(IM)PERMANENCE
Public Art and Placemaking in Downtown Phoenix
Ed Lebow was standing on the corner of Van Buren Street and Central Avenue in 1989 with a friend at lunchtime when someone from out of town approached. The visitor asked the pair -- standing in the heart of downtown Phoenix -- if they knew directions to downtown Phoenix.
The experience stuck with Lebow, who has been Phoenix’s director of public art for the past 12 years, because the place he knew as downtown didn’t feel like it to an out-of-towner.
Lebow has overseen the implementation of several temporary and permanent public art projects in the city, including downtown's most iconic work, Her Secret is Patience by Janet Echelman, in 2009. Known as “the net,” “the jellyfish.” or even “the big condom” by residents, Her Secret is Patience is one of piece of a public art scene that has come to shape the identity and character of downtown Phoenix in recent years.
Another permanent work sculpture that will soon be implemented downtown has a rich history for longtime Phoenix residents. Neil Logan’s “Wallace and Ladmo” statue will be a bronze rendering of the iconic Arizona children’s show characters. The piece will be backed by community members and Arizona State University, and will then be loaned to the city.
But art in the public realm isn’t necessarily funded by the public. Other prominent works in downtown Phoenix, such as Lauren Lee’s “Three Birds in Flight” were privately funded, though the commissioner aimed to install a work that is highly visible to the public.
Valley Metro’s mission of integrating public art with public transportation has yielded a wide range of public art pieces at light rail stations across the Valley. The works at the downtown Phoenix stations are both historic and futuristic.
Finally, the pop-up, public installations from the IN FLUX initiative draw attention to the idea of placemaking. The temporary pieces redefine what is and what could be in downtown Phoenix.
All these works help shape downtown, both for residents and out-of-towners, even as downtown’s landscape changes with each new year. Lebow said public art is “both the result of but also the fuel for” downtown’s growth.
Various works of art around downtown Phoenix. (Sarah Jarvis)
Lebow said that Roosevelt Row, the arts district centered at Roosevelt Street downtown, “underscores the American lesson that where artists go, real estate follows.” When parts of downtown were zoned for high-rise developments and other parts were zoned for work/live spaces, many of the unique galleries, shops and performance spaces that are the foundation of Phoenix’s First Fridays were born.
Lebow said this “Millennium Park Effect,” named after the observed economic gains seen in and around Millennium Park in Chicago after “Cloud Gate” (otherwise known as The Bean) was installed, has made downtown attractive for developers.
He also compared this to SoHo in New York City, saying lofts were carved out of commercial spaces by artists in the 60s and 70s because space was at a premium until developers wanted in. He said people always want to “hold onto what is cool, but often the economic forces that are in play make that difficult.”
“What’s clear is more and more of the economic revitalization of places is occurring in and around cities,” he said. “Urbanization means, and has meant globally, that increasingly people who have the wherewithal want to live near interesting places, they want interesting sites they want their city to be beautiful and interesting.”
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Permanent and temporary
Lebow said public art is important because it expands the function of existing spaces. As Phoenix has become urbanized, the public art program has raised people’s expectations of what good design should be, he said.
“That was part of the reason for the birth of the public art program,” he said. “These things were lacking in the city, but were identified by community leaders and individuals as something that would be good for the city’s quality of life.”
Lebow said the city is obligated to create permanent works of public art because so often it is funded through bonds. The city has a limited ability to install many temporary works because it has to be able to show bondholders that their money went to something, which usually means something permanent, he said.
He said that when it comes to temporary public art: “The advantage is they go away; the disadvantage is they go away.”
Temporary work allows artists to be more edgy, he said, and to create things that the public doesn’t necessarily want to have installed permanently for a variety of reasons.
He said that while private groups and nonprofits are more equipped to do temporary public art, the documentation of the temporary projects that the city has done -- their economic and community impact -- live on.
Sitting in his city office overlooking the skyscrapers and passerby on the streets, Lebow reflected on the past two decades of growth in the city. He thought back to that moment in 1989 when a visitor wondered how to get downtown, not knowing they were already there.
“I don’t think that would be a question now,” he said.
Her Secret is Patience
Her Secret is Patience by Janet Echelman over the course of an evening. (Sarah Jarvis)
Under the bright grey clouds of an early March evening, the net is a silhouette. People walk by the sculpture, some standing directly beneath it to look at it invertedly.
They mention how it will look much cooler once the sun goes down.
The sun eventually sets, the clouds taking on bright shades of orange, crimson, and pink. Soon enough, the sky returns to gray, this time a darker hue than before. But “Her Secret is Patience” has taken on the colors of the sunset, preserving them while illuminated by the five sets of colored spotlights positioned upward to shine on the statue.
It might not look the way it does now, since the colored spotlights change hues with the seasons.
But on this evening, the lights highlight the orange color of the net first. Shades of blue and purple then start to emerge as the sky gets darker. The gray poles and wires keeping the statue in place are obscured by the darkness, and the net looks like it’s floating.
A family of four walks by. The parents take a break at once of the tables set out beneath the netting, while a little blonde boy no older than five runs directly under the net and screams “WOW!” He skips over to the square, multicolored lights embedded into the concrete underneath the netting and screams again “WOW LOOK AT THESE LIGHTS!”
Created for Civic Space Park in 2009, “Her Secret is Patience” is downtown Phoenix’s most iconic piece of public art.
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City Public Art Director Ed Lebow said people from outside Phoenix often wonder how his office completed that project, and they ask him how they can get ones like it for their cities. He said Civic Space Park was “a central green” in what would eventually become an area surrounded by residential and corporate buildings as downtown “revitalizes.”
But the location of the sculpture was vital in its creation beyond the anticipated boom in the surrounding area.
The city’s budget for public art is dependent upon its budget for capital improvements: One percent of capital improvement funds is used to fund public art attached to projects such as the creation of parks and streets. A city ordinance mandates that the public art be at or near the site of the capital improvement project.
The “percent for art” money is calculated in this way, minus the costs of equipment and land purchases.
How a Phoenix public art project happens:
1. Funding identified through Capital Improvement sources (GIS mapping)
2. Staff works with city council members to determine community needs
3. City puts out a national call for artists (RFQ -- request for qualifications)
4. A panel comprised of area stakeholders and community members chooses the second round of artists
5. Artists get a stipend to propose their project
6. Panel looks at proposals and selects one
7. Four-stage approval process for project (City public art subcommittee, Arts Commission, city council subcommittee, and full city council)
8. Residents provide feedback on the project through community meetings
9. Design phase - artist fleshes out logistics of creating project
10. Project undergoes same four-stage approval process again, this time with revisions
11. Project construction begins
“It’s tied to complex fiscal realities,” Lebow said. “But in a nutshell, public art gets a penny out of every buck in the capital program.”
The funding for “Her Secret is Patience” came from the cross-section of multiple capital improvement projects that the city was planning near Civic Space Park.
“There were water and wastewater lines being removed and being relocated that made two significant major capital projects on each side of the park,” Lebow said. “Right in the middle of that, you could draw an X. That told us this is a location for a major work of art.”
Making it happen​
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Lebow’s office uses a graphic information system (GIS) mapping process to determine potential locations for public works of art based on the other city projects planned in the surrounding area. He said “back in the old days,” the process involved physical mapping on the walls of his with thumbtacks to mark potential public art projects. That process is now digital, with a computer program showing concentrations and overlaps of projects based on data from various city departments.
“In an odd way, this small office, because of this mapping, has the opportunity to see the city whole in a way that individual departments may not because they’re just concerned about their department,” he said. “We’re concerned about all capital programs.”
Lebow said the public art program had a budget of about $9 million when he came on in 2005. By 2006, additional funds were injected into the public art program because of a city bond program and major improvement projects at Sky Harbor International Airport, including the creation of the PHX Sky Train and the modernization of terminal 3. Those funds brought the public art program’s budget up to $32 million, though since the completion of the airport projects and a diminution of the bond program, Lebow said the budget has levelled out to be around $10 or $11 million today.
He said his office has completed over 80 public art projects since he started working for the city.
In a TED Talk from March 2011 entitled “Taking imagination seriously,” Janet Echelman, the artist behind “Her Secret is Patience,” said her work aims to juxtapose the harsh edges of large buildings in cities. Echelman has constructed net sculptures in the style of Her Secret is Patience in several cities around the world. She could not be reached for comment for this story.
Echelman created her first permanent work in 2005 in Porto, Portugal entitled “She Changes.”
“For two years, I searched for a fiber that could survive ultraviolet rays, salt, air, pollution, and at the same time, remain soft enough to move fluidly in the wind,” Echelman said in the TED Talk.
Christina Park, art collections manager for the City of Phoenix, said Echelman worked with the city and industry experts to determine the best material to use for “Her Secret is Patience.” The team eventually determined that polyester would hold the shape of Echelman’s design more effectively and for a lower cost than the teflon she had proposed, despite the fact that the color of the material would fade earlier if it was polyester.
Janet Echelman's TED Talk. (Taken from YouTube)
With this in mind, the city purchased three polyester nets for the price of one teflon net, Park said, so they could replace the nets over the years as the color faded.
The city replaced the net in late 2015 in a process Park described as a “ballet of two cranes” hoisting workers from a net company into the air to “slowly un-piecing and re-piecing” the nets.
“Her Secret is Patience” had a budget of $2 million. Park said the cost of hiring a team to replace the net was $50,000 -- about the cost of the net itself. The city has one last net in storage to use when the color of the current net fades in an estimated seven years. Until then, Park said the city has to come up with another $50,000 to hire the team to replace it when the time comes.
Park said the budget for maintenance of public art, which comes out of the city’s general fund, is one of the first areas the government cuts in a financial crisis.
“We have these amazing budgets for these projects,” Park said of “Her Secret is Patience.” “But unfortunately, none of that can be used to maintain these pieces.”
Park said people can be critical of the city for choosing to work with an international artist like Echelman. But she maintained that it’s important for the city to employ both local and non-local artists so other cities will employ Arizona artists to help them grow.
“With all art that gets installed in public places, someone will hate it,” she said. “Everyone makes beautiful work, it’s truly about who makes the best work and what’s the best thing for the place.”
Wallace & Ladmo statue
Neil Logan has been a Wallace and Ladmo fan since he was a kid.
Like many children who grew up in Arizona from the mid-50s through the 80s, Logan would plan his days around watching the Phoenix-based children’s comedy show. The Flagstaff native even won a contest once to draw Ladmo, one of the show’s main characters, and had his work shown on the program.
This portended his future as not only an artist, but the sculptor behind the Wallace and Ladmo statue set to be unveiled later this year on the north side of Civic Space Park -- just down the street from the original KPHO building where the show was filmed.
“It’s kind of sweet that many, many years later, that little artist has now created a three-dimensional Ladmo,” said Pierre O’Rourke, Director of the Wallace and Ladmo Foundation.
The Wallace and Ladmo Show was the longest running local children’s show in television history. It featured various comedy bits by Bill Thompson as Wallace, Ladimir Kwiatkowski as Ladmo, and Pat McMahon as a variety of recurring characters. Wayne Newton, Alice Cooper and Steven Spielberg all appeared on the show as kids, and Muhammad Ali made an appearance as a guest.
Logan said the show’s humor appealed to kids and adults alike, and he and his friends made sure they watched each episode, even in high school.
“If we were going to go out and raise hell, we were going to do that after Wallace and Ladmo was over,” Logan said.
The bronze statue will depict McMahon as the character Gerald, along with Wallace and Ladmo, on the park bench that Wallace and Mr. Grudgemeyer, another recurring character, would fight over on the show.
Fans of the show will recognize another reference in the piece -- a Ladmo Bag. The character of Ladmo would give out Ladmo Bags to kids in the studio audience and at various events around the Valley throughout the show’s run. The bags, which were filled with candy, snacks, movie tickets and other treats, were highly sought and prized by anyone who got one.
Logan designed the statue to show Ladmo standing behind the bench holding out a Ladmo Bag. This way, people can pose with the statue and receive the bag from Ladmo himself, Logan said.
A sketch of Neil Logan's statue; initial shaping of the statue; Pat McMahon posing in front of a photo of himself as the character Gerald from the Wallace and Ladmo Show; life size sketches of the statue; Pat McMahon, Neil Logan and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton in front of the pre-cast statue. (Photos courtesy of Neil Logan)
The statue, which was originally going to be located at the Herberger Theater Center on Second and Monroe streets, is backed by Arizona State University. Logan said the university plans to loan the sculpture to the city of Phoenix, which leases the park to ASU for its downtown campus. The Wallace and Ladmo Foundation set up a GoFundMe crowdfund to cover the remaining costs of the statue.
Logan said the estimated 2,000-pound statue is almost completely cast, with only the heads and some of the other 60-70 parts remaining. He has been casting the sculpture piece-by-piece in bronze at a foundry in Sedona because it’s so large.
A lifelong love
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As a kid, Logan would sketch portraits and ask his parents to try and guess who he drew. Through his military deployment in Vietnam, he sketched pictures of home. He said he loves that he is the artist who gets to create this statue, and he came up with the design years ago, and he hopes the realism will create a connection with people who see it.
“I want everybody to remember all the time,” he said. “This is about Wallace and Ladmo and Pat.”
The men who brought Wallace and Ladmo to life, Thompson and Kwiatkowski, passed away in 2014 and 1994, respectively. O’Rourke said that when Thompson’s widow, Katie, first saw the sculpture, she sat on the bench and held Wallace’s hand.
Then when Kwiatkowski’s son Robin saw the statue, he said, he immediately turned around and walked outside of the studio. Thinking he was mad, O’Rourke chased after him. Robin Kwiatkowski told him he had seen a lot of artistic depictions of his father, but that sculpture was the first one that “was him.”
Logan said many people -- “mostly people with gray hair” -- stopped by the downtown Phoenix studio where he created the statue to watch him work. He said kids who grew up without the show missed out.
“I would give anything if my grandkids got to have a program like Wallace and Ladmo,” he said.
Logan has many other statues scattered around the state, including a veterans memorial in Prescott. He said it was a cool feeling to watch people interact with the memorial one Fourth of July. That interaction and immediate recognition, he said, is why he is drawn to realistic sculpting, permanent works and public art.
This is his favorite piece he’s worked on. He said it’s a neat feeling knowing his grandkids and their kids will be able to come see his work.
“It’s a cool feeling, but really it's about the guys,” he said. “If anybody deserves to be remembered, it's those three guys.”
Neil Logan's completed sculpture before bronze casting. (Photo courtesy of Neil Logan)
Three Birds in Flight
Roosevelt Row does not look like it did five years ago.
The arts district, which extends along Roosevelt Street roughly from the Garfield Neighborhood to Grand Avenue, comprises much of the galleries, studios and art spaces that attract thousands from around the state every month for First Fridays.
As housing costs rise and developers continue to break ground on new apartment complexes, the identity of Roosevelt Row has often been a source of contention among artists, small business owners, historic preservationists and housing developers. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton recently thanked longtime downtown residents such as Alwun House Founder Kim Moody for their role in creating the arts scene and shaping the identity of downtown, as the Downtown Devil reported last month.
Those integral to the DIY culture of the area resent -- or even protest -- the continued development and gentrification of the area, while trends like the growth of ASU’s downtown campus reinforce the need for more living spaces downtown.
“Every group is correct and wrong at the same time,” said Christina Park, art collections manager for the City of Phoenix.
One Roosevelt Row mural serves as a kind of microcosm, representing not only the relationship between artists and housing developers, but also the private backers that fund much of the “public” art visible on the sides of businesses downtown. Lauren Lee’s mural “Three Birds in Flight,” which hangs on the west side of ILuminate Apartments on Third and Roosevelt Streets, is a reminder to downtown residents of the way the area was before so much of the development.
The three identical square panels depicting birds taking off in flight is visible from blocks away. It’s an homage to the first mural Lee ever made, “Three Birds,” which was privately commissioned for the east exterior wall of greenHAUS, the gallery and boutique that was demolished in 2015 and replaced with ILuminate.
Despite the contention downtown development elicits, Lee, 33, said working with the developers of ILuminate wasn’t about having a grudge. It was about doing her part for Roosevelt Row.
“To me, it’s not art culture vs. developers,” Lee said. “It’s about when a city is growing, when a city is in flux, then how do the artists step up to their rightful place within that society and do their part?”
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The original "Three Birds" mural on the side of greenHAUS. (Photos courtesy of Lauren Lee) Photos of the "Three Birds in Flight mural and Lauren Lee. (Sarah Jarvis)
She said artists and businesses should commit to working together from start to finish.
“The more that artists get on this kick of ‘being against’ -- that’s not productive. I understand, people think it is, think it will push art more underground … that’s not my deal, that’s not my bag,” she said. “My bag is to be ‘normal enough’ that I can go and meet with developers in cities and give them what their whole constituency is -- kind of meet them in the middle.”
Lee was born in Yuma, Arizona and grew up in Mesa. An artist through high school, she holds an art degree from Arizona State University. She said her art is deeply connected to feminine spirituality.
“There are people who do not understand how my art affects people in ways -- people will call her art simplistic or commercial, really what it is is it’s feminine,” she said. “There is a sense of femininity that I bring artistically that we are not used to seeing in an urban environment.”
She wanted the original “Three Birds” mural to be simple and modern -- an image people could see and digest as they drove by.
“There’s a historical sort of connotation,” she said. “But the new piece has to be equally digestible in a new way -- power in size and scope, power that you can see it from a distance. It’s a flag in a way.”
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Integrating art and development
Nicolette, an assistant manager with ILuminate who declined to provide her last name for personal reasons, said incorporating local art into the development was always part of the plan.
“Being a new development downtown, we didn’t want to take away from the character of the neighborhood as much as we could,” she said. “Bringing the artwork into our building was our way of keeping the neighborhood as it was.”
She said there are three different murals between ILuminate and Linear -- an apartment across the street owned by the same company, Baron Properties -- and there are plans to install a fourth next year. Lee is a staple downtown, she said, and the community reaction to including her work on the building has only been positive.
“Lauren is what we’re kind of known for,” she said. “We’re the ‘birds building.’”
Lee said she’s happy “Three Birds in Flight” allows her to continue the dialogue with the community that she started with “Three Birds.”
“There’s no tangible value to what we do, and yet there’s a lot of value to what we do,” she said. “(Art) taps into something greater than ourselves; and if we can do that as artists, then we’re being successful.”
Valley Metro Light Rail
Since it began operating in 2008, the Valley Metro light rail has become a daily staple for many in the East Valley. And when they’re not looking at their phones or rushing to catch the next train, light rail passengers may notice the works of public art integrated into each station.
The 40 stops along the 26 miles of the light rail stretching from Phoenix’s North Mountain Village to Mesa each feature different works of art that reflect the surrounding communities. The pieces at some of the stations in downtown Phoenix incorporate pieces of downtown’s history and play off the theme of transportation.
MB Finnerty, public art administrator for Valley Metro, said making the art pieces site-specific is key.
“Building within the neighborhood and having a point of pride -- that’s all really important,” she said.
In her 15 years with Valley Metro, Finnerty has overseen the partnerships the organization has with various cities in incorporating public art into transit. She used to give tours of the light rail’s public art, though she said since it’s not “shiny and new” anymore, there hasn’t been as much of a demand for tours lately.
Like the city of Phoenix, most cities have public art budgets of around one percent of construction costs.
Finnerty helped put out a nationwide call to artists who submitted clips of their past work to show what kind of art they could add to the stations. She began the process again last month as she began the search for the artists who will create art for stations along the light rail’s upcoming South Central extension.
Valley Metro has an art oversight committee of about 20 people, consisting of art administrators, architects and others residents of partner cities interested in the arts. That committee selected design team artists who created design criteria for each station.
Artwork at light rail stops in downtown Phoenix by Cliff Garten and Steve Farley. (Sarah Jarvis)
Then, with a selection committee for each station, the design team artists chose the light rail public artists from the roughly 250 artists who responded to the initial national call. Valley Metro doesn’t ask for proposals from the artists until they are on board.
“The idea is we want them to learn about the place and then design,” Finnerty said. “The art needs to be contextual.”
Artist and Tucson State Senator Steve Farley took that sentiment to heart for his works at the light rail stations on Washington Street at Central and First Avenues.
Farley used his self-developed method of transferring photographs onto tiles with computer software to create mosaic images of hands doing activities tied to the area around the Washington Street and Central Avenue stop. According to Farley’s website, “Farley photographed people's hands at work and play in the vicinity at the station -- serving and eating lunch at a nearby cafe, working in the adjoining office buildings, playing WNBA basketball at the U.S. Airways Center, and just hanging out in the adjacent plaza.”
But his work for the station at Central and First avenues takes a more historic angle.
“A lot of schools who do tours of the judicial system -- they start by coming to that stop, and it’s like an introduction to the judicial system because you have all branches of the judiciary from the local to the state and the federal all along that stretch of Washington Street,” he said. “So I wanted to do a history of justice in downtown Phoenix.”
Farley searched through the archives of The Arizona Republic and the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center; and he interviewed people who have long histories in Phoenix, including Calvin Goode, the city’s first African American city councilman.
He made terrazzo tile pieces on the floor of the station’s platform depicting Sandra Day O’Connor and John Frank, the attorney who won the 1966 Miranda case at the Supreme Court. Details in the pieces include the historic logos for the city of Phoenix and Maricopa County.
Steve Farley in his office at the state capitol standing in front of one of his original works showing the University of Arizona stadium with multiple photos overlapping one another. (Sarah Jarvis)
(Farley said he has dinner with Sandra Day O’Connor every month, though she still hasn’t seen his artwork depicting her.)
Farley’s other tiled work on the back of the station platform next to the sidewalk depicts tiled images of some of downtown’s civil rights history, including the first African American judge, reporter and legislator as well as images of a marches downtown after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and more recently as residents pushed for the state to recognize MLK Day as a holiday. Other images include people married in the nearby courthouse and Phoenix’s old street car.
“I don’t have captions on these because I don’t want people to feel like it’s simply a museum display,” Farley said. “I want them to be asking the questions themselves and having to go figure out the answers so they’re more deeply engaged in the art.”
He said he wants people to feel represented in all of his public art, which is displayed across the country.
“Public art should be about embracing a place where you’re at, not simply doing something pretty or cute or interesting,” he said “It’s gotta be something that really reflects back what we could be and who we are.”
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Adaptation in the desert
Cliff Garten, a Los Angeles-based artist, took a more conceptual approach with his work at the stops on Third Street at Washington and Jefferson streets. His silver, Constantin BrâncuÈ™i-inspired towers light up in color at night.
Garten said he wanted to play off the theme of arrival and departure, and he wanted to create something monumental. He said he tailors his work to its location in terms of scale and light, but he generally prefers to make his artwork public.
“I want my life to be part of the everyday and not sequestered in a gallery or museum,” he said.
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He said he went through several different designs with the committee before deciding on one that would work for the location best. He initially wanted to have the changing lights of the structures coordinate with the arrival and departure of the trains -- something he’s been able to accomplish with subsequent public artworks -- but it proved a challenging technicality in Phoenix.
Finnerty said a good public artist walks the line between maintaining their vision and applying feedback from the community.
“You really want people to like the work, but you also want work that’s going to challenge people,” she said. “That’s the point of art.”
For future Valley Metro projects -- such as an additional light rail station in front of the Ability360 disabilities center and a streetcar in Tempe -- Finnerty is trying to give opportunities to local artists. She said it’s important to continue integrating public art into public transportation to build Phoenix’s identity.
“When people talk about ‘oh let’s cut the budget for the arts,’ you might as well cut the feet out from underneath, because it’s quality of life,” she said. “It’s what brings people here; and why would they live some place where they don’t have those amenities?”
Cliff Garten's "Station Beacons" at Washington and First streets in Phoenix. (Sarah Jarvis)
IN FLUX
The way Noe Baez looks at it, his portfolio of temporary public art starts with the graffiti he sprayed on the walls of Valley freeways as a teenager in the 80s.
“I already knew it was going to be short-lived,” said Baez, who goes by Such Styles. “So it was almost like temporary art, but it was unsanctioned.”
These days, Baez’s work can be found lining the walls of galleries instead. During an exhibition in March at the Oasis on Grand gallery, he showcased his most recent temporary work: a stylized interpretation of the word “transportation” that features several geographic icons of the Phoenix area.
Baez made the painting for IN FLUX, a temporary public art initiative organized by Scottsdale Public Art that takes place every year. The painting was printed onto a large canvass and wrapped around a wall at the light rail stop on Central Avenue and Roosevelt Street downtown. But, like all IN FLUX exhibits, it was taken down after several months.
Kristin Van Cleef, the founder of IN FLUX, said the fact that the art installations will go away is how they bring vitality to cities. And people are used to spectacle these days, she said.
“If you think about how ephemeral our world is -- we live on the internet now. So it doesn’t make sense in a way that art would would not also be ephemeral in some ways.”
Images of IN FLUX installations (taken from influxaz.com); far right -- Daniel Funkhouser's "Hey, I Made This for You" installation at Practical Art in downtown Phoenix. (Sarah Jarvis)
Van Cleef, who is now a marketing manager for public programs and performance at the California Institute of Technical Studies, got inspiration for the initiative from other cities during the economic downturn in 2010. IN FLUX began as in abandoned storefronts as a way to activate the area and give opportunities for local artists to present their work.
Since then, seven cycles of IN FLUX have come and gone. The work has grown beyond storefronts -- and beyond Scottsdale. Though the city of Phoenix is not an IN FLUX partner like it was in years past, IN FLUX projects still crop up downtown.
In 2015, a rendering of Botticelli's “The Birth of Venus,” made with brightly colored layers of wood and fake flowers, occupied a window space at the Phoenix Convention Center; in 2014, light blue cots were set up at Margaret T. Hance Park so participants and passersby could lay down and look up at the clouds; and last year, an immersive display of glass and lights was set up in a small room at Practical Art on Central Avenue and Camelback Road -- all for IN FLUX.
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Van Cleef said people become more aware of where they are when there’s a change, such as the installation of a temporary art piece.
“You might get taken a bit more out of your day-to-day and think about where you are if there’s something new there,” she said.
Building community with temporary art
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Andrea Teutli, assistant director with Scottsdale Public Art, said temporary art allows people to connect with their cities.
“You pass so many times in front of this space, and suddenly, it’s different,” she said. “There’s something there that makes you look at it differently understand it differently.”
She said community members often express a desire to make IN FLUX pieces permanent, but doing so can be burdensome and yield high insurance costs for younger artists.
Teutli works with Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker, public art manager for Scottsdale Public Art, in putting out a call for artists, selecting the artists, and organizing the cycles. One of the goals of the program is to reach out to potential artists and help them with the formal proposal process, since it can be intimidating, she said.
Vaughan-Brubaker said participating in IN FLUX is often a stepping stone for artists to start doing permanent works.
“It’s hard to get a permanent project without demonstrating you're capable,” he said. “So it’s a great kind of entry point for artists.”
He said artists get a $3-5,000 budget for the projects, which allows them to build their portfolios and show that they can replicate their work in other cities. Temporary work also has fewer restrictions, he said, such as ensuring that works will last through the seasons. It can also be more attractive for cities to support temporary projects for that reason, he said.
“It’s a little bit less risk for a city because if it’s not a popular project, then it goes away soon,” he said.
He said temporary art also allows artists to respond to “social issues of the day,” which can be valuable for cities.
“Maybe you take guests (to see permanent art) when they come into town .. it’s mainly the visitors that are experiencing it more than you do,” he said. “Temporary art is that way to have a magical experience in your daily life.”
Noe Baez, known as Such Styles, with his IN FLUX piece at a gallery show in March 2017. (Sarah Jarvis)
Credits
Thank you to all the artists, art managers, art curators, and art enthusiasts who took the time to help me understand public art downtown. This project would not exist without your stories, enthusiasm and patience.
Thank you to Dr. Leslie-Jean Thornton for agreeing to help me put an incredibly vague idea into a concrete plan.
Thank you to Dr. Betsy Fahlman for bringing your years of expertise to this project.
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(im)permanence was created by Sarah Jarvis as a thesis project for Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University.
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Sources:
Ed Lebow -- Public Art Program Director, Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture
Christina Park -- Art Collections Manager, Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture
Janet Echelman -- Artist
Pierre O'Rourke -- Director, Wallace & Ladmo Foundation
Neil Logan -- Artist
Lauren Lee -- Artist
Nicolette -- Assistant Manager, iLuminate Apartments
MB Finnerty -- Public Art Administrator, Valley Metro
Steve Farley -- Artist
Cliff Garten -- Artist
Noe "Such Styles" Baez -- Artist
Kristin Van Cleef -- Founder, IN FLUX
Andrea Teutli -- Assistant Director, Scottsdale Public Art
Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker -- Public Art Manager, Scottsdale Public Art
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For further reading:
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Capitalizing on Arizona's Arts and Culture -- Arizona Town Hall
Collaborative, Creative Placemaking: Good Public Art Depends on Good Public Spaces -- Fred Kent and Cynthia Nikitin
'Bring to Light' Reimagines Public Space With Artistic Spectacle -- Project for Public Spaces
"In Phoenix, an artist's birds are reborn, soaring over the Roosevelt Row neighborhood" -- The Arizona Republic
History of The Wallace & Ladmo Show -- The Wallace & Ladmo Foundation
Valley Metro Art 2016 -- Valley Metro
Tilography -- Tilography.com
Cliff Garten projects -- Cliff Garten Studio
Her Secret is Patience -- Echelman Studios
IN FLUX cycles -- Scottsdale Public Art
