Going public: New program blends art, design, architecture, landscape architecture

By Nancy Wick
University Week

In winter quarter a new program will be started at the UW that is - as far as its originators know - the first interdisciplinary program in public art in the country. Open to both graduate and undergraduate students, the program is a blend of sculpture, industrial design, architecture and landscape architecture.

“What’s great about it, in addition to breaking down disciplinary walls, is that it reflects the way public art is being practiced by professionals,” says John Young, a professor in sculpture and one of five faculty members who collaborated to design the program.

This poster designed by graduate student Boaz Ashkenazy features the downtown sculpture Hammering Man, by Jonathan Borofsky, an example of the kind of art the new program will prepare students for.

The term public art refers loosely to artistic expression located outside an art gallery. That covers everything from traditional statues like the one of George Washington overlooking Campus Parkway to uniquely-designed bus shelters like the ones at Rainier Vista and environmental installations such as the untitled earthwork by Mary Miss southeast of the UW Medical Center.

“Public art involves more than the design of objects or structures,” Young says. “A public artist needs to know how to evaluate a site and integrate his or her work into it. Those are traditionally the domains of architecture and landscape architecture.”

Public artists also must learn how to navigate yards of red tape to get approval for their ideas before an artwork can be installed, since the sites on which they will be located are most often publicly owned.

Young and his collaborators - Jim Nicholls, architecture and industrial design; Louise St. Pierre, industrial design; Daniel Winterbottom, landscape architecture, and Steve Badanes, architecture - have designed a program that will be team taught and cover what a public artist needs to know.

The group received Tools for Transformation (TFT) funds to offer two classes per quarter for the next three years in hopes of eventually creating a new major. Current students won’t receive formal recognition for taking the new classes - just credits toward their majors - but that doesn’t seem to be a deterrent. Young says he received more than 50 e-mails from interested students, on and off campus, after the program was announced.

“Getting to work in collaboration with students from other fields is the exciting part of it,” says senior in sculpture Jennevieve Schlemmer, who plans to take the classes. “In most of our classes we’re very much divided by field and you never think to work with someone. But in public art you’re not just making a piece by yourself.”

Schlemmer is interested in public art as a career path, and is particularly interested in the design/build studios that will be part of the new program, as well as classes that deal with the nuts and bolts portions of the profession, such as making a contract, preparing a portfolio, applying for grants and so forth.

The winter’s offerings include both types of classes. One, called “The Public Context,” is about how to first analyze a site in terms of its history, cultural and physical parameters, structural elements and traffic patterns; and then to negotiate the bureaucracy to get the necessary permits.

“Students who take that course will be prepared to make a public art proposal - a specific design for a site,” Young says.

The TA for the course, Craig Maldonado, is a living example of what the program is trying to accomplish. He has a degree in landscape architecture, has studied art and design and worked as an assistant in public art projects, and is currently working on a degree in architecture.

“Sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between the three fields,” Maldonado says. “They seem to be marrying one another at every turn.”

The second winter quarter course is a design/build studio with a real client - the UW Medical Center. Students will have the opportunity to design individual artworks and/or to collaborate on a piece for the end of the so-called “barrel vault” on the first floor of the building.

Another studio in spring will involve two projects, again with real clients. One is a memorial for the site where Lewis and Clark camped, commissioned by the state parks department. Initial planning is also under way for an artwork at an elementary school in the Tukwila School District.

In addition to the classes, the TFT funding provides enough money to bring in two major practitioners in the field every quarter over the next three years, giving students the opportunity to learn how artworks they are familiar with were created. This spring, for example, Jonathan Borofsky, creator of the Seattle Art Museum Plaza’s Hammering Man, will visit.

The program creators are veterans of public art themselves. Badanes, for instance, is well known for the Fremont troll under the Aurora Bridge and Young’s Fin Project: From Swords into Plowshares is installed in Magnuson Park. They and their collaborators know that public art calls for skills from several disciplines.

“The new program isn’t an original idea on our part,” Young says. “We’re just doing something that seems very natural to us.”