Cortez Public Arts Advisory Committee

Cortez Public Arts Advisory Committee Regular Meeting Wednesday, June 13, 2018; 3:30 P.M. Cortez City Hall Meeting Room Present: Heidi Brugger (scribe), Corinne Damore-Rome, Sonja Horoshko (president), Eric Ikenouye (city liaison), Aaron LeMay, Peyton Heitzman (city intern) Absent with notice: Brandon Shubert, Dan Simplicio, Kirbi Vaughn Citizens and visitors: Janet Lever-Wood, Rosie Carter, Rose Russell, TJ Zark, Nicci Crowley. Kari Cockrill, Marcie Reichenau, Rhonda Reichenau 1. Call to Order. The meeting convened at 3:30 P.M. 2. Presentations. Deep Desert Art Collective members Kari Cockrill, Rosie Carter and Rose Russell presented a proposal for the group’s first public art installation project that includes partnering with the City of Cortez. The concept is for a pedal-powered piece of kinetic sculpture that would encourage viewer engagement and that builds on regional enthusiasm for biking. The hope is that this would put Cortez on the map as an art destination, would support local artists, and help to make art a viable livelihood. The pilot project is estimated to run about $22,000. The project is broken down into several pods so it could be installed over a series of months or years. The sculpture would be placed in a city park and construction would include community members. Janet Lever-Wood expressed enthusiasm for the concept. Committee members expressed a need for more information regarding cost to maintain the initial pod and the competed sculpture and cost to insure both aspects, which are components of the suggested partnership. They also expressed concern about the insensitivity of basing the sculpture on a ship, which has potentially negative connotations for many tribal people. The project proposal needs more consideration and information. Sonja Horoshko suggested that she could connect Deep Desert Art Collective with Dan Simplicio and Ed Singer so they could talk over the concept with some Native artists who could give cultural advice. 3. Citizen Participation. Marcie Reichenau and her sister Rhonda asked if the city is continuing to fund murals. Marcie is co-owner of Cortez Glass on West Montezuma and they now have a newly stuccoed wall and would like to have a mural done. They have contacted Brad Goodell, who did two of the city’s commissioned murals and have a quote but were interested in assistance. Heidi Brugger agreed to contact Marcie and give her background on city murals. Sonja promised support for this effort. 4. Old Business. a. Approval of May 9, 2018 minutes. Corinne Damore-Rome made a MOTION that the minutes be accepted as submitted. Aaron LeMay seconded the motion, which PASSED UNANIMOUSLY. b. City Art Inventory Project. Sonja announced that she had just received the report from art appraiser John Peters-Campbell on the city’s collection. Due to the length of the report, the committee members will review it for discussion at the July meeting. Eric Ikenouye will send digital copies of the report to committee members. c. Contra Dance and Jersey Jim follow-up. Heidi asked about the status of these since she has not seen anything on either subject on line. The committee had promised to share information about events and programs these organizations field. The closure of the San  Juan National Forest makes artist-in-residence programs in the forest moot for this year. Contra dancing begins again in fall; the last dance was in early May. d. Other. Aaron volunteered to be timekeeper for presenters. We agreed that we could have up to two presentations per meeting, but no more in the interest of being able to cover all that we need to. 5. New Business. a. Monumental Public Art. Karla Robbins of Slavens True Value Hardware spoke with Sonja about resurrecting the water fountain at the west end of Main Street. Discussion includes turning it into a public monument to welcome people to the west end of the city. Due to lengthy discussion in the earlier presentation there was no further discussion at this time. b. Orland Joe is a sculptor. He has invited the committee to come to his studio to see the three-dimensional work he does. Sonja agreed to contact him to set up a Monday meeting this summer. 6. Draft Resolutions/Ordinances. None 7. Additional Citizen Participation. None. 8. City Staff Liaison Report. None. 9. Committee Reports. a. Acquisitions. Four jurors reviewed artists’ submissions; the results from three jurors are in. Sonja has sent thank-you notes to those submitting work. In discussion about the guidelines/protocols for evaluating artists’ work, Sonja showed the committee the guidelines and protocol that explains how the jury approached the process and how each artist’s work was considered. The guidelines and protocol are site-specific, and place- based in nature. She shared it in hardcopy format to help the committee, the city the general public understand the jury process. She is not willing to share it online in the public domain and offered to share a short explanation of criteria used but not share the complete document, explaining that it is not done in visual art juries. Aaron opined that the criteria need to be in the public domain to ensure transparency. A lengthy discussion followed centered on the legal issue of ownership of work done while serving as a volunteer on a committee for the city. Sonja noted that she did this work as part of an ad hoc committee that does not report to the city—only reporting to our committee. She presented the hard copy in an effort to educate the committee and assure transparency, she said. Eric and Peyton Heitzman (city intern) will contact Linda Smith for assistance with a legal review that would better define work ownership. Heidi asked the committee to table further discussion until we have more information from the city. b. Facebook. The page is up and those with page responsibilities are encouraged to start working. We are reminded to like the page and invite contacts to do the same. Those of us with Facebook pages are encouraged to share the page to our timelines. We have an album of city-commissioned murals and are working on one of other murals in town. We also have a mural celebrating the life and work of Otter Lopez, local Ute muralist who died last month. The committee agreed that Kirbi Vaughn should serve as gatekeeper for use of funds to boost specific posts. Eric will use his city credit card for these charges, so Kirbi decides and Eric implements. We need to decide on an amount of funds we will dedicate to this and then we need to set the number of events we can boost and the amount that we will equitably dedicate to each event. 10. Upcoming: Next meeting is July 11, 2018 at 3:30 p.m. 11. Adjournment. Corinne made a MOTION to adjourn and Heidi seconded the motion which PASSED UNANIMOUSLY. The meeting adjourned at 5:00 p.m.