Today I completed the cycle of my first bid for a public commission,

and I came out of it with mixed feelings. Needless to say that after all the pontificating I do on public art and why it is so bad lately, I jumped on the opportunity to submit.
They called me and asked me to submit a proposal in 30 DAYS! Complete with itemized budget and everything! On top of it the amount of money was a joke for that size of building. If $33,000 is one percent, then they were constructing a 50,000 square foot, two-story building, with full glass facing, in downtown New Haven for one heck of a bargain! But since I would be a fool to turn down such an opportunity I agreed to submit. I went to the firm working on the project, and the architect was on vacation! None of the people that received me cared much about the project, nor did they seem to know much about it. I went with an architect (my brother) to the meeting, and according to him they were not very professional, and there were enough mistakes in the CAD files to gain them penalties from the contractors until they would have to settle down with building a very nice shack! (Of course I’m exaggerating).
When I looked at the plan, practically every square inch of the building was spoken for, so my first reaction was “so what the hell do they need me for?!”, but I took the blueprints and got to work.
Imagine my excitement when I realized that the school was in a Puerto Rican neighborhood! I guess that’s what the pencil neck I spoke to at the firm meant by saying it was in “not such a great neighborhood.” Now I really wanted to try my best to make it work. Since the space was so huge, but the budget so small, I thought the best way to have an impact on the space was to work with the same materials that were already at play in the courtyard of the building, so that budgets could be combined. I would be improving on some of the things that would have been merely utilitarian and turning them into something more, which would be a great opportunity to prove some of my points about how public art should engage people, and I don’t mean in a “push this button” type of way.
Some of the people in the panel seemed impressed by the concept, and by my interest in making something that those kids could use and feel proud of. Others just wanted to find somebody that would just show up at the end of the day with their little trinket, and hang it somewhere out of the way. Never mind ‘problem solving,’ ‘going the extra mile,’ or ‘developing new ideas.’
I came up with these beautiful patterns to be rendered on the rubberized playmats that they were to put on the floor. Apparently, having the audacity to work off the building’s inherent geometry was taken somewhat personally by the architect. I thought that he might even take it as a compliment! Boy was I wrong! Let me just say that at one point I heard the words “You took my courtyard and you…” but he stopped himself from making all of us innocent debutants blush. The best part was having the African-American construction manager stand up for my design, and tell him that not only was it feasible, it was a very sensitive way of approaching the problem! So when feasibility was settled, he turned his guns on my very controversial subject matter: flowers. LOL!
Yes folks, it is a sad day in history.
When I told him they actually came out of his geometry, he seemed to get even more upset.
Was that wrong? ;-)
I don’t know, maybe he was too macho for flowers, which are only half-male.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this was a very educated and perceptive man. When I finished my slide presentation he actually knew exactly where I was coming from, and he even explained the project in a favorable light when he said to everybody to “look at it in terms of a concept” rather than a finalized piece ready to be mounted. He knew I wanted to work with them, and to further develop this thing until it worked for everybody while still being faithful to the idea, but the sad part is this:
People work their asses off, and pay taxes to get schools for their children and to improve their living environment. They know the difference between bread and roses, and they want both. I think that's fair enough. Then a small group of people decide how, when, and where these buildings (which they will never use, or set foot in afterwards) get built. Later as a sort of afterthought, they think “Oh, I maybe we should throw some art in it, or something.” This is the same population that expects plenty of accouterments and embellishment out of their environment (or should I say “accruements?”). So, they call another group of mostly-Caucassian people to come and meekly hang their little “pet project” on one of their walls, take some pocket money for their troubles, and thank them for being able to even get that far (and when I say “pet projects” I do not mean “pet projects” in the artist’s eyes. Most of us care very much about what we do, enough to live with being under-paid, and under-appreciated by society).
Would you believe that I was the only Artist to actually visit the site, and talk to the neighbors?
Actually, I later found out I was the only one to even THINK about doing that. Shouldn’t that be an automatic impulse? “Gee let me see how these people feel about stuff…. After all they are going to be the ones stuck with my vision for the next 50 years.” Is it any surprise when kids come and spray paint the hell out of these places? Probably you are thinking “self-destructive behavior.” True, I don’t endorse it in any way, but do they even see it as SELF-destruction, or are they just reacting to what they see as handouts? How many more concentration camps do we have to build until our sensibilities have been reduced to a dull “cement gray”? Or should I say to a dull “box white”?
I was disappointed to see that from the two artists in the review panel only ONE asked A question. It was so memorable and insightful that I have to quote it for you. Ready? Here it goes:
“Is that resin?”
The people that were actually asking the important questions were the ones that we might tend to think of as “bureaucrats,” and the architect.
The most important word I learnt during my MFA career was “stultified.”
Public art and gallery art used to be two different things because they have two different purposes. It seems that now people can only SEE gallery art. If you have any sort of public agenda you have to be ready to explain what should already be obvious.
Public art is for the masses, but that doesn’t mean you dumb it down, as some people would have you believe, on the contrary it needs to have meaning and a strong sense of purpose. But the artist needs to think generously, and in a detached way, so that enough room is left for the public to complete the piece and give it personal meaning. Gallery art, on the other hand, only needs to enchant ONE person: the buyer. When you magnify one of these pieces, and put it in the middle of a square, in what amounts to an oppression of taste (or the lack of it), don’t complaint about people just walking by it. I am not saying that you have to please everybody, but if you are making a fetish piece that only you care about, or a dull pontification of nothing in particular, then why get into public, or monumental, pieces?
I still haven’t heard any results, so this is not about “sour grapes.” For all I know, an invitation letter may be on its way to my address. My meeting actually was the longest of the three, and I was very glad to see that my work was not so “ready made,” both in form and content, but that it actually required some work and development IN CONJUCTION with the architecture. That part of the experience was quite invigorating and encouraging. Had it been some sort of easy-pass, I may have had some serious doubts about my work. My only problems are with (1) the expectation of people for public art to be just a big version of white-box northern hemisphere intellectualistic (as opposed to intellectual) concerns, and (2) the lack of consideration for the population that the art is supposed to be serving. Yes, I said SERVING. If you are making public art without the word generosity ever crossing your mind, Heaven help us….