Roundabout Art Committee Invites Public Participation

By David Gill, Aesthetics & Selection Subcommittee Chair for the AiR Committee

The Big Park Council is pleased to announce that its Art in the Roundabouts Committee is about to embark on the next phase of its work: that of polling the Village citizenry about its preferences on the subject of roundabout art, including proposals for artistic themes and artwork characteristics which portray the origin and early indigenous, cattle-ranching and Western history of our Village (the committee’s stated mission).

MISSION STATEMENT: To display the story of our community with inspiring public art.

HOW: The Art in the Roundabout (AiR) committee will develop a process and structure to facilitate the selection and installation of works of art to be placed on the four roundabouts located in our community on State Route 179, and ensure they are properly maintained.

The committee will ask for the community’s participation in order to achieve the broadest acceptance possible.

To date, the committee has formalized its agreement with a fiduciary agent (Sedona Village Partnership) to accept donations, prepared a draft list of themes and selection criteria, and created an artistically appealing and professional website in order to gather input, report findings, next steps and progress to the community.

This current phase is intended to ensure broad community participation and response. Through its website, the committee will propose themes for each roundabout and share proposed selection criteria to be used in the next phase of the committee’s work, that of a “call to artists”.

Preliminary selection criteria include adherence to the proposed themes, the artwork’s ability to convey clearly those themes, quality, durability and maintainability of the proposed art, scale, visibility from all directions of approach, colors, and eventually the art’s cost.

Once the community has confirmed the artistic direction of the program, this platform will also constitute the vehicle for a “call to artists, locally, regionally and across the country.

In order to ratify the committee’s process, and to obtain a good sampling of the community’s preference, the Art in Roundabouts Committee requests the reader’s participation in a brief online and anonymous survey.

More information about the project and committee, as well as survey questions can be found at OurVillageArt.org.

Photo: The Art in the Roundabouts committee is seeking input from the community on themes and selection criteria for artworks to enhance the four roundabouts in the Village. The survey is open to everyone, OurVillageArt.org.