Culture, Arts & Pride Commission

CULTURE, ARTS & PRIDE COMMISSION Wednesday, April 10, 2019 12:00 noon Municipal Complex, Committee Meeting Room (3300) 100 Ann Edwards Lane Mount Pleasant, SC 29464 MINUTES Members Present: Bren Romano Monteiro, Chair; Ann McGahey, Amanda Tadlock Members Absent: Rebecca Gosnell, Frank Sonntag, Kathryn Whitaker, Charles Williams Staff Present: Nicole Harvey Ms. Monteiro called the meeting to order at 12:04 p.m. 1. Approval of Minutes from the March 21, 2019 meeting No action taken due to lack of quorum. 2. Public Comments Mr. John Wright, 145 Rose Lane, Mount Pleasant, SC, said he was coming before the Commission as they have a chance to help him support and be a part of something amazing that is coming up next year. He said he was born and raised here and was retired military and came back home five years ago. He said there was a very special asset that they have in the community in H&R Sweet Shop on Royall Avenue. He said that it opened on April 2, 1945 and next year it will be 75 years old. He said as a former business owner he knows that restaurants are not easy, and they do not last 75 years under the same family structure, but H&R Sweet Shop has. He said he knew the Commission is planning to do murals around town and he had an idea of something he saw in Amsterdam in what they call a Madurodam, which is a miniature city. He said he wanted to put our miniature city on the side of the Sweet Shop. He said that the Old Village area used to be the Town of Mount Pleasant. He said he had been in  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 2 of 11 contact with some people in that community and the idea was to put a mural on the side of the building recognizing Harriett and Riley, which is where the name H&R was derived from. He also would like to put a picture of the old garbage truck facility, the old Laing school, the water tower, Pitt Street Pharmacy and things that were relevant to that community on the side of the building. He said they had some good ideas, but he needed their help. He said that the mural was something that they are talking about now. He said that a 75-year celebration of one business in Town would be an amazing opportunity. He said the building was 60 x 15. Ms. McGahey asked if one wall was 60 x 15. Mr. Wright answered in the affirmative. He said that he had spoken with the Mayor about this and with the Miriam Brown Center next door, there is a lot of activity there. He said he thought if they could put that mural on the side of that building it would be a great way to show what the Town used to be. He said they could put some chairs on the side of the building to have an outdoor patio and it would be a good touch for the Town and the community. He wanted to come before and talk to them about it. Ms. Harvey said she thought they needed to get him in touch with Ms. Gosnell and Ms. Tadlock. Ms. Monteiro said that they are actively seeking locations for the mural initiative. She said she finds this very interesting. She said one of the things they are tasked with is highlighting Mount Pleasant culture and fostering pride, and this would be nice way to combine both of those with art. She said that they will have Ms. Gosnell get in touch with Mr. Wright. Mr. Wright said he thought it was a great opportunity for all of them and for Mount Pleasant as well. He said he had been in contact with the Artist Guild, the College of Charleston, and Avery Research Center. He said he wanted to make it a community collaboration where they could get students from Charleston County School District to do some of the work. He said there was an artist named Patterson that was a native with family from the Old Village and he is an art professor in New Jersey. He said he has done about 20 murals in New Jersey and he will forward that information to Ms. Harvey. He said they would love to engage him because of his family structure but also want to make sure they get all the Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 3 of 11 community that was in the arts involved so it was a community collaboration. Ms. Harvey said that Ms. Tadlock was one third of the subcommittee also and she would get Ms. Gosnell to reach out to him. Mr. Wright said the upcoming Sunday they were going to talk to the Friendship AME Church next door to get them involved. He said that he thought the second through the fourth weekend of April of next year would be a good time. He said he thought the actual 75-year anniversary would be the weekend of the Bridge Run, but they would not have a celebration that weekend. Ms. McGahey thanked Mr. Wright for coming to them with the idea. 3. Report from Subcommittees a. Green Mount P Ms. Monteiro said that was Mr. Williams and Mr. Sonntag. She said that Mr. Sonntag recently asked if he could be moved to the It’s Raining Art subcommittee. She said that as of right now, Green Mount P does not have a lot happening. She said that they need to put it on the agenda for the next meeting to choose the Civic Pride Award. She said everyone needs to start looking, get pictures, and send them to Nicole. She said that those eligible would be any business or neighborhood entrances. Ms. Harvey said that some of the past awards were given to I’On Homeowners Association, Towne Centre, Oakland Market, and Vintage Coffee won last year. She said it was the first time the Commission had given it to a small business which was nice. She said it was for beautification of outdoor space. She said that as they drive around Mount Pleasant, they need to look for places. Ms. Monteiro said they will submit during this next month and vote on it at the next meeting in May. b. Town Hall Art Ms. Harvey shared some submissions. She shared submissions by Ms. Becky Hurwitz, Mr. David Harrison, and Ms. Fer Caggiano. Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 4 of 11 Ms. McGahey asked how wide Ms. Caggiano’s tryptic total hanging was. Ms. Harvey said it was 56 x 26 and would work on one of the large wall spaces. She shared other paintings of Ms. Caggiano and then shared some of Ms. Gloria Smith, Ms. Julia Kelly, Ms. Lucy Richmond, Ms. Renee Magdalene, Ms. Susan K. Bryant, and Mr. Konstantine Voronin. She said they have a good variety this time. Ms. McGahey asked how many spots they were trying to fill. Ms. Monteiro said it was 30 spaces and they technically have space for all of these. Ms. McGahey asked if was because they are taking down some current art. Ms. Monteiro said they do not have that many now but in the process of hanging the current ones they realized they actually have more space than what they originally thought. Ms. Harvey said that they ordered more hooks. Ms. McGahey asked if they could say yes to all of them. Ms. Monteiro said they could, but they do not have a quorum to do so. Ms. Harvey said she did not believe the art selection is something they have to vote on. Ms. Monteiro said they were at the point of they are not deciding between one or the other as they are saying yes to all of them. She asked if Ms. Tadlock and Ms. McGahey were comfortable with that. Ms. Tadlock and Ms. McGahey answered in the affirmative. Ms. Monteiro said on record that she did not think there was anything there that was offensive. She said that some of it was a little not quite Mount Pleasant but still lovely to look at. Ms. Harvey said that because they are not making any organizational or structural changes, she believes they can select them without voting on them. She said that if they needed to, they could email Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 5 of 11 them out to everyone and let them know that these were the selections. Ms. Monteiro said she was comfortable with that if they could email them out to all the Commissioners before letting the artists know they have been selected. Ms. Harvey said they had one artist Ms. Phyllis Malpas who wanted to submit, and she has photographs out in the hall, but she was away. She said she was going to email them to Ms. Harvey. She told her that she would let her know if the Commission was comfortable with that being emailed to them but if not, they would save her submission for the next round. Ms. Monteiro said to go ahead and email them. c. Sculpture Ms. McGahey said there is nothing much to report except that the bases are in and the two pieces are getting installed. Ms. Harvey said she checked on that again and he said he had been trying to coordinate with Mr. Jarod Charzewski. She said it was finals time at school and they are trying to finish semester projects. She said the professors are very busy helping students and he said they should be installed by the end of the month. She said they are at the mercy of the students and professors and their schedules. She said the bases are built and the artist had to make some slight modifications to the sculptures to make them fit on the base. Ms. McGahey asked if this was for the Jones Center and the library. Ms. Harvey answered in the affirmative. She said the next day they are digging the holes for the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition (SEWE) sculptures at Waterfront Park. She said that the forms are being installed and the concrete should be poured in time for the sculptures to be in place before the Blessing of the Fleet. She said they would have six SEWE bronze sculptures at the park. She said she would hopefully have pictures at the next meeting. Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 6 of 11 Ms. McGahey said she liked the rust that was on the Sailfish that was in place on Coleman. Ms. Harvey said it did look very nice and she agreed. d. Art on the Half Shell Ms. Harvey said that Mr. Phillip Hyman had picked up his oyster. She said that Magnolia and Honeycomb one would be installed the next morning at Waterfront Park. She the last one is being painted now. She said they did receive another submission. Ms. Monteiro asked if this would for the next round. Ms. Harvey answered in the affirmative. She said she replied to the artist and let him know that. She shared a picture by Mr. Brad Carroll. Ms. Monteiro asked if they were submitting what they would do to the back side. Ms. Harvey answered in the negative but said they have all either carried the front artistic theme around to the back or made the back look like an oyster shell. She said she spoke with Ms. Kay Hyman and she was going to go look at the park to see what others did with their backs. She said that they all have been very different and it was a very nice mix. e. Traffic Box Art Ms. Harvey said she was working on blurring out the signatures on the art. She said she told Transportation to have South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) hold on to the encroachment permit application and she would be getting the new art minus the signatures. She said that all artists agreed even though they did not like it. f. Paint the Town Ms. Harvey said she communicated with the two artists who submitted last time. She said that Ms. Gosnell is planning to follow up on those. She said that she followed up with the artist and let Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 7 of 11 them know that they would be having a discussion and more guidance on how the Commission would like to see the direction go. Ms. Monteiro said she thought it was important to give them good direction and try to still work with them. She did not want them to be in a situation where the Commission was turning artists away because they had a reaction to something that they submitted. Ms. Harvey said that the more she had looked at Mr. Quintin Chaplin’s art, the more she liked it. She said especially the sweetgrass theme. Ms. Monteiro said she thought it had a lot of potential. She said if they said just make it about Mount Pleasant and not firefighters would be enough of direction for someone like that to immediately know they like the sweetgrass aspect of it. Ms. Harvey said the only thing in it that says fire department was the fire shield. She said she thought maybe the hesitation was because it was submitted on a paper bag. Ms. Monteiro said it makes it hard to conceptualize it. She said they were talking earlier about the need to bring in culture to some of their projects and she thought the murals lend themselves well to that. Ms. Harvey said that the fire station that they were painting was on Bowman Road just off Highway 17 which is Sweetgrass Basket Parkway, which ties in well with his idea with the sweetgrass basket weaver. She said hopefully they will have more news on that soon. g. It’s Raining Art Ms. Monteiro said that she knew that Mr. Sonntag was taking that over, but she knew Ms. Harvey said they were struggling with the last submission. Ms. Harvey said they have two stencils and they could go ahead and spray them. She said on the turtle one, the artist did another more simplified version of it and she had sent it to Mr. Cary Morton, but Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 8 of 11 with finals and projects and building the bases for the SEWE sculptures, he has been very busy. Ms. Monteiro asked if they could just find out an estimate of when and they could just hold and do them all three at the same time. Ms. Harvey said she would let her know as soon as she hears back from him. Ms. Monteiro said to also let Mr. Sonntag know as well. h. Marketing Ms. Harvey said that Instagram had been approved. She said she thought she could create it from the Facebook admin settings. She said she was an administrator on the account and she would get with Ms. McGahey about getting it set up. Ms. McGahey said that she and Ms. Monteiro decided that she would man Instagram and Ms. Monteiro would man Facebook. She said that they could share images and content. Ms. Monteiro asked if there was a way to link them to anything so that anything posted on Instagram automatically gets posted. Ms. McGahey said she knew that one could do it from Instagram directly to Facebook. Ms. Harvey said she did not know if it works the other way around. Ms. Monteiro said when they set it up, they need to make sure that it happens. Ms. McGahey said it was a switch that says also share to Facebook. She said she did not know if they saw Mr. Williams email that his contact, Ms. Becky Taylor, sent him a few events that were in the works for the next couple of months that could be content for Marketing posts on Facebook and Instagram. She said they may need another strategy to increase content. Ms. Monteiro said that maybe they would just do it via email this time. She said she thought they were still struggling for the content. Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 9 of 11 She said she still needs to get all the photos off the drive that Ms. Harvey had sent her. Ms. Harvey said she was going to ask her if the links she sent worked and was she able to access all the files. Ms. Monteiro said that Ms. Harvey had talked about the oysters being put in. She said when they get it all up and running it should be that Ms. Harvey sends her photos or she would run out there and post it that day. She said they would give credit to the artist. She said that once they get it under control then she thought it would work more smoothly and they could post it on Instagram, and it could just filter down to Facebook. She said that she thought a goal of Facebook was to give the artists some exposure. Ms. Harvey said that a couple weeks before the art switching out it would be good if they had daily posts of each of the artists with the Mayor and their art at Town Hall. Ms. Monteiro said that with each of those posts they could say stay tuned for this event where they are going to be switching them out. Ms. McGahey said it might be nice if they had a backlog of pictures to start with at least on Instagram to get things rolling and they would not be searching for things to post. Ms. Harvey said another goal would be for people to start coming to our page and sharing their posts. i. Emerging Arts Ms. Monteiro said they had a meeting with Ms. Kathryn Whitaker, the Commission’s new member. She said they were talking about the concept of Emerging Arts and how important it was to continue to have a landing space to talk about future projects. She said that one thing that came up that she did not want them to forget about was the possibility of doing some sort of artwork on the bus shelters. She said that they need to find out who owns those. She said it could be SCDOT, Carta or the Town. Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 10 of 11 Ms. Harvey said it may be the Town of Mount Pleasant, but she would find out. Ms. Monteiro said they talked briefly about the electrical boxes and that was not a possibility. Ms. Harvey said that was how traffic box art began because they could never get approval to do those. 4. New Business Ms. Monteiro said that she had finally received a proposal from the Artist Guild. She said when they visited the meeting a couple of months ago, they proposed a fine arts juried festival to be held at Memorial Waterfront Park. She said a lot of initial questions were who was handling security, restroom facilities, printing the signage, and overall logistics. She said they suggested having music, professional performances (not children), and want to keep it semiprofessional. She said those people are expecting to be compensated. She said hopefully they have thought it through a little further. She said they may need to scale it back for first year if it were to happen. She said they are talking about bringing in sponsors, businesses, and food trucks. Ms. Harvey said the question is who is responsible for all of that. Ms. Monteiro said she would pass it to Ms. Harvey. She said they need to discuss and see how we would handle this given there are so many other events Ms. Harvey is responsible for already. Ms. Harvey said she and Ms. Richter have more than 40 event days per year. Ms. Monteiro asked how many festivals they had. Ms. Harvey said the large events are Artfest, Blessing of the Fleet, Children’s Day Festival, Christmas Parade, Holiday Market, Farmers Market. She said that the partner events were Party in the Park, Cooper River Bridge Run, and now the Sweetgrass Festival. Ms. Monteiro said that may be part of the discussion of whether they would partner on this. Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com  Culture, Arts & Pride Commission April 10, 2019 Page 11 of 11 Ms. Harvey said that she declines a lot of things. She said they do not have the ability to do everything everyone want to do, but it is worth exploring. She said there was some thoughts about potentially folding this into something else or altering something existing into it. She said they needed a starting point, so she was glad they emailed something. 5. Adjourn There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 12:46 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Karen Bedenbaugh, 4/10/19 Title VI Notice: The Town of Mount Pleasant fully complies with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and related statutes and regulations in all programs and activities. Town meetings are conducted in accessible locations, materials can be provided in accessible formats, and provided in languages other than English. If you would like accessibility or language accommodation, please contact the Title VI Coordinator one week in advance of the meeting, at the Town of Mount Pleasant at 843-884-8517. Telephone (843) 884-8517 - Fax (843) 856-2180 www.tompsc.com