Public Art Conference Archive—2002
Key Speaker Address: Fresh Perspectivies
by Key Session Speaker Tad Savinar, Artist
June 6, 2002, Nashville, Tennessee
Artist Tad Savinar kicked off Fresh Perspectives: Public Art 2002 with this key speaker address. He was invited to address one of the key themes of the preconference: Essential Program Partnerships.
Copyright Tad Savinar, PO Box 10798, Portland, Oregon, 97296
I’d like to begin this morning by announcing how lucky we all are.
And why, you might ask, are we lucky?
Well, we are gathered here with our peers in a truly magnificent part of the country, and we have been separated from our laptops and our email, (well maybe momentarily). Of course you are a little more lucky than I because you are down there in the audience and I am up here at the microphone. But you are lucky for another reason, because I am about to make a presentation, and then when I am done two other members of the program are going to prance up here and take the opportunity to nail me every which way since Sunday. They have had a copy of my remarks for the better part of 6 weeks to dissect and analyze. They’ve had time to search the internet to gather thousands of slide images that refute my comments. And, they’ve had time to email hundreds of artists and administrators across the country to find counter point examples to all of which I am about to speak.
In fact, I don’t think what I’m doing has anything to do with speaking, it is actually more akin to industrial sacrifice. But I want you all to know I am sacrificing myself here on this podium so we can have a fruitful exchange. At my expense all be it, but fruitful never the less. I guess all that I ask is that you recognize my sacrifice and as you see me wandering among the conference corridors you will still talk to me and someone may even offer to buy me a drink. I have taken the liberty of dividing up my presentation into three basic sections. Section one is entitled Our Partnership With Art and concerns itself with where public art has been, where it is now, and where it could go in the future. Chapter Two is focused on Our Partnership With Process and reviews a number of basic steps we all go through to facilitate public art. And finally, in chapter three; Our Partnership With the Future, I will touch briefly on urban design, design teams, and the relation of designer to client in the process of creating memorials. And so, my comrades, let the games begin.
Part One: Our Partnership With Art
I would like to personally thank all of the public art administrators and consultants in this room for their optimism, their tenacity, and their political skills. You have gone head to head with the public, the government, and the artists. It has been an evolving course this public art thing and no one really had a rule book. Had it not been for your efforts this country's civic spaces would be uninteresting and devoid of human scale. You have brought art to the commuter, the neighborhood, the workplace and the children. And most of all you have made many of us better public artists. And I thank you.
My dear architects. You have drawn the artist's concept when the artists couldn't. You have toiled for countless unbillable hours to resolve engineering and construction details that we were unable to resolve. But foremost you have invited us into your works, to sit down at your table, and encouraged usto enter into the dialogue. Had it not been for you and your gracious invitations we might never have understood how buildings work, how urban spaces work, and how we might broaden our own creative pursuits. Artists, dear artists. I want to thank you for the intelligence you've shown, the magic you've worked and the wonderful surprises that I encounter as I walk through cities. So many of you have come up with such smart solutions that I am continually awe-struck by your intelligence.
All of us in this industry have learned a great deal. We have learned by surveying the field to see what has worked and what hasn't. We communicated with each other to solve problems and to offer professional support in time of need. I am very proud of all of us.
But starting right now and continuing on for the next forty five minutes I would like us all to consider how we can begin to inject the ART back into public art. And let me be perfectly clear, the art of which I speak is not animal paw prints sandblasted into sidewalks. It is not literary quotations copied from the pages of a book and etched onto the window of a library. And it is not, and I repeat, it is not terrazzo maps of rivers set into the floors of airports and convention centers. As of 2002 these exercises are better left to graphic designers, librarians, and the historical societies. Now mind you, I have not been immune from these practices for I myself have etched pavers with text and created riverbed maps in transit facilities. But I stand before you today as a changed man who has seen the evil of his ways. And now is the time to call all of this nonsense to a halt.
I would hazard a guess that none of us in this room are involved in the arts because we love hearing city counselors opine on modern art. Rather, I would suggest that we are involved in the arts because of a personal encounter with an art object that made us understand the power of creativity. It was magic produced with a little oil and pigment applied to a piece of cloth, or a slab of stone wrestled to the ground by the artist’s hands. It was that which drew you in. Not only drew you into their world, but reminded you of your own world at the same time. An incredibly dynamic moment of communication between you, the hand made object, and the object’s creator. Nothing was spoken other then the abstracted language of form, color, and content. I would guess that a number of you could even recall where you were, how old you were, and the specific artwork that opened up the door to that joy. I’d encourage all of you to take a moment and remember the quality and the overwhelming power of that experience, and the experiences you’ve had since then, that confirm the wonderment of creativity. Maybe it was the obsessive high level of craft, or maybe it was the originality of the concept. But I am sure of one thing—it was that very personal experience which catapulted you in to the field of art. Maybe it was the light in a 19th century Turner landscape. It could have been a playful cast steel Joel Shapiro dancing across the floor of Paula Cooper. Maybe it was a tortured self-portrait by Frieda Kahlo which you came upon at the LA County. It could have been The Dinner Party installation by Judy Chicago, a delicate object formed by the hands of twenty of Anne Hamilton’s studio assistants, or even the scores of fanatical cast bronze creatures who inhabit the children’s playground in Battery Park created by Tom Otterness. However, regardless of the specifics I would hazard a guess that such an experience was not the result of artist designed trash cans.
In producing my own art work, I draw a very fine line between studio work and work commissioned for the public realm, but a line never the less. My studio work is driven by my own internal wish to create objects and express ideas. And, in that pursuit, I myself am muse, patron, creator, and critic all rolled into one. It is a completely closed circle of my own choosing. I see the challenge of creating public work slightly different. And the difference is that in public art the impetus for the work springs forth from an entity outside of my own spontaneous need to create. And rather than a spontaneous need, the public art project begins as an ordinance and evolves into an assignment. An assignment mind you that I am free to accept, or pass over. I always hope for the need and the assignment to converge in the end to produce a wonderful work of art for all the public to share. But, in the fulfillment of that assignment I can never assume that I am in the studio alone. For I am in a partnership as I work. I am a partner with the site and the community. I am a partner with the city and it’s bureaus, with its citizens and with the future of place. And my goal in these partnerships is to create a work which will provide a personal experience within the public setting, and keep on ticking.
Let’s take a moment to move out of this conference room and go back in time. The recent history of American public art began in the 1970’s. Initially, the public art that was produced was limited to an artist placing in a public setting a work similar to what they might have also produced for an exhibition. In short, the work was more about the artist’s own intellectual pursuit, than it was about being public. Public art, in the 70’s and then in the early 80’s, was in many ways much like the early public buildings of architect Michael Graves. During this period, public art and civic architecture had less to do with the scale of the site then they did with the scale of the artist’s studio and the dimensions of the architect’s ego. And just as Michael Graves' first public building has undergone numerous retrofits, upgrades, and other attempts to get it to function at its most basic level, so was artist Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc ripped from its public plaza in New York City, and placed in storage never to insult the workers within that federal building again.
As artists and architects continued to create their own personal work for the public, the more the public questioned why they were paying for it. And without going into the particulars, a few public artworks and events made arts commissions across the country rethink their missions, rethink their selection processes, and rethink their relationships with city officials. And as a result many new partnerships were forged and many new process directives were established for artists. And so it came to pass that in the late 1980’s a new kind of public artist was born. An artist who went to public meetings. An artist who engaged in research about the history of the particular place where his or her project would sit. And rather than working in isolation the artists came out into the bureaucratic-corporate environment and began to collaborate with the planners, the architects, and landscape architects. Hell, they even began to collaborate with the engineers. And now in the year 2002, what has this process brought us? Let me answer that by again reflecting on the field of architecture. For, I ask you what was the single most drawn architectural element in the 1980’s for urban revitalization programs? The fix-all for livability, that macramé of the urban design field, that touchy-feely I live in a real neighborhood design element? Why it was little ye olde streetlights with hanging banners and flower baskets. Well, the public art field produced its own version of this creeping menace and it soon became the logo for the evolution of the public art world: that must-have community art project, that Oprah Winfrey feel good neighborhood element—the kids tile project. Now don’t get me wrong, there are many good civic works across this country facilitated by many people in this room, but engaging well-designed timeless works of public art are less common than the mediocre ones. Let’s face it, the field is turning into some kind of retail public art market. Similar solutions to projects are popping up in every city with a public art ordinance. And rather than creating unique expressions that explore the human condition or enhance our understanding of a unique place, we are getting off-the-rack solutions akin to a Starbuckification of the field. And Just like the familiar logo of the green and white sign that we all looked for this morning on the streets of Nashville—the public is drawn to art that is familiar it because it is familiar—not because it is unique. And yes it has some little site-specific details to blend in with its neighborhood. But ultimately it tastes just like the half-caf-short-no-whip-carmel-etched granite-geological-timeline that you sipped in Chicago yesterday and that you walked on in Seattle the day before. Recently I was hired to draft a public art master plan for a twenty-mile light rail system. And, in a progress meeting with my director I recommended art budgets of $300,000 based on the scale and urban design needs of each station. He, on the other hand, was insisting the budgets would be ample if they were $50,000 per station. He thought they should be $50,000 because that’s what they were on the last system he worked on 10 years ago. I tried to impress upon him the fact that the public art industry had evolved further, and that the integrated elements on his system could be found on virtually every transit system across the country. He disagreed and began to tell me how at one station the artist had discovered that a stream ran under the station platform. And, as this engineer pulled out a color catalog of that art program, he proceeded to turn to a page with an image of that very station illustrating a curved paving pattern set into the platform mimicking the curvature of a stream. Silently I pulled out the catalog of a rail system that I had worked on and opened to a page illustrating a station in Portland where a stream runs under the platform and there it was, the obligatory river-like granite pattern with the same curvature. To make a long story short, I got the 300.
Now I am sure that many of you in this room can tell me wonderful stories about the community building exercises, the ghetto kids that were turned on to art, and cranky right-wing voters who were ultimately impressed with a little colored concrete. But I’ve got to tell you that much of what is labeled public art is not art—it’s art education, it’s graphic design, or in many cases it’s community pride projects. And those of us who walk out of this room today and encourage artists to continue with these design exercises, are slitting the throat of creativity. Because together we are single handedly facilitating the dumbing down of cultural America. We are giving citizens graphic design and calling it art. And this not only lowers the expectation level of the public in the visual arts, but also poisons the public’s expectation in the fields of literature, dance, film, and all other expressions of creativity. Remember what I talked about a few minutes ago? I talked about the power of an art object to change your lives. I hope that you will consider—for just a moment the spirit of what I’m getting at. And what I’m calling for is to put the art back in what we’ve been calling public art for the last 20 years. Now is the time to take all that we’ve learned about working in the public realm and use it as a studio tool to create magnificent works of art in buildings, in plazas, and in transit facilities which communicate more than the outline of a mountain range off in the distance, more than the original platting of a city etched in granite under foot, and more than the names of Native American medicinal plants inscribed on bus stop windscreens adjacent to a hospital. Public art should not be reduced to some kind of Nike-esque branding exercise where logos of our civilization are cut and pasted from a Macintosh clip-art file onto a granite slab in a library floor surface. Rather than using design to tell an elementary-school-level-history-lesson, let’s use artists to tell us about our lives in a manner that touches us because of its ability to create wonder, not reach the lowest common denominator of representation.
Right now architect Michael Graves designs clocks for Target. Is this design at it’s highest level of professional investigation, innovation, and intellectual pursuit—or is it just plain good ol boy retailing? I often think his media mate, architect Frank Gehery, may ultimately be more engaged in designing photo opportunities for municipal tourism posters than he is in designing lasting civic architecture. For when every city stands up and announces they’ve “got-to-have” one of Mr. Gehery’s buildings is it innovation or is it merely the Mcdonalidification of civic architecture? And artists. So many artists are slipping into a feel-good historical context bag of tricks menu that has more to do with making every city look the same rather then forging new landmarks—indigenous tree leaves cast into tree grates, historical photos of what used to be at this site, Native American images drawn by the hands of out of town Caucasian artists—and the list goes on. Many of these design resolutions were good the first and maybe even the second time, but to see them reproduced in every community waters down the originals and turns the country into a public art shopping mall populated with lacy Victoria Secret wildflowers, Baby Gap kid projects, and Barnes and Noble history quotes. We should value artists for their creativity and originality not their ability to create rampant familiarity. Both civic architecture and public art have somehow evolved from egotistical studio based work in the 80’s to smiley-faced community charettes full of kitchen sink urban design solutions in the ought’s. At the present, each and every one of us sit here in this room as the facilitators in the design of America’s built forms. And, if we take that charge, what are our responsibilities? Our responsibilities to ourselves, our responsibilities to the urban landscape, and ultimately our responsibility to the future.
I would suggest that our responsibility is to take full responsibility for what we design, and the effect it has on the citizens who will share the impacts for generations to come. And, I would further suggest it’s time to stand up and be proud of what we’re all trying to accomplish.
- As artists and administrators it’s time to say no when there isn’t enough money to create magic.
- As selection panel members it’s time to push the artists a little harder to get them to produce their best work.
- And as arts professionals it’s time to tell the city councils, in a respectful yet authoritative manner that we know more about design and what the public needs than elected officials do.
It’s time for all of us to begin to inject the American cities with cultural landmarks that will hold their culture longer than season’s run of Frasier. It is time to take the profession to the next level of evolution, and I believe that the next level is paved with confidence and knowledge. Knowledge of what is good and the confidence to speak up and use that knowledge. Even though I understand the session this morning is about partnerships, I wonder if it’s possible to step up to the plate, seize the power and move ahead with confidence on an individual basis. Although this action does not eliminate the need for partners, it certainly assumes that change begins at home. Maybe this talk should have been subtitled Partnering With Ourselves First. Again I urge you to consider these ideas in the context of a conversation for the field.
Part Two: Our Partnership With Process
When I was invited to speak today, I was informed that my audience would come from a range of backgrounds. Some of you are seasoned veterans fresh from the trenches of public art while others in our audience are new to the process. I’d like to take a brief look at some of the concrete steps in the public art process which might assist us in our evolution—or dare I say revolution?
I’d like to mention that most of these following observations are not completely my own, but actually are the things that have come up when public artists sit around, drink beer, and talk about the field.
First, if you are working for a city, have you examined your public art ordinance lately? Does it establish hard and fast regulatory guidelines for process and budgets? Recently I came across a city ordinance that stipulated "up to one percent of the construction budget" should be set aside for public art. What this means is that each and every project is up for discussion between the arts commission and the individual funding bureau. And, as political climates change from year to year, the isolated project that caught a little public heat from the local newspaper could influence your funding base from annum to fiscal annum.
Review your selection process and the veto power, of elected officials and their staffs in relation to your programs. Are they crystal clear, or is it time to tighten up the language a bit based on some of your more difficult projects.
Rule One for the Revolution—Control Your Own Destiny.
Project Opportunities. Have you spoken with the project architect and the city agency about their ideas for what the art can be and if so, does it match with your intentions? How flexible do they seem. How will they work with an artist? I think we may have gotten a little heavy with all this romance about having the artists on deck at the earliest moment. If the real need for the art is to landmark a site, you may get more bang for your buck by holding the artist at bay. Plop art got a bad name in the beginning because artists were just dropping things from their studio directly onto a site with no concern whatsoever about context and community. But now that our field has evolved—artists are more experienced and so are architects. There is no reason to prevent an experienced public artist from plopping something quite fantastic right down on the site. I have to say that in the recent years I have yet to see a really great idea get turned down because the initial groundwork hadn’t been laid. Let me hammer my point once again. We’re looking for great art, not necessarily a love fest between an architect and an artist. Yes, I am fully aware that there is value in educating architects as to what art can bring to a project, but we all need to ask ourselves if it is our goal to pay artists to work as evangelists and tutors, or would we rather have them create dynamic works of art which remain on the landscape for the next century for all to enjoy? Recently, on my master planning efforts I have begun to examine the urban design needs of a particular given site and ensure that the public art component supports those urban design goals rather than leaving everything open for the artist, the architect, or the selection panel to determine. This not only builds better cities, it also gives artists a clearer definition of their assignment and is efficient with their time and budget.
Rule Two for the Revolution—Clarify Goals and Roles Early On.
Once you have determined the project possibilities, have you checked to see if they match the budget? I am appalled when I see RFQ’s for 15 or $20,000 where the scope calls out for a "major artwork" or suggests that the "artist will work closely with the community." These projects are better off not being undertaken at all. Underfunded projects are detrimental to artists, architecture, the public art field, the community, and future arts administrators. Expectations of magic are always on everyone’s minds but let’s face it, very few artworks produced for $20,000 will attract the competent artist or result in an object that will have content or materials which will stand the tests of more than two or three years.
Rule Three for the Revolution—Enthusiasm Does Not Qualify as a Substitute for Adequate Funding.
Okay, assuming that you have a good match between project and budget, it's time to put a selection committee together. And this is where the rubber meets the road. According to a highly scientific industry survey based completely on my own personal opinion it’s where 75% of all public art projects can take a turn for the worst. Once a panel makes the wrong choice here, there is no turning back. Your panel is your Achilles heel. Generally I look for some of the following membership traits in panel make-up:
- A thinking artist who will be able to explain or translate concepts to other panel members with a certain amount of credibility.
- Amember of the community who has some kind of political clout—Not imperial power mind you, just someone who would be able to speak to a mayor or city council member should things get dicey.
- The designing architect. Not the project architect, but the designing architect. Recently I was working on a large transit facility I placed the project architect on the panel who then proceeded to select a number of artists for the projects that were quite inappropriate and had little to do with the design of the facility.
- Obviously there needs to be someone from the management side of the facility where the art will go. They will be your best press agent. Not only within the facility, but throughout the city bureaus as well.
The last trait of the panel would be someone who has been through this process before. They can be an architect, an artist or an arts commissioner. Regardless of who, their experience will help keep the process moving through the tough decisions. The smaller the committee the better. Small committees tend to express their opinions a little easier. The intimate size facilitates a more spirited discussion, yelling is okay—picking up your toys is not. The unfortunate all-too-often outcome of committees with larger memberships above 5 is that at the end of the day the votes tend to gravitate to the center leaving you with a qualified Pottery Barnesque artist, but maybe not the most engaging artist for the project. Remember, if the committee makes a bad choice there is no way to fix it. Almost everything else in the process can be fussed with, but this one can’t. And when it can’t be fixed, it becomes your job to smooth out the rough edges for the rest of the journey.
Rule Four for the Revolution—Choose Teammates Carefully.
Now, you've got your budget, your project has been defined, you’ve empowered your panel, now it’s time to notify the artists of the opportunities at hand.
RFQ’s. Don’t let the graphic designer think that since this is an advertisement for an art project that the design of the RFQ has to be "artsey." You should all make note that the Federal GSA Program seems to do just fine announcing their projects with 10 pt. black type formatted on eight and a half by eleven sheets of white paper. Artists don’t care about fancy graphics, they just want to know if this is a project they should pay attention to. This little printed item is supposed to provide readable information. Half screened images as background that make it impossible to read the overlaid text doesn't do anything to help our application process. Four-color extravaganzas printed on cover stock don't do anything to communicate about the project—plain and simple it is a waste of your budget.
You’d be amazed at the number of RFQ’s that come to me in any given year that are difficult to read or lack the most basic information. Clear deadlines that list anticipated shortlist interview dates, descriptions of the selection panel processes, and readable site plans and elevations are always helpful.
Is it a project where you are looking for a design team or do you want an object maker? Is this a planning project or a trophy collection? These questions are ones I hear complained about most often among artists. An RFQ which establishes the need for an artist to identify opportunities for other artists should result in the selection of an artist who will complete that task. What happens much of the time is that the jury, often lobbied by the architect, is seduced by an artist’s slides with little or no consideration as to how that artist, who has a history of making big things that go in a plaza, will do as a planner. It should come as no surprise when the art plan created by this artist recommends the siting of one of his works in the plaza. It further comes as no surprise to the field when most of the project money has been turned over to that artist and few if any other artists were brought into the project at comperable budgets. Rarely, and I mean almost never, do I develop a public art master plan that includes a project opportunity for myself. Currently in my $6.23M art plan for a 20 mile light rail system I have selected one project for myself at the same budget level as all of the other 28 projects. However, I know of a current large scale civic building where an artist has turned the project’s funding for a number of major site specific commissions into one commission—their own, and then added a handful of nickel and dime temporary projects to take place during construction. Rule # 5: Be Clear and Consistent and Don’t Get Seduced by Pretty Pictures.
One comment that I hear consistently from artists is how much they appreciate a rejection letter that lists who made the short list or who got the project. It’s a small thing, but it means a lot to artists.
The Artist’s Interview. Make sure to give the artist enough time to present themselves. I have established a standing rule for myself. If a panel is not going to give me 30 minutes plus time for non-prepared questions, I'll pass on both the interview and the job. If I’ve taken the time to structure a thoughtful presentation and travel to your city, the least you panel can do is ask me some questions that were stimulated by my work. Also, it is critical to quickly project the applicant’s slides to the panel as a refresher before each artist comes in to make their presentation. The most common mistake artists make in a presentation is assuming that the panel has a complete understanding of the architecture of the project, and the most common mistake that program facilitators make is assuming that each panel member will remember an artist’s slides from a previous meeting.
I would encourage all of you to clarify the scope expectations and schedule with the shortlisted artist before the interview. Lots of artists juggle many of these projects at once. In most job interviews applicants always say they are available because they want the job. Artists are no different. A few years ago at the first meeting of a design team project all five artists pulled out their calendars to see when we could schedule the next session—everyone was so busy we were unable to set up a future date until nine weeks out. Regardless of how great the artist is for the project, if they can’t devote the conceptual and conferencing time everyone gets short-changed. I have initiated a new practice with major projects I undertake. I inform the director that if I get the job I will consider this project a priority for the first year and will not take on any additional major work until the year has ended. I tend to juggle 6 to 8 projects at a time and have found this little plan a handy way serve the client well during the start-up phase and not get too overwhelmed with work.
Rule Six for the Revolution—Treat Artists With Respect and Demand the Same in Return.
Concept Presentation. I really only have one issue to discuss here. Artists are interesting and often unique in their personalities. Many of them are downright entertaining. After all, when you put the creative urge together with a stand-up sales presentation format, you create a stand-up entertainer. Often I have seen panels become seduced by the personality of the artist. In one such project I was watching another artist present their conceptual approach for a piece. At one point the artist was asked why he made a certain design decision (which the panel picked up on as a weak element within his approach to the project). Well, he thought for a moment and then responded by saying it must have been a “Zen moment." Well the panel all giggled and I admit it was an entertaining response, but he was questioned no further. And now that weak element in his design would get built and become a dysfunctional part of the urban environment for a century to come. These selection panels have got to get more aggressive about saying no, that’s not good enough. The selection panel is empowered to curate a work of art into the permanent collection of a city. They have a responsibility to the city and the citizens to make good decisions for the future of culture and place. You have empowered them to do that, now encourage them to use that power.
Rule Seven for the Revolution—Ask Difficult Questions—Make Difficult Decisions.
Part Three: Our Partnership With the Future of Our Cities
I can remember watching on my television as South Central Los Angeles set itself on fire one day in the 90’s. And I am pretty sure that many, if not all of us, in this room watched those images. The looting, the senseless violence, and the lawless destruction of a community by its own residents. One particular image shot by a helicopter news crew remains etched in my memory. It was the sight of a truck driver being pulled from his cab by an angry mob and then laid out in the street and beaten. At the time I was watching this scene unfold I had no idea as to the victims’ crime as perceived by the mob. But one thing did seem crystal clear. These people, these citizens, these neighbors were expressing a disenfranchisement and a disillusionment that welled up from a sense that the laws and rules of society did not apply to them. And in my own internal exercise I wondered if any of this disillusionment had been fueled by elements on the urban landscape designed by our associated trades that made them feel as if they were strangers in their own neighborhood. Although the initial violence was sparked by racial injustice, these citizens reacted aggressively towards their own urban fabric. The local grocery, the local furniture store, city infrastructure all became targets. Now a full blown inner city riot has many roots of cause and effect, but I can’t help but think had these people felt a sense of ownership or pride in their urban surroundings there might have been a different expression of their rage.
Dysfunctional urban design has no specific demographic. It abuses old and young, poor and rich, black and white, resident and visitor, male and female. How do we as artists, architects, urban designers, and as public art administrators design places which make people of all social strata feel welcome, respected, and not part of some grand faux-artistic-urban-design experiment.
Currently there is a fair amount of design team work being undertaken in this country by artists and architects. And in many many cases these projects have borne the fruit of stunning design solutions—collaboratively creative beyond any of our isolated individual imaginations. They have commonsensed our cities, humanized our transit systems, and brought a simple wonder to infrastructure and open space. However, this process has also been responsible for some of the most inhospitable urban environments in America—plazas with dizzying paving patterns that looked arty in plan view, benches impossible to sit on, transit canopies which offer no protection from the elements, and parks which are uninviting, impossible to maintain, and already stylistically dated long before the drawings are dry. Even formally trained urban planners are capable of screwing up our cities, but please show me where it was written that just because an artist designs something that it can ignore the most basic principals of urban design and civic respect. How do we establish a civic conversation where citizens understand the need of the greater good, and not the need of the ego or the impossible wish for immortality. Unfortunately both of the latter have become embarrassing fevers that have swept our country. These distasteful obsessions can be seen in 3 civic trends:
- the naming of public facilities after living individuals,
- the obsession with donor recognition programs, and finally,
- the rush to create public memorials.
A couple of years ago I was hired, as a member of a design team, to create three conceptual designs for the twelve children and 1 adult who were brutally murdered at Columbine High School. You might find it interesting to note that in the suburban community which surrounds that school streets and walls divide one housing development from another. There is no civicscape to speak of other than brown lawns and scrub oaks in the front yards of the homes—There is no street grid or clearly defined sense of circulation, only endless “places”, “drives”, “lanes”, and “courts” with names given to them by real estate developers. There are buildings and roads, but there is a void. A void that swallows up all that is human, much that is natural, and all that is hopeful. I found it to be one a very uninviting built environment. And to make my point even clearer, this place was designed by our fellow design professionals. Well, after talking with the parents, teachers, and friends of the slain and the surviving victims over a period of months it became clear that the best way to memorialize these kids lives was to document their lives. And by document we meant to recreate these kids in the fullest manner. Rather than some giant abstract gesture with a poem on it, it was the design team’s hope that by portraying these kids as real people having real lives, then and only then, would this community begin to acknowledge the respect for the fragility of life.
One concept called for a life size bronze sculpture to be fabricated of each child, complete with the recreation of their clothes, backpacks, cd players and so forth. The sculptures were to be accompanied by texts culled from interviews of each child’s universe of friends and family. Besides the families of the murdered and the wounded, community committees of all types reviewed our work and finally it came time to present it one last time to another full gathering of the parents of the slain children. After describing the preferred design, the mother of a murdered child stood up and began to talk. She was soft spoken and polite. She thanked the design team and said that God would bless us for the work we had done. But she had a problem with the preferred concept. She said that as a mother she had spent the last 15 years caring for her son making sure he was warm and got enough to eat. She was asking us what she was supposed to do when he was cast in bronze, standing in a park near Columbine High School, and it was snowing. She was wondering aloud and asking us how she was supposed to keep her son warm as he stood in the park with snow falling all around him. It was at this moment I began to understand the obstacle that needed to be overcome in this and most other memorial design exercises. Because it was at this moment I realized that this parent was treating the public memorial as a private resting place for her murdered child. However she was wrong in this assumption as were all the other parents in the room. For the truth of the matter was that their children were actually buried in single graves in cemeteries throughout the community. And this very public memorial was an attempt to use their children’s death to teach a lesson to a broader community. While the memorial had a duty to be respectful of the families and their loss, it also had a responsibility to be effective in communicating a message that would be meaningful to a larger audience over time. And to be quite blunt, yes these parents knew their children, but the design team knew about designing public spaces and how to best use icons and content to tell a story. Yet they had been empowered to arbitrate the design. To this day these grieving families still operate as a group of highly isolated individuals living in a highly isolated physical environment.
Over the last half dozen years I have been engaged in the design of a number of memorials. And through this work I have encountered a view of humanity that goes beyond our daily understanding of what has become life-memories for others. I have listened to a 250 pound black fireman in San Jose sob uncontrollably as he told me he could still remember the taste of an infants last breath in his mouth as he tried to bring it back to life through mouth to mouth resuscitation. In Portland I listened to a holocaust survivor who at the age of ten stood in a line with hundreds of her Jewish neighbors on the banks of the Danube River as the SS calmly walked down that line systematically shooting each and every one of those people until for no reason they stopped shooting when they came to her. In New Jersey I listened to a room full of aging World War II Veterans tell me that unless you were there, no one can ever understand the shear horror of that war. And recently in Littleton I heard the story of how one teen girl had hugged and shielded her best friend with her torso as they both huddled under a table to hide from the shooters. Thirteen bullets later the girl on top was dead, the best friend underneath alive and unharmed. All of these stories are important but these individuals are far too wrapped up in trying to understand what they’ve been through to ever drive the design of a memorial. I have brought this up to illustrate how similar it has become to the community involvement process in the creation of public art. The untrained public has been given too much ownership in the design of public spaces. Now do not get me wrong. I am in favor of their input so that I can fully understand the task at hand. But at some point they have got to trust that he professional design team has the long term interests of the community in their hearts.
What we do is serious business. And maybe as we’re gathered together here in Nashville over the next few days and nights it might be a good time to stop and ask ourselves how we can learn to better navigate through the intersection of what’s good for a career, what’s good for the evolution of the field, and what’s good for community.
You know, those two towers were a symbol. And, I would suppose that between that September morning and this June morning, each and every one of us has briefly questioned ourselves about the intersection between professional ethics, personal aspirations, and the moral responsibilities of building objects in cities. This last fall all of us, like the Columbine families, came closer to understanding the fragility of life. And in so doing it triggered internal wonderings about fate, and presented us with a new perspective on symbols in the landscape. For all of us who think about form and function, object and content, and its relationship between the civic and the self it is a time to pause. And whether you interpret this pause as a gift or an intrusion is entirely up to you. The point I want to make is that the things we create, and facilitate the making of, are not mere isolated exercises. They are the landmarks, the cultural icons, the reflections of the times in which we lived—that’s right, the times in which we lived, past tense. It is of the utmost importance that we realize these things that we are making are not for us, they are for the future.
Rarely this morning have I used the word partner, which incidentally is the broad topic for today’s session. But I feel I have presented some approaches which can indeed fuel positive relationships with various constituencies we encounter in our work. I have not avoided using the word, nor did I forget to use the word. But if I can draw you back to the beginning of my remarks I suggested, and I repeat “It is time to take the profession to the next level of evolution, and I believe that next level is paved with confidence and knowledge.”
Okay, maybe it’s time for a little joke. Do any of you know how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb? The psychiatrist would answer, “none”, because they would tell us that the light bulb has to want to change.
Right now I am hoping that I am speaking to a room full of light bulbs. We can sit here all day and talk till we’re blue in the face about how to create community buy-in, how to encourage public awareness, how to influence private developers and all of that traditional public art industry partnership stuff. But honestly, isn’t the real challenge to create the processes and the ethical fortitude which will facilitate great public art work? Can’t we build better partnerships by elevating the field and in so doing create a credibility which goes beyond all of the letters to the editors?
You are the experts in your field in your cities. I encourage you to use that power of authority. And that power comes from a central base of confidence, and the wish to do great things. Now do that. I encourage all of you to go home and do great things. Great things for our cities, great things for our citizens, and great things for the future of our cultural heritage. I ask you once again to remember that first powerful encounter you had with a work of art. Imagine if each and every one of you in this room went back to your communities and facilitated the creation of just one such work set into the public realm.
Imagine the lives that could be touched.
I’d like to thank you for your consideration of these ideas.
