Lawrence Argent’s Red Rabbit: a virtual view of the construction site

When Sacramento’s new International Airport terminal opens in late 2011, visitors will be greeted by a new urban mascot: a 56-foot red rabbit that appears to be diving from the ceiling into a suitcase. It’s the creation of sculptor Lawrence Argent, best known most recently for a giant blue bear that, on hind legs, peers into the windows of the Denver Convention Center. Argent’s is one of 13 new pieces of public art that will soon grace an expanded Sacramento International airport and transform how many visitors see the city for the first time. 

Sacramento International Airport Terminal B exterior view.  Architect:Corgan Assoc., Dallas

Donald Lipski, virtual installation view of “Acorn Steam”

Sacramento already has a museum-quality collection of public art scattered within a stone’s throw of the State Capitol. It includes pieces by Alice Aycock, Stephen Kaltenbach, Jennifer Bartlett, William Wiley, Jenny Holzer, Deborah Oropallo, Deborah Butterfield, William Allan, Robert Brady, Nathan Oliveira, Lita Albuquerque and Mark di Suvero to name but a few. In all, there are more than 650 pieces of public art in its domain. Problem is, unless you work for the state or have reason to do business with the government in-person, it’s unlikely that you will ever see many of these works – although you could have seen quite a few of them had you taken one of the tours offered last year by SMAC.

Joan Moment, “A Fragment of the Universe", 2009, 24 x 36 inches, acrylic on paper; virtual view of the piece as a 12 x 18-foot glass teserae floor

 

The remake of Terminal B addresses the visibility issue by masterfully integrating art and architecture. It was not an easy feat. With its curved roof, floor-to-ceiling windows and sweeping, light-suffused vistas, the building doesn’t exactly offer a surfeit of hospitable places for displaying painting, sculpture, installation or video. Nevertheless, by working creatively with SMAC and with the architect, the artists, at least on paper, figured out how to install engaging works that complement the airport’s essential functions: parking, transportation, security, ticketing, baggage handling. 

 

A preview of what it will all look like is on view at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento through May 16.  The show (In Public: Designing Art for the Sacramento International Airport) consists of architectural drawings, models, video presentations and original paintings. The paintings, by Suzanne Adan and Joan Moment, will be translated to glass teserae mosaics by Franz Mayer of Munich, widely regarded as the world’s leading fabricator of glass for contemporary art installations.  Overall, the exhibition achieves its goal of demonstrating the process by which works of public art come into being; that is, the revisions that an artist must make to satisfy structural, safety, security, aesthetic and budgetary requirements. 

 

What a show like this can’t possibly communicate is the complexity of the overall process.  To get an idea of what’s involved, I spoke to Shelly Willis, program manager of SMAC’s Art in Public Places Program. What follows is a condensed version of our conversation.

 

Sculptor Lawrence Argent and Shelly Willis, program director, Sacramento’s Art in Public Places program  Photo: Lawrence Campling

David M. Roth: Bringing the outside world into the interior of the airport seems to be the connecting thread for most of the pieces in this project. Why was that important?

 

Shelly Willis: "Bringing the outside in" is one of the underlying building design concepts. As the artists began developing their designs, I suggested they consider this as a foundation for their work. Thus far, all but one of the artists uses this idea in their work.  

 

Sacramento actually has quite a bit of great public art, a lot of it by well-known artists, both local and national. What does the art in this project bring to Sacramento that’s new and exciting?

 

All of the work in the project looks like art. I know this may sound strange, but sometimes when artists are required to create functional works of art (benches, tree grates, fences), it can disappear into the building. This work will not. The "outside-in" idea prevents that from happening. It serves as a theme that holds the work together as if it was curated by one person.

 

Most people have no idea how complicated it is to integrate art into a construction project this size.  Give us a brief idea of what it takes to bring a project like this from conception to completion. 

 

The process began two years ago with a plan that had three phases.  The first was a limited competition for works that are part of the building’s structure. These have to be planned early on because the art is literally part of the structure. The artist and the architect have to work cooperatively.

 

 Terminal B, Interior View. Architect: Corgan Assoc., Dallas

The remaining 10 artworks were selected in a second phase that began with a nationwide call for qualified artists. 503 artists responded.   I convened seven panels of community members. Depending on the project, the panels met three to six times to select the artists and to approve designs. Each panel, after reviewing the nominees, narrows its selection down to a group of finalists. From there, a winner is selected who then submits a proposal. The proposal is generally revised quite a few times before it is accepted by the panel. After that, it must be approved by the Arts Commission and by the Board of Supervisors. There’s a third phase that will involve three additional artworks, two in the international terminal and one on the South Lawn. The artists have yet to be selected.

 

How much of what you described is your direct responsibility?

 

I direct the program which means I manage the process from start to finish.

 

What distinct challenges did this project present for artists?

 

Overall, I think time is the biggest issue. Meaning, I wish we had more of it! However, each project has its own set of challenges.

Christian Moeller: long view of untitled baggage claim worker portrait, “bit-map” images in wood

 

Public art commissions are seen as big paydays for the artists, and because of that the competition is always intense, and the results are often hotly debated both by artists and the public. What steps did you take to ensure a fair and transparent process?

 

Christian Moeller: (detail) of untitled portrait of baggage claim workers using wood shelving to create wall-sized “bit-map” images

I don’t know about "big paydays". In this project artists are restricted to receiving a maximum of 15% of the budget for design and project management.   The remaining 85% of the budget is used for fabrication and installation. But, yes the competition is fierce – and that is as it should be.   There is a lot of pressure on everyone involved. The artist wants to make a great work of art without compromise. Staff wants to run a flawless process. The panel wants to jury the work at the highest level possible, and of course the Commission and Board want to provide the highest level of project oversight. Nobody wants to make a mistake and everyone wants success. From the very start, every part of the process is held in open public meetings.

 

Was the composition of each selection panel the same, i.e. equally divided between county officials and art professionals? 

 

It was about 50/50. Every panel included the architect, three County officials, a commissioner, and at least 3 arts professionals. 

 

How were the nominees for each of the projects selected?

 

The majority of these artists were selected in an open competition. Seven of the ten opportunities seen in this exhibition were restricted to artists residing in Northern California. Limited or direct selection processes are not the rule. However in addition to trying to reach as many artists as possible through an RFQ (request for

qualifications), I always do research and invite artists to apply to particular projects based on the purpose of the art at the site or what the public wants the artists to "do". This is an important distinction. My research is rarely, if ever, based on what the public wants the artwork to "be". Artists, especially those who have not made public art before, may not be plugged into the public art network; so like any contemporary art curator or historian, I am always researching, reading, looking at art and encouraging artists to apply to particular projects.

 

Mildred Howard, untitled glass house

How many artists were presented to panelists during the first round of the selection process?

 

It was different for each panel. It varied from about 30 to 250 artists.

 

In public art projects there is always a battle over what portion of the total project cost will be used to calculate the art budget. How did this all play out with the Terminal B project?

 

The Sacramento County code applies to all public projects, not just the Sacramento County Airport System. Unless a different amount is directed by the Board of Supervisors, two percent of the total construction costs of the eligible projects is allocated to art. For this project the Board of Supervisors approved an amount less than the normal 2% called for by the County’s Ordinance for the airport art budget. 

 

What, then, is the total budget for art in this project?

 

$8 million dollars was allocated to the art program. $5 million dollars for art. $1 million for administration of the program (any amount not used for administration will be used for art), and $2 million dollars to be set aside for an endowment. 

 

There was quite a flap last year about that, about money that was allocated to maintenance rather than to funding new works of art in the airport. What are your feelings about that?  

 

Establishing an endowment was a brilliant and visionary decision by the Board. The interest from the endowment will be used to maintain the artwork and to fund temporary public artworks at the airport.  

 

Suzanne Adan, “Flying Colors”, 2009, 16 x 22 inches, oil on paper; virtual view of the piece as a 12 x 18-foot glass teserae floor

Tell us about your background in public art.

 

My love of public art began in 1986 when I read a description of the public art program at the California Arts Council. It was fate, I guess. Although I’ve curated a number of exhibitions in traditional exhibition spaces over the past 20 plus years, my work inevitably moves out of traditional exhibition spaces and into the community.   I came to Sacramento after six years of managing the University of Minnesota public art program where I directed the development and installation of temporary and permanent public artworks on campus throughout the University of Minnesota system. I developed a public art minor program at the University, the first program of its kind in the United States, which has yet to be launched, and taught courses in public art in the Department of Urban Studies and the Department of Landscape Architecture. Among other writings, my essay on the state of public art education in the United States was published by Americans for the Arts in the book titled Public Art by the Book, edited by Barbara Goldstein.  I am also co-editor of the book, Public Art Practice, published by Routledge New York in the spring of 2008. I think I am proudest though, of some of the work I did while working for the City of Fairfield and in Sonoma where I produced works of temporary public art. 

 

Besides the airport project, what other public art projects are you currently managing?

 

Lynn Criswell, model for one segment of a 18 x 30-foot terrazzo floor mosaic, “As the Crow Flies”

The Art in Public Places Program has a small staff that includes myself, a project manager, and program assistant, a part time education coordinator, and a person who works with us part time on maintenance issues. Together we maintain a collection of more than 650 works of art. We produce 12 exhibitions annually in public spaces. We’ve got seven new public art projects in the pipeline and approximately another 15 in the works — not including the airport. 

 

Among local art professionals, it’s a fairly well-known fact that you work a crazy-busy schedule. Give us a glimpse if you will.

 

My average work week is 60 hours. In any given day I can be figuring out how to deal with the tile that is falling off a major work of art, talking to an artist about how to best present their ideas in a public process, developing the budget for a new project, giving a talk about the history of public art to a panel, writing a press release, and researching the artists for a new project.   It’s impossible to be bored and not feel vital in this job. 

 

What other things would you like people to know about this project that I haven’t asked you?

 

I care deeply about this work because I’ve seen it create real and substantial change in communities across the country. 

 – DAVID M. ROTH

 

In Public: Designing Art for the Sacramento International Airport @ Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento through May 16, 2010.  

 

Lita Albuquerque's "Golden State" installation at the state Capitol. In dollars Sacramento spent, has one of the richest public art programs in the U.S.

Sacramento and art? The two generally don’t show up in the same sentence. Sacramento has always been a drive-by city: a Central Valley town you pass through en route to San Francisco or Lake Tahoe, better known for political rhetoric than painting. In fact, for most of its history, starting with the Gold Rush, this capital city bounded by two rivers-the American and the Sacramento-has been regarded as the artistic stepchild of a lesser god. While that notion still circulates in certain quarters, it no longer has any substance. Read Thomas Albright’s definitive Art in the San Francisco Bay Area: 1945-1980 and you’ll learn about a region that for more than a generation has been awash in artists of near-mythic proportions.

To wit: It was UC Davis faculty members William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, Robert Hudson, Nathan Oliveira and Roy De Forest who collectively put Northern California on the international art map in the ’60s and early ’70s with satiric, self-parodying style that critics dubbed Dude Ranch Dada. Following suit, though hardly in lockstep, Sac State’s art faculty-which included William Allan, Joan Moment, Steve Kaltenbach, Jim Nutt, Joseph Raffael, Roger Vail, Joan Brown, Oliver Jackson, Peter VandenBerge and Carlos Villa-pushed Sacramento’s reputation even further in the decades that followed.

Never mind Albright’s charge of “stubborn regionalism,” by which he meant the persistence of funk, figuration, ceramics and plein air landscape traditions that brought the region to prominence. The only things Sacramento lacked were consistent institutional support, a network of strong dealers and the necessary quotient of affluent, educated collectors. Today this tree-canopied, government-dominated city of 1.5 million people has all three. The city’s public art budget, swelled by a wave of new Capitol-area construction, is at an all-time high. The number of quality exhibition spaces is growing at a fast clip. And the Crocker Art Museum (see sidebar), is set to quadruple in size by 2010 in a new building designed by Charles Gwathmey, the architect who remade New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 1992.

The forces driving this transformation are simple population growth accompanied by a widespread desire for civic renewal and cross-cultural engagement. Émigrés from LA and the Bay Area, flush with real estate profits and dotcom cash, flooded the area in the past two decades, bringing with them an appetite for fine art and other urban pleasures.

“We’re seeing a very different kind of collector these days,” says Beth Jones, who along with co-partner Lynda Jolley operates JayJay, a warehouse-chic East Sac gallery whose stable includes some of the city’s best-known artists, including Michael Stevens, Suzanne Adan, Roger Vail, Joan Moment, Mark L. Emerson, Kim Squaglia and David Wetzl.

JAYJAY Art Gallery: Pictured L to R: Roger Berry (sculpture in foreground), Susan Keizer, Joan Moment

“Now instead of only thinking about what looks good over the sofa, collectors are asking more serious questions, like what museum collections an artist is in and who else besides us represents them? The level of sophistication is definitely higher.”

The first inklings of a real shift came in the early ’90s, when gallery owners agreed to coordinate openings on the second Saturday of each month. Supported by generous media coverage, including a monthly supplement from a local newspaper, the Second Saturday Art Walk became an instant hit, animating Sacramento’s once languid, downtown streets with throngs of revelers who, while not necessarily conversant with Artforum, nevertheless made Second Saturday a once-a-month social centerpiece. In turn, developers who previously focused on the suburbs began refurbishing the city’s core. Over the past three or four years, they’ve added a slew of loft-style apartment buildings to the city’s existing stock of historic Victorian and Craftsman homes, pulling in restaurants, bars, clubs, boutiques and other businesses. The event now draws upwards of 10,000 people with up to 50 galleries participating city-wide.

The focal point of the Second Saturday action, which extends outward in about a 4-mile radius, is the intersection of 20th and J Streets, otherwise known as Lavender Heights, the historic heart of the city’s gay nightlife district. Always bustling, it’s become even more intense (and a lot louder) in recent years. The catalyst was the renovation of the MARRS Building. This nondescript, block-long concrete hulk was transformed into an architectural showpiece, with restaurants, a newsstand, a coffee shop and the Solomon Dubnick Gallery-a glitzy space specializing in figuration, funk, ceramics and landscape painting by local artists.

The neighborhood’s most noteworthy pioneer was the b. sakata garo gallery.

Barry Sakata of b. sakata garo gallery

In 1998, owner Barry Sakata transformed an 1880s carriage house into a spare, elegant red-brick showcase for local and Bay Area artists, including Katherine Sherwood, Enrique Chagoya, and a sizable UC Davis contingent that includes Hudson, Wiley and the abstract painter Mike Henderson. More recently, Viewpoint Photographic Art Center, a member-supported educational and exhibit space, relocated to the neighborhood, extending a 17-year history of shows from established U.S. and international photographers working in styles ranging from early 19th century processes to the latest digital manipulations.  At the opposite end of midtown, near the corner of 19th & P Streets, you’ll find two area institutions side-by-side in the same building: Axis Gallery, Sacramento’s oldest artists’ cooperative, and the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento (CCAS), now in its 19th year. Axis, contrary to what some may think, is not a vanity gallery. Its 14 members are carefully screened, and now include several artists with reputations that extend well outside the region, including the photographer Richard Gilles,

Geoff Tuttle, Moment 1 @ Axis Gallery, a member-run cooperative whose artists have earned national recognition.

 best known for his panoramic images of graffiti-covered power plants, and new media/conceptual artist Jiayi Young whose work appears in this year’s Beijing International Art Biennale. CCAS, a member-supported nonprofit, has mounted several excellent group shows since relocating to midtown in 2005, the most notable being a roundup of top-tier LA artists curated by Cathy and David E. Stone of One Year in LA and a wide-ranging survey of contemporary photography that included Vic Muniz, Mona Kuhn and Todd Hido among others.

Pamela Skinner/Gwenna Howard Contemporary Art is another area magnet. It occupies a renovated 5,000 square-foot, brick warehouse building about half a mile west of CCAS. With its soaring clerestory ceiling it is, without question, the most striking room in the city to view art. Opened in 2006, it shows a mix of abstract painting and figurative sculpture, mostly from Bay Area artists. The strongest is Aaron Petersen whose biomorphic paintings on aluminum have sold briskly. 

Pamela Skinner/Gwenna Howard Gallery

2008 marked the opening of two significant new DIY venues: Tangent, a storefront on Fourth Avenue on the edge of Curtis Park, which specializes in emerging artists, all whom seem to have a flair for material inventiveness, and Block, a tiny upstairs room downtown at the site of the original (now-defunct) Michael Himovitz Gallery that mounts installations and has, in a very short time, generated serious buzz among the new media crowd.

One of the biggest transformations in Sacramento is unfolding in Oak Park, an economically depressed area that’s gotten a lift from 40 Acres Gallery and Cultural Center, a nonprofit complex funded by former NBA star and current mayoral candidate Kevin Johnson. Situated in the heart of the community at 35th and Broadway, the complex includes a gallery that shows nationally known African-American artists, a refurbished theatre, a coffee shop, and an excellent bookstore run by Johnson’s St. Hope Corp., which also operates Sac High, a charter school that brings in well-known artists for extended residencies.

This past summer, 40 Acres mounted a show from local collections that included works by Raymond Saunders, Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Catlett, Robert Colescott and Carrie Mae Weems. In January it will show selections from Bank of America’s collection, which includes Jean Michel Basquiat, Sam Gilliam, Lorna Simpson and Martin Puryear. 

Robert Colescott (from the "Black" show) @ 40 Acres

“Our mission has been to expose people to the very best,” says Kim Curry-Evans who, when speaking about the gallery, is always quick to add: “It’s not just about doing exhibitions. Really, the emphasis is on education. It’s about how can we use this art to teach the community about the power of what it means to have art in your life?”

At Sac State’s University’s Library Art Gallery, another of the region’s top exhibition spaces, Director Phil Hitchcock expresses a similar idea. “Art,” he observes, “is not a singular activity. It’s not just something that occurs in arts and letters. It can involve science, politics, sociology or almost any discipline you can think of.” Two memorable cases in point include a groundbreaking exhibit of technology-based art in 2003 curated by new media professor, Rachel Clarke, and an equally stunning exhibit of contemporary Korean art last year that included collaborative works from Koo Kyung Sook and Ian Harvey. This month, documentary images of homeless teenagers from Sacramento photographer Kent Lacin go on view.

While galleries are one measure of Sacramento’s artistic maturation, an even more visible indicator is public art. It’s everywhere. Since 1977, the Sacramento Metropolitan Art Commission (SMAC), through its Art in Public Places program, has transformed the region into a virtual museum, with some 600 artworks installed county-wide. About 75 percent are from leading local artists; but there are also significant works by internationally recognized names like Jenny Holzer, Dale Chihuly, Deborah Butterfield and Dennis Oppenheim. Operating on the “two percent for art” formula, SMAC each year distributes between $2 million to $4 million to artists, with an additional $8 million earmarked for art at a new terminal under construction at Sacramento International Airport. “At a time when everything is becoming generic in urban design and planning, public art is part of what gives the community a sense of itself and makes us different from every other place in the world,” observes Shelly Willis, SMAC’s administrator.

Indeed, a quarter mile from the Capitol, visitors can take in California’s largest public art project, the Capitol Area East End Complex. It contains 24 site-specific works situated in and around five state buildings that span a two-block installation called The Golden State. Its focal point, known as the Zone of Discovery, consists of 55 steel-supported glass discs that look like they were deposited by space aliens. Referencing cosmology, alchemy and history, the installation by Lita Albuquerque and Mitchell De Jarnett, includes an anamorph (an image that’s visible only from a single vantage point) of the astronomer Edwin Hubble and a golden orb that echoes the one atop the Capitol. It’s pretty spectacular. Even area developers who don’t use a dime of public money are investing in public art. “90 percent of all the work I have done is for developers who are not required to put one stick of art in their buildings,” says Sac State’s Hitchcock, who has long served as a conduit between builders and artists. “There are so many of them… and they do it with a real passion.”

One high-profile example is sculptor Robert Brady’s 17-foot tall bronze figure, Tor, installed this summer outside the U.S. Bank Tower on Capitol Mall. Like so many others that grace the city, it was cast at the Art Foundry Gallery. This facility handles bronze casting commissions from all over the West, and is widely regarded as Northern California’s best practitioner of that ancient process.

Art Foundry owner Alan Osborne demonstrates bronze casting of Nathan Oliviera sculpture.

Allan Osborne, Foundry’s sculptor-owner, established the business in the historic warehouse district on R Street in 1999, and has been thriving on the growth of public art ever since. His bronze pouring demonstrations on Second Saturdays are consistent crowd pleasers.

The city of Davis, 15 miles west, also knows how to please a crowd. Show up at any of the events organized by the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts and you’ll understand. A funk art dealer for the past 23 years, Natsoulas has, over the past four years, morphed into an impresario whose programs include annual conferences on ceramics and landscape painting which, over three-day weekends, spill out across the city with demonstrations, lectures, panel discussions, workshops and exhibitions. The most entertaining of these is The Davis Jazz Festival: Beyond the Beat Generation, which runs October 4-5. It features “performance painting” accompanied by jazz from historic figures like ex-Monk collaborator David Amram and poetry readings from the likes of Amiri Baraka. True to the spirit of the Beats, the event is free.

On campus, UC Davis’ venerable Richard L. Nelson Gallery, in operation since 1976, features museum-quality exhibits that pull not only from its fast-expanding collection of contemporary and historic works, but also strives to “expand boundaries.” For Director Renny Pritikin, who joined UCD from San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Art Center four years ago, that means “partnering with non-art sources, like cutting-edge science and digital arts, as well as amateur art and popular and material culture.” This fall’s triple bill-of collage artist Laura Breitman, interactive video practitioner Camille Utterback and sculptor Lauren Davies-promises to be good example.

The Pence Gallery, a community-run space a quarter mile off campus, is another must-visit venue if you’re in town. It makes a habit of opening its doors to artists and curators with provocative ideas, like the conceptualist Chris Daubert who earlier this year knocked viewers off balance with his perception-bending installation The Hidden.

Sacramento may have once been an artistic backwater. But the consensus among art professionals today is that the city has changed dramatically. “By every important measure-the number of good galleries, the increase in collectors, the growth in public art and the Crocker’s expansion- it’s clear that Sacramento has come into its own,” says JayJay’s Beth Jones. “It’s not about beating San Francisco or LA; it’s about energizing the audience and reaching a certain level of excellence with respect to contemporary art. I think we’re there.”

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This article originally appeared in the September 2008 edition of Art Ltd.