After outreach criticism, new Petaluma art project gets scrutiny

The public is invited to weigh in on a series of small art installations around Petaluma.|

After the fallout from the Water Street art project, the Petaluma Public Art Committee is taking greater care to more effectively engage the public from now on.

The PPAC has multiple ventures in the works, including a small artworks project that will provide additional creations in the city’s public places. Three finalists have been selected, and their proposals are currently on display with comment boxes at the Lucchesi Community Center and Petaluma Regional Library until Dec. 12, giving residents ample time to weigh in.

The art committee has been a lightning rod for criticism ever since its most expensive project, “Fine Balance,” was beset by staunch opposition over the last six months. While much of the scorn was focused on the prominent waterfront location and the controversial concept, which features five bathtubs suspended on stilts, many opponents claim the PPAC failed to sufficiently conduct outreach.

“We’re not this committee that’s trying to hide behind closed doors and make decisions,” said vice chair Katherine Plank. “I think we all were just caught off-guard, the public and us, too. We thought we were being open and doing adequate publicity, so we want to remedy it where we can.”

With no location, medium or theme in mind, the PPAC simply sought durable, low-maintenance art that was suitable for placement outdoors on city-owned property, said Annee Knight, the city’s art committee liaison.

The maximum budget for the project is $25,000, funded through fees paid by non-residential developers.

After the initial request for proposals in February, the art committee steadily narrowed the field of 26 submissions down to a mural for the Keller Street Parking Garage, a community-cultivated heart sculpture, and a series of stenciled “value words” that would expand a project that has already been commissioned in Napa and Sacramento.

As the selection process played out, Plank said the committee felt it was important to select Petaluma artists – even if the three finalists weren’t necessarily in the top three for some of the members.

“Even though (Fine Balance artist) Brian Goggin is from the Bay Area, that’s not local enough for some people,” Plank said. “We’ve chosen people that are very local, and I think that was probably the biggest (factor for the committee) without even really talking about it.”

Petaluma muralist Maxfield Bala and co-artist Ryan Petersen chose the eastern wall of the Keller Street Garage facing Telephone Alley for an abstract landscape of California. More than 270 feet wide and over 30 feet tall, it would be the largest mural in Sonoma County.

The mural would feature some of the state’s most iconic plants and animals, like the California quail, desert tortoise and Chinook salmon. On the south tower is a Great Horned Owl.

There’s also an avocado and California poppy plant sprinkled in among the colliding landscapes, painted with dense patterns that mirror the utility boxes Bala recently decorated in downtown Petaluma.

According to the proposal, their hope is it would create an inviting atmosphere to an alleyway constantly targeted with vandalism.

“We were both trying to figure out what style and how we’d mesh it together in a creative way,” Bala said. “We kind of landed on the idea of, ‘How do we represent Sonoma County? How do we represent California?’ We looked for animals and iconography that could relate to California in some way. We looked for something that could relate to Petalumans and that’s a love for nature.”

Petaluma resident Jennifer Sousa is a newcomer to the public art world, and proposed a sculpture for the downtown area called “The Heart of Petaluma,” a tribute to her mother Alyce Sousa-Pickrell, who died unexpectedly of heart disease in 2016. She hopes to unveil it with the American Heart Association so it can increase awareness and help save others from succumbing to heart disease.

The inspiration is also derived from the city’s heart shown during the October 2017 wildfires, Sousa said.

The sculpture is a large mesh heart filled with custom steel flowers handmade by Petalumans, and each will represent an individual that helped make the city what it is today, she said. The piece will be fabricated by renowned local sculptors Reared in Steel.

The heart will also be attached to a bench so any passersby can stop, sit and reflect.

“The Heart of Petaluma means a lot, and could mean a lot to the town,” Sousa said. “It was also important to have an art piece that was not just my idea but the community gets to put their hands on it. We get to build it together.”

The third finalist is Peter Hassen, creator of the Values Project, which collaborates with local youth to uncover words that define the host city. In Napa, over 500 words in both English and Spanish have been painted in more than 60 parking lots. In Sacramento, 60 words were painted in 21 different languages.

For Petaluma, six words – picked by local students and the Boys and Girls Club – will be made in brass and placed on sidewalks throughout the city.

The inspiration for the series is to see what brings people together, Hassen said. It’s built on the psychological principle of priming, where exposure to one stimulus unintentionally influences a response to a subsequent stimulus. The words are meant to be subtle yet dynamic.

“We all share values,” Hassen said. “It may not correspond identically to each other, but there’s enough overlap to put some stuff out there and have it shared by many people.”

Knight said the PPAC will likely pick the artist in January. None of the concepts have been finalized, and the PPAC board provided feedback to each of the three finalists before the proposals were posted around the city.

“None of the sites have been approved, so they’re all in concept phase,” Knight said. “If somebody is selected, the overall location and work might be edited and drafted in a future concept a little differently. I think there could be a lot of lovely locations for those pieces around town.”

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter @YousefBaig.)

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