become a city in which artistic excellence is celebrated, supported and available to all,” McCabe said.
“Unfortunately, there is a perception that San Marcos doesn’t support the arts. We need to start making an effort for the artists in our community.”
While the Arts Commission is striving to become a stronger presence in the city’s infrastructure, it may take awhile for San Marcos to recognize the need for pushing art-based tourism.
“The arts are at the bottom of everyone’s priorities,” McCabe said.
“But we are quickly learning just how important the arts are to our community, to our society and to our lifestyle.”
Courtesy of AP ImagesThere is an entity entirely responsible for the existence of art in the public eye, without which none of these famous displays would be possible. It has faced many challenges, has constantly competed for recognition and is a perpetual subject of debate. It fights indifference, disbelief and strong feeling rather than rational thought, yet it continues to hold strong and leave its mark across the country.
That entity is the arts commission.
City arts commissions are publicly funded programs that came to be in 1935 with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which produced the Federal Art Project under the Federal Works Agency for the purpose of providing new jobs for the unemployed.
According to Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America, author Jonathan Harris writes, “the Federal Art Project explicitly and systematically attempted to offer a different set of social, aesthetic and ideological priorities.”
Unfortunately, the Project faced scrutiny, and was “constantly forced to fight against claims that art was not real work and that artists were not, and could not be, authentic workers.”
According to Harriet Senie and Sally Webster in the anthology Critical Issues In Public Art, “with its built-in social focus, public art would seem to be an ideal genre for democracy,” an asset that would allow the American people to express their cultural and intellectual achievement in a physical form.
However, “since inception, issues surrounding the appropriate form and placement, as well as funding, have made (public artworks) an object of controversy more often than a subject for consensus or celebration.”
But just how important is it to our society to have a visually stimulating environment? Without the effort of arts commissions and public artists, public spaces would lend nothing to its occupants to invite interest, therefore decreasing tourism and the positive fiscal impact that tourism has on the economy.
Arts and the City
Walk into Austin City Hall at 301 W. Second Street and you’ll think you’ve accidentally sauntered into a museum.
The aesthetically pleasing atmosphere of the building is a product of the city of Austin’s Art in Public Places program (AIPP), which makes its home on the second floor of the unique structure. AIPP, which oversees the selection, commission, placement and maintenance of works of art in and about the Austin community, was established in 1985, making it the first program in Texas of its kind to be recognized and funded by a municipality.
Photo by Thea SetterboAccording to the Art in Public Places Web site, “by ordinance, 2% of budgets is allocated to commission or purchase art for public sites such as the airport, convention center, libraries, parks, police stations, recreation centers and streetscapes.”
In order to enhance the visual quality of public spaces in Austin, the Art in Public Places ordinance requires that works of art be included in all new city construction projects, including building remodeling, streetscape improvements and park development.
“We always battle the perception of spending money on art as frivolous,” Meghan Turner, a coordinator for Art in Public Places, said. “But that perception doesn’t directly affect our funding, as art is an economic driver in the community.”
AIPP chooses to commission artists for work based on their resumes, just as any other business would.
Photo by Thea SetterboMegan Crigger, the administrator for Art in Public Places, personally oversees the artist selection process for every project that AIPP undertakes.
“We commission artists to participate as an additional consultant to capitol improvement projects, under contracts that can extend anywhere from three to five years,” Crigger said. “We have an open call application process for our projects where artists can submit work, but there are pretty stringent selection criteria.”
AIPP has a seven-member jury that evaluates the applicants based on the specific needs of the project. A different selection panel is chosen for each project.
“We try to objectify the review without quantifying the flexibility. Beyond anything, it’s about the quality of work,” Crigger said.
Art in Public Places is currently focusing on several projects, each at varying stages of completion. Some of these projects include the South Congress Streetscape, Lance Armstrong Bikeway and the Caesar Chavez Memorial Project, which will be revealed on May 12.
One Artist's Impact
“A wealth of public art exists, particularly in the United States, which has followed the processes necessary for the creation of art for the public, from the public,” Garrison Roots, large-scale installation artist and professor of Fine Arts at the University of Colorado, said in his book Designing the World’s Best Public Art.
“Public artists enter into consultation with a community, learn about its mindset and generate thought-provoking works and installations in some very public settings.”
One specific example of this type of artist comes in the form of Roger Colombik, a man who has made a living doing what he enjoys.
Photo by Thea Setterbo“I’m very fortunate that I get to teach what I love to do,” the artist said in-between bites of his green beans Wednesday afternoon.
Papers, books and little bits and pieces of inspiration scatter his office. Pictures of his wife, their family and past travels cloak the walls. In one corner stands a triangular bookshelf holding several tools and various supplies. The cover of his first book, A Quiet Divide, hangs proudly across the wooden door to the room.
A professor at Texas State University, Colombik has spent the past 20 years teaching all levels of sculpture, though his students don’t often get an opportunity to see their instructor at work in the classroom.
“I have to be alone, plain and simple. There isn’t enough room for me in there. I’ll just be in the way of all of their stuff.”
His role as educator, however, is only a part-time job.
His personal studio, a space with plenty of room for the artist’s endeavors, has yielded many notable works of art, several of which are products of collaboration with his wife, Jerolyn Bahm-Colombik. Together, the Colombiks have designed a handful of installations for the cities of Austin and San Marcos, including a piece for the Austin Emergency 911 Response Center, a fountain for the Second Street Corridor District and additions to the San Marcos Activity Center’s sculpture garden.
“Our goal is to build exciting sculptures for public spaces, to transform urban spaces into poetic spaces,” he said.
One of the couple’s most recent collaborations was for the City of San Marcos Convention Center, located at the Embassy Suites Hotel and Spa.
“Back in early September, the architect for the development reviewed my portfolio, which included fountain-based projects for the city of Austin, and asked (my wife and I) to come up with a water-based idea for the atrium,” Colombik said.
As the only artist from Texas State University to be selected, Colombik’s participation in the venture was greatly anticipated, though the process was a little more tedious than expected.
“After visiting the site, we spent about a month and a half playing intellectual ping-pong with the architect before reaching an eventual agreement.”
Though the new fountain is currently installed in the hotel’s entrance hall, the artists are not quite finished with it.
“We need to redo the platform for the fountain. That’s going to take at least another month.”
Fortunately, for the sake of tourism and community stimulation, public art displays have made a dramatic transition from the basic bronze statues of old to the modern, though-provoking installations seen today.
Colombik holds a strong conviction that public art should not subject its surroundings to a means of statuary for commemoration.
“In small communities, there is too much resistance toward new paradigms in the ways you can celebrate and remember,” he said.
“If someone says we’re going to raise money for public art just to put up a statue of a fireman and a policeman — those things don’t inspire dreaming, thinking or metaphor. Public art should wake up the viewer to the world.”
According to Colombik, San Marcos has been very supportive of his endeavors and the visual interest of public work in the community.
The Struggle for Recognition
Lisa Morris and the San Marcos Arts Commission have a vision.
Texas State University, Prime Outlets and Aquarena Springs are a few attractions that might come to mind when considering a trip to San Marcos. However, tourists might be surprised to know that the city is also home to a large community of artists that is on the rise.
“This is a time of growth for the arts in San Marcos,” Morris said Monday.
Morris, the recreation manager for San Marcos Parks and Recreation, has seen a dramatic change in the city’s priorities in the past few months.
“This is the first year we have been able to generate a ‘Master Plan’ in order to guide the city and policymakers in the development of arts in the community,” she said.
The plan, currently in its first stages of completion, is conducting a community inventory of artists, organizations, existing and potential arts venues and educational opportunities that will promote art as a significant player in San Marcos’s tourism industry.
“We’re not just looking to define the overall ‘art scene’ of the community,” Morris said. “We’re also deciding the best way to utilize the arts.
Photo by Thea SetterboThe Arts Commission receives the majority of its funding from the Hotel Occupancy Tax, which, according to Texas Legislature Online, “shall be allocated in the general revenue fund to be used for media advertising and other marketing activities of the Tourism Division of the Texas Department of Commerce.”
In the 2008-2009 budget year, the Commission received $60,000 from the tax and $8,500 from the San Marcos general fund. The Commission was also allocated an additional $10,000 for the development of the Master Plan.
Diann McCabe, vice-chair of the Arts Commission, recognizes the need for a stronger connection between the city’s tourism administration and the Arts Commission.
“The ultimate vision of the San Marcos Arts Commission is to help San Marcos become a city in which artistic excellence is celebrated, supported and available to all,” McCabe said.
“Unfortunately, there is a perception that San Marcos doesn’t support the arts. We need to start making an effort for the artists in our community.”
While the Arts Commission is striving to become a stronger presence in the city’s infrastructure, it may take awhile for San Marcos to recognize the need for pushing art-based tourism.
“The arts are at the bottom of everyone’s priorities,” McCabe said.
“But we are quickly learning just how important the arts are to our community, to our society and to our lifestyle.”
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