Riverfront artwork planned for downtown

Petaluma’s Public Art Committee is preparing to accept proposals for a new piece of artwork to be installed on Water Street.|

Petaluma’s Public Art Committee is preparing to accept proposals for a new piece of artwork to be installed on Water Street.

The committee has spent the last few months exploring opportunities for art along a swath of the city’s central waterway, and after getting the approval of the city council, committee members can now begin the search for qualified artists to fill the space.

The first step is getting the word out; local, regional and national artists with a proven track record in public art installations will be invited to apply. Alison Marks, chair of the committee, said that based on the quality of applications received, three to five artists will be given a $1,000 stipend and asked to submit a full proposal for the space.

The proposed project area is a stretch of Water Street between Petaluma Boulevard North and the Petaluma River, with a focus on the area between the East Washington Bridge and the Balshaw Bridge. Marks hopes an artist will be selected by next spring, with the installation unveiled in the winter of 2015.

Back in April, the committee held a public art forum to help define the project, which looked for inspiration in installations in other towns - from grandiose gateways and murals, to sculptures that move with the wind or emerge only at low tide.

Marks said she hopes the artists’ proposals will pay homage to the history of the site, the sense of place and time and the generations that have lived and worked on the river.

The proposed budget for the project is $120,000 to $150,000, which includes the design, construction and installation of the artwork. To fund public art projects, the city requires developers to either incorporate a piece of art in their design, or pay 1 percent of the total project cost into the city’s Public Art Fund.

The fund currently contains about $317,000, mainly from fees paid by the developers of the Target shopping center on East Washington Street. Merlone Geier, developer of the new Deer Creek Village shopping center on McDowell Boulevard, became the first developer in town to install their own artwork.

Until now, the public art fund has only been tapped once to purchase “Cherry Soda,” a sculpture by Robert Ellison in front of Boulevard Cinemas.

(Contact Allison Jarrell at allison.jarrell@argus courier.com)

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