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HomeMy WebLinkAbout~Master - PAC Meeting Minutes 05/03/22PUBLIC ART COMMISSION, CITY OF AMES MEETING MINUTES – May 3rd, 2022 AMES CITY HALL, ROOM 135 Present: Erica Briest (Chair), Candace Zwank, Armaan Gupta (Vice-Chair), Joe Merchant, Claire Kruesel, Elias Simpson, Angie DeWaard (Past Chair), Kyle Hauswirth (Secretary) Call to order- Erica Briest, Chair, called the meeting to order at 5:33 PM •Consent Agenda- o GIS Database Question- Aspen had volunteered to be the lead on the GIS Database. o Motion to Approve- First- Joseph Merchant Second- Kyle Hauswirth •Passed Unanimously •No guests present for speeches. •Chairs Report o Erica Briest- Introduction 5 Kids- all grown, oldest is 26, youngest is 22, all kids live in Tennessee. Enjoys strolling around Ames to delicately touch art and the Cy statues. Explores Art with hands rather than eyes. Enjoys Archery, Baseball and Swimming Loves to Volunteer Social Justice Champion o The Year Ahead A lot on our yearly agenda. Projects •Wrapping Electric Transformers •Fire Hydrant proposed project •Mural potentially in the Ice Arena •AAOSE- o New Sculptures going in on Main Street this month. •Neighborhood Art •Art Walk, Art Fair, and Farmers Market PAC Booths, Octagon Art Fair o Chance to interact with public and explain what we do. o Everyone for the commission must do at least 2 of those events. o Dates- Art Walk is Thursday June 2nd. Art Fair at Reiman Gardens is July 10th. Octagon Art Fair is usually September. Farmers Market is usually the end of August. o It was questioned if we stopped doing Farmers market due to lack of return, but the discussion was that it was because of lack of volunteers due to Covid, but that isn’t the case because Society is going back to societal norms. o What was done at the events- AAOSE Voting by the public is done at these events And we can explain what PAC Does for the community. Artist that gets the most votes from the public gets an additional stipend as a “Public Choice Award” Makes the public feel more involved. o Photos at Art Fair had some issues. That they fell over, but the committee had looked at some digital frames to progress the photos through. o Last year it was put on hold due to limited budget due to anniversary, but the documentation is still held and around. o In defense of plastic frames, there is no mess, and they are easy. Yes, the plastic frames will be kept around but the digital frames will be nice for seeing things in more than one dimension. •Art in the Park and Neighborhood Art flows out of AAOSE- o As AAOSE Is in December halfway through the year the apps open for the neighborhoods to request the art. o Elias put forward that for Neighborhood art it seemed to him as more of a special thing, Claire is working on something as well. o Question was asked if we were involved in the park across the street (Downtown Plaza). Request for proposals from artists was held for the park, and there were representative samples from the art, budget is being worked on and finalized this week. Future of that is shaky now. Construction bids for the plaza were more than expected. So, changes might need to be made. Artists might need to be held, or art held in general depending on budgetary restraints. There was a PAC presence on the committee that decided on the Art for the Downtown Plaza. The view on having a signature art piece is important to the plaza, so there is a thought that it will continue. •Past Chairs Report o Wording change for Deaccession policy- First draft had been sent to Candice and Olivia, and committee was going to work on that. Her draft is done, and she is happy to have someone else view it if necessary, or whatever the next steps would be. The document is ready to be done and sent. Candice had received the document from Angie, but Olivia said there might need to be a documentation committee, but everyone is ready to be. •Question as if there needed to be a documentation committee, but questions proposed if a committee would need to be created. •The 3 people had not had a chance to review the policies together or discuss it, so there was no consensus. •Question was asked if Candice and Angie can get together and discuss the document, and they agreed to correspond via email to hopefully be ready to be voted on by the next Commission meeting. •Angie will not be present, but if Candice is comfortable presenting it then it can be moved forward. •Erica doesn’t like how long it has been on the agenda, but other things took precedence. o Decommissioned Fire Hydrants- We need to get Dale, Keith, and Angie in a room to discuss next steps, and it has been difficult with schedule management. •City Manager’s Report o PAC bought the sculpture “Riding High” Pennyfarther bike, from AAOSE- the location was supposed to be the intersection of Dawes Drive and Top-O-Hollow Road, but that area has been reconfigured sometime around the time requests were made, and there is another piece in that area. We have this riding high piece, and now it needs to be placed somewhere, there are a few options that John Forth recommended. Grand, Bloomington, near Ada Hayden, near Calhoun Park that John recommended as a good spot. Otherwise, we could go back through other spots and figure out the next best spot. Claire recommended we look into the piece that replaced Riding High, and figure out if it is good for that spot. The pads are poured for the specific size of the sculpture, so the pads might have to be adjusted, as the pad might have been put in place to put the new statue there. The discussion would have to be brought to be put the statue somewhere with Parks and Rec and potentially the Parks and Rec commission. Also, is the new spot the safest in Calhoun park, as it’s not a highly trafficked area. No one recognized the art that is currently in the area. o Conversations on Transformer Wrapper Getting ready to go forward with installation One location the transformer is not suitable for wrapping Working with artist to relocate the wrapping, in the back parking lot of main street, there are 3 in a row that wraps are going on 2 of them, and the one in the middle was going to be empty, but the art should go in the middle one well. The original site was site 1, near Fareway, but it was obsured on two sides. Couple issues with resolution, but they are working on resolving that. •Carly Evans is the resolution issue. Tattoo style one. •She should be able to fix the issue. Expanding the program questions, •What would be good options for further transformers. •Do we want to move into neighborhoods, or stay to business areas? •Depending on what we want to do we can move to different locations •Lessons were learned about formats, and intricacies between working with PAC and electric and the wrapper. •Request from Green Hills to wrap their transformers, 2 big boxes to wrap at 1500-2000 to wrap, largest one PAC did in this sweep was 1300. •Vinyl is rated 7-10 years. •There were options with designs not used. •Transformers including residential areas in Ames around 900. Including some in schools and parks. •Some in areas that it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to wrap, and some have screening requirements for transformers. •Do we want to target certain areas like schools, or parks if we move forward with this program? •Kids could submit designs for the transformers near schools. •1 traffic control box is also being wrapped. •78 traffic control boxes, and some are usually near schools. •At each intersection there are traffic control boxes, and they are the brains of the intersection. •Those can’t be screens. •Concern was raised on if the vinyl will last, and the commission might be better suited to wait and see how the program works before going forward with more. •The vinyl is the “Anti-Graffiti” vinyl, but there appears to be no guarantee from the manufacturer on their product. •This project was done within a year. •Decided we should wait and see what happens. •The sizing for the art we have wouldn’t work for the Green Hills transformers. •Green Hills has their own art committee. •Status Updates- o Transformer Art- Artists were contacted, and they are excited. Installation can be done 2-3 per day and be cleaned and set up and good to go. Pictures were asked to be taken during installation. PR Should work on this project to promote the project. o Storm Drain Intake- Liz Calhoun has been handling contacting artists. Scheduled and running smoothly Should be happening soon, hopefully this month.  Costs were very low for this project- but not coming out of PAC Money  Money coming out of Storm Water Utility System o Art in the Parks- Tahira & Labh Hira Park  No updates since last meeting  Now that it’s going to be nice, they want to meet in the parks  Keith has indicated he’ll be flexible  Sidewalks are poured  People who the park is named after have put forward some theme ideas for the park.  Olivia has contacts who might help with funding for some of the arts.  Need to establish a budget, about $25,000 for art in the parks right now.  Asked if terraforming was an option, as an interactive area for parks, potentially a rolling field instead of just flat.  If we approach the Hira’s for funding, we need to keep their wants in mind.  When school ended operations, the neighborhood was offered by the city to sell to apartment developer, or the neighborhood could pay money to turn it into a park.  This discussion is a committee discussion. o What not to do with public art features-  Questions as to who was going to write those? • Potentially Aspen  These might want to be rolled out more, as the new AAOSE Sculptures are being rolled out.  Phrased as “What To Do with Public Art” o Ice Arena Mural-  Double Check with Angie, but no movement on this recently.  Question as to if the Ice Arena could be defined as “Art in the Park”  We need to better define Art in the Parks and figure out the way to make it most visible.  Ice Arena gets a lot of people from out of town as well. So having good art might speak well about our community.  Will the ice arena be contributing something towards this program?  Ice Arena struggling with the structure and logistics of setting something like this up.  Is listing the Ice Arena a slippery slope?  Something we should talk to Keith about?  Erika is going to reach out to Taylor about this. o Flo-Esque Statue  No movement on it yet.  Artist is Dave Johnson, but no contact information is available, but this is being worked on. • New & Continuing Business- o Priscilla Sage- Auditorium  Reach out to artist who could potentially do repairs, but the artist who was recommended has not contacted her back.  She would be happy to reach out if she was given those names, if people in the commission are ok with moving forward with other artists doing the repair.  There was a Motion to reach out to selected local artists. • Motion- Candice • Second- Claire o Passed Unanimously o Next Projects-  Poll was sent out, but no idea on what the poll was at the time, so also in stasis currently. • For the Good of the Order o Nothing brought forward • Motion to Adjourn- 6:50 PM o Motion- Kyle Hauswirth o Second- Joseph Merchant