40th Streetscape
Public Art
Conceptual Design
Finalists
Proposed Artist Teams
Artist Total
Score
Team Firm Location Website(s)
Centuori,
Jeanine 106 Russell Rock Urban Rock
Design Los Angeles URBAN ROCK DESIGN
Chen, Sijia 91 Studio manager
Michael Pak Single business Los Angeles SIJIA CHEN and (VIDEO) Donahue, T
Scott 115
Lesley
Gasparetti
John Roberts
Team of three
individual
businesses
Bay Area
SCOTT DONAHUE
JOHN NORTHMORE ROBERTS
LESLEY GASPARETTI
Boswell, Addie 102 Matt Cartwright
Team of two
individual
businesses Portland, OR ADDIE BOSWELL
MATT CARTWRIGHT
Goldlust, Pete 107 Melanie
Germond
Single firm,
multiple people
Eugene, OR THE GERMLUSTS
UrbanRock Design
Jeanine Centuori
and Russell Rock
Los Angeles
UrbanRock Design
Jeanine Centuori and Russell Rock
The breadth and scope of this project are very engaging and closely aligned with our experience and passions. We work between art and design in our practice. We have created: episodic streetscape public art, plaza integrated artworks, and iconographic design imagery that is imbedded into public artworks. This unique call contains inter-related processes and disciplines that will work together to make for a holistic project. We have completed many site-specific integrated public art projects. These works include a variety of media in a wide range of sites in many places around the United States. We have worked extensively with design teams on completing public art in consultation with arts agencies, engineers, architects, any many other professions. We see community engagement and site-specificity as the soul of our practice and seek opportunities for outreach in our artwork process.
Our Approach
Our artworks are rooted in principles of connection, and uplifting aspirations. We are interested in interactive artwork with layered meanings. This is accomplished through strategies of unique perspectives, perceptual shifts, and tactile experiences. We feel that public art is most powerful when it engages the here-and-now by offering more than imagery. We are interested in the agency and power of public art to energize places that are intertwined with sound site planning and urban design. We understand the complexities and richness of working in the public realm and appreciate the give-and- take qualities of this work.
Our goal is to make projects that convey stories in a light-hearted manner, and that create place-based experiences sustaining interest over repeat visits. Our Interest in the 40th Streetscape for Emeryville This project interests us because we value the place making nature of the program combined with the site’s rich history and music culture. Our approach would be to merge site-specificity with amenities for the streetscape and plaza such as seating, shade, and/or informational wayfinding. We understand that there are several dynamic and rich forces at work in this project including experiential qualities of the site itself and the theme of bringing nature into the urban streetscape. Stakeholders, the design team, and potential community engagement sessions will provide valuable resources for researching content for the artwork. Our body of work embraces similar sensibilities expressed in this call. A current streetscape project for Raleigh, NC proposes a series of elements along the roadway that express attributes of the community Our main goal for this project of several components would be extreme site-specificity found through careful and robust research and outreach. This project will dovetail artwork with sound urban design and planning principles. We are very interested to be a part of the design team and seek the opportunity to make a presentation to the selection committee 3 Sijia Chen Studio
Sijia Chen
Michael Pak (Assistant)
Los Angeles
I am expressing my interest to produce the artworks that will be responsive to your project’s goals and intent. As a contemporary multidisciplinary artist, I employ form, scale, color, and light to convey my viewpoint. I explore the intersection of personal identity, diversity, and self-determination, and how it manifests in the perpetual friction and equilibrium between individuality and community, creativity and convention, and ambition and humility. Through my public artworks, I contemplate the complexity and richness of the convergence of cultures, history, and regional heritage, and how that shapes our aspirations and viewpoints. My process involves interpreting and reconstructing natural objects, landscapes, and architectural elements, and infusing them with private and public-sourced details and anecdotes. My works have a dynamic quality, they reveal layers of context and contain myriad details and subject matter. I interweave individual narratives to create a multicultural labyrinth, and to present a cross-section of diverse voices and perspectives.
My public artworks have been placed in transportation hubs and public spaces to serve as welcome points and gateway markers, and to fulfill placemaking, cultural representation, and community activation objectives. My public artworks visually articulate personal and collective narratives, and local cultural landmarks and symbols. Through actively engaging and partnering with residents, stakeholders, and community organizations, my public works are transformed into compositions that reflect the values, history, and ethos of local communities. This collaboration encompasses site visits, workshops with students ranging from middle school to undergraduate educational institutions, and community-driven open forum events.
I’ve also supplemented this in-person engagement by creating project specific websites, through which I’ve solicited from the public personal photographs, memorabilia, documents, their responses to a curated list of questions to develop a deeper understanding of personal values and cultural heritage. I then incorporated their submissions and responses directly into in the final design of the work. This direct community participation and contribution to the development of the artwork ensures that they are representative and site specific. I’ve adopted this process for my public works SWA, Bloom, and Blossom, Endeavor, and Cloud Field.
I believe this collaboration promotes ownership, encourages dialogue, sparks creativity, and generates appreciation for the value to the community in investing in the creative arts. The project becomes more than an artistic composition, it is the culmination of a community movement. My intent is to activate and enrich the project spaces through bespoke themes, elements, and cultural heritage of the City of Emeryville. My current commission for Wichita, KS is applicable to your project, I developed a series of multipaneled colorful sculptures that will also serve as seating areas next to a public bike bath, and will incorporate wayfinding elements and integrated lighting, so that the works serve as visual markers and geographic reference points for commuters and pedestrians in both day and nighttime conditions.
My concept for your project would have a holistic theme and focus on papercut art inspired perforations that I’ve incorporated in both my paintings and public works, along with integrated lighting throughout, to creatively and functionally activate the streetscapes. I would construct a bespoke website as I have done for several of my previous public projects. The website would feature content related to stakeholders’ vision, creative process and lifecycle of the project. The website could also effectively serve as a communal archive where the public could upload photos and content of their interactions and observations of the artworks. I believe this project is an exceptional opportunity to express an inclusive vision of public art, and to produce a community driven artwork for the City of Emeryville.
I on behalf of Sijia Chen Studio would enter into the Professional Services Agreement, and in addition to my involvement and direction of my project team, my studio manager Michael Pak [email protected] would be your day-to-day contact. 2.8
Scott Donahue,
Lesley Gasparetti
John Northmore
Roberts,
Bay Area
We are excited about designing this new public space for 40th Street, with the goal of creating a defining experience for anyone traveling the street, whether walking, biking, or riding in a car or bus. The planned path and four plazas create a progression of compelling spaces for artwork and design, allowing viewers to take in the art slowly, over time.
Decades of combined experience designing public spaces throughout the Bay Area and beyond uniquely qualifies our team for this project. The three of us collaborated on the César Chávez Memorial Solar Calendar in Berkeley, assisting the project founder and director, Santiago Casal. This place attracts crowds at the two solstices and two equinoxes.
John Northmore Roberts was lead designer and Scott Donahue was a technical advisor and an art curator for the Addison Street Arts District in Berkeley, which contributed to revitalizing the area.
Our goal is to make 40th Street a place that communicates what Emeryville is—an urban city with the right mixture of culture and nature. Our multifaceted approach will connect public art and informational graphics to the physical environment and the community, and will influence wayfinding
Scott Donahue, an Emeryville resident, has been a public artist for 32 years and has completed 26 permanent public and private projects.
John Northmore Roberts is a landscape architect with over 50-years of experience in the design of ecologically-based public outdoor spaces, all of which have had an extensive community outreach component. Many of his landscape projects have involved close collaborations with artists.
Lesley Gasparetti has worked with an eclectic mix of clients and collaborators on a variety of design projects, developing distinctive visual languages for several local organizations. signs, city logo and Emeryville’s identity going forward.
2.6 Addie Boswell
Matt Cartwright
Oregon
• As an artist and writer, my specialty is collaborative public art that tells a story. Stories revolve around shared work and a sense of place or season, and always reference real and specific communities with strong lines and vivid color.
No matter the theme, my mission is to capture the inherent beauty of regular days and the inherent dignity of ordinary citizens. My favorite art projects intersect at useful and inspiring, and I especially like projects that tie into the everyday lives of citizens with practical opportunities for seating and way-finding. Moreover, I like the amount of thought put into your improvements and the chance for artists to be involved from the very beginning. • My partner, metal artist Matt Cartwright is a designer and fabricator who has worked around the country to design and build functional art, sculpture and custom furniture. He is known especially for his organic shapes and innovative design, which often makes use of recycled materials. We enjoy producing functional art in a scale and place with which people can interact. For the Sunnyside Library Entrance, we created life-size silhouettes based on drawings of real patrons, and are currently building a giant dragonfly and heron for other park-based projects. We both like dreaming up a big picture and inventing things, and then Matt specializes in the materials and 3-D construction, while I focus on the more graphic and detailed work and any collaboration in the community. For the more realistic metal designs, I start with black-and-white paper cuts, which have a hand-drawn and elegant look. These also translate easily to vector designs and to perforated or laser-cut metal.
• As a visiting artist, I am a guest in your house, and my aim is to reflect your citizens, not to speak for them. My philosophy is “more hands on the wall,” as I have found that the impact of public art relates directly to the ownership your citizens have over it. At a base level, I work with the art committee to determine a theme, collect content through site visits and provided photographs, and procure public feedback. But there are many ways you can level-up the community involvement, and it sounds like you have a great process for implementing it already. • I would be excited to work with the committee and stakeholders to design a community-engagement piece that is meaningful.
2.6 The Germlusts:
Pete Goldlust
Melanie Germond
Oregon
As public artists, we enjoy working with communities to make their environments more engaging and beautiful, to instill a sense of wonder and playfulness into daily life and celebrate the stories that make their place special. We strive to make artwork that warms and humanizes public spaces, and that is visually rich enough to engage viewers’ interest, even across repeated encounters with the work over a lifetime. Since 2009, we have been awarded 30+ public commissions. Our work has included sculpture, wall reliefs, and mural work, with budgets up to $250k. Projects cover a wide range of media: metals, concrete, terrazzo, painted murals, mosaic, glass, and recycled materials—often including kinetic pieces, functional fixtures, or other interactive elements. The work often combines multiple, interrelated art elements, across several media, to build expansive installations across several spaces within a larger site.
Our many years of shared experience as graphic designers informs all our projects. We love the challenge of making a complex story visually compelling and broadly comprehensible. Community collaboration is a critical, and very gratifying component of our work. We try to honor each community by creating work that suits its place and brings joy to its humans. We love the challenge of making a complex story visually compelling and broadly comprehensible. And we especially value projects where the community seeks to uncover and celebrate a wider cross-section of its own deep history and culture. Our passion for historical research and our playful, imagery-rich approach lend themselves to projects that value inclusivity and broad representation. We enjoy working with the constituents to create spaces that celebrate specific local stories and reflect local culture.
Two examples: Heroes Branch Library, Glendale, AZ To generate imagery, we worked with staff and community leadership, soliciting input through a series of presentations/discussions of local history. One particularly rewarding outcome was a wonderful working relationship with neighborhood historians, that yielded a treasure trove of obscure information about the area. Flagstaff (AZ) Pulliam Airport We created an illustrated 260’ long steel/stained-glass fence, celebrating the interconnected history, environment, and culture of the region. We explored a variety of ways to connect with the airport’s many constituencies and neighbors.
We collected community input surveys, met with video focus groups, and sought guidance from organizations representing the broadest possible range of constituents throughout Coconino County, Campbell Community Center, Eugene, OR We composed wall reliefs, kinetic sculptures and sidewalk inlays, celebrating Campbell’s location on a rare plot of preserved camas prairie. Images of local flora and fauna intermingle with references to both the day-to- day activity of the community center, and Eugene’s free-spirited artistic and cultural 2.6