Good evening. Welcome to the October 20th, 2025 Arts Commission regular meeting.
Effective October 17th, 2023, public comments may be made in person or in writing. If you would like
to view the meeting remotely, you may do so in one of our following ways. YouTube Live, Comcast
cable channel 28, Rossmore channel 26, Astound channel 31, and AT&T Uverse channel 99, or
live stream online at the city's website.
Secretary.
Okay, we'll do the roll.
Commissioner Perelman?
Here.
Commissioner Dresser?
Present.
Commissioner Clauber?
Here.
Commissioner Tesfaye?
Here.
Vice Chair Bagnani?
Here.
And Chair Balthazar?
and Chair Balthazar.
Presente.
Next on the agenda is public communications.
This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment
on items not on the agenda.
Under the Brown Act, the commission cannot act
on items raised during public communications,
but may respond briefly to statements made
or questions posed, request clarification,
or refer the item to staff.
are there any great the next next on the agenda is the consent calendar does any
Commissioner have questions on any item on the consent calendar we do not thank
you Commissioner do I just wait someone needs to call for a motion right great
is there any public comment I move that we approve everything on our consent
calendar. Okay Commissioner Perelman. Aye. Commissioner Dresser. Aye. Commissioner
Clobber. Aye. Commissioner Tesfic. Aye. Vice Chair Magnani. Aye. And Chair Baxar. Aye.
Motion passes. Great. Next on the agenda is an item for Commission consideration.
It's item 4a, consideration of the proposed mural sites, concept illustrations, and budget
allocations for four mural renderings submitted for the mural grants program.
At this time, I'm going to invite staff, right?
Here we go.
All right.
Good evening, commissioners.
My name is Mariah Nelson, Public Art Manager for the City, and first agenda item is to
review a mural proposal from Trent Thompson of ABG Arts Group submitted as part of his grant
application. I'm just going to do a quick refresher. If you'll recall the grant was first
launched in 2023 and in the two years that it was open and available we realized no murals with it.
So at the January 2025 meeting,
the Arts Commission approved a restructuring of the grant.
So this took effect in January.
The revised program eliminates the match requirement
and instead offers a more accessible grant
of up to 30,000 per fiscal year.
And that is to be distributed
at the discretion of the commission.
So tonight, we are pleased to welcome Trent Thompson
of ABG Art Group.
He's here to present his concept for all of you.
He has a series of mural installations
across several buildings or walls.
And I just want to mention that,
in addition to being a very talented artist himself,
he has actually already realized
several large-scale mural projects
with other cities and organizations,
including one right here in Walnut Creek
that you're probably familiar with,
the Trinity Center.
He partnered with the youth
And that's the mural up at Honda.
So with that, I'll hand it over to Trent.
I'll memorize myself with this.
OK, we're good.
Hello, commissioners.
Thank you for having me.
Just out of bit of context here, we're
aiming to do four different locations.
This is a result of a collaboration
between building owners, artists, hopefully you all,
and really came from interest
from a handful of building owners
that I've done some work with in the past.
And then also, I don't know how long ago it was
that Mariah and I had sat down
and she had told me about the matching fund program.
And I think the proof is in the pudding
that being that that sat there for two years,
I'm excited at the way that it was restructured
because in order to make these murals happen,
it does take a lot.
someone has to go do the legwork to get the building owners
on board and get those designs and make
all the cooks in the kitchen agree to what we're doing.
So more than an artist on a project,
that's more of what my role has been,
just trying to put the pieces together for this project.
So I'll just read through this.
We're aiming to create a Walnut Creek mural program
by creating collaborations between local artists,
building owners, and the city of Walnut Creek,
produced by ABG Art Group, which is my company.
We do large scale art installation all over the Bay
Area.
And we'd love to do more and more here in Walnut Creek.
Currently engaged collaborators include the Walnut Creek
Downtown Association, BH Development, which
is Brian Harihara, Comerica, and Zebra Tattoo.
There's all of those kind of entities
have multiple excited participants within them.
We have Sean here, who's with Zebra Tattoo.
here if you guys have questions on that specific project.
And just to go towards some of the legwork of the challenges
of making these projects happen, I want you to kind of see,
I want to just call attention to the legwork that's
been put into this, because we do already
have four signed approvals for mural locations
with building owner signed permissions.
We do have four approved artists and teams
where we presented a group of local artists
to the building owners.
they deliberated amongst their teams,
selected which artists they wanted to work with,
then have also already compensated those artists
to do back and forth with design.
And so what you guys are getting here today
is already, all of the work has been done
as far as getting the permissions
and getting sign off from the building ownership,
tenants of the buildings, all of the necessary parties.
And finally, beyond just that, we don't,
We are requesting more than what we have,
so I'm happy that the one-to-one match is now a requirement,
but we're also coming with financial contributions
committed from these building owners.
And we have five different financial sponsors
who have agreed to be a part of this in different amounts.
I could have just showed you that
instead of doing this whole long ramble,
but essentially these are the steps that we have passed
and now we're at the submit for city approval,
so just want you guys to recognize that.
Yeah, this feels like maybe we're graduating
onto the part where we actually get to put paint on the walls.
So I'll read through this.
Based on MarketSquare footage, the career
stage of the artists and comparable programs
were producing in other cities.
The market rate for these four murals
could justify a higher budget.
That being said, given our conversations with artists,
the management support required and our shared desire
to see this project off the ground,
we hope that with the city's partnership,
we can at least fund these projects
within the lower end of industry standards, which
is actually, I want to commend the city of Walnut Creek.
Oftentimes the city, when we come with proposals,
it's very rare that the city is like,
you need to pay more to these,
so we had kind of come at a like,
this is what it will take to get off the ground
and we just want to make sure that we,
to your credit, that we are at least getting
within the industry standards of,
so these artists can make some money on the projects.
We have independently fundraising committed 16,000,
contingent on at least at least a one-to-one match from the building
owners. We hope you recognize the legwork initiative and community investment is
taking to get to this point. We invite the City of Walnut Creek and Art Committee
to join in the building on the momentum. By producing all four walls
simultaneously, we hope to create some organic energy around the program, foster
goodwill within the community, and highlight the Walnut Creek Art Program
through community building around the packaged initiative. I think if we're
able to do all four, I do understand that you all have the discussion to say we
We want to do one in three or two in four.
We're proposing all four because we
think that if we get the train moving, people will jump on.
It'll be a bit of a mural festival.
There'll be a food element, and someone
will want to come play music.
And we're just hoping to create some of that momentum
by doing all of them.
However, partial funding of the program
through contributions towards individuals
would also be helpful.
And I know what you guys will be deliberating on tonight.
This is just ugly wall, pretty wall.
Let's do it.
Wait, this is about me and my business
and some of the large scale and community operations
that we do throughout the Bay Area.
I'll gloss through this because I know you guys want
to see pictures and walls.
Here's some other large scale murals just kind of adding
to our portfolio and expertise.
Some more, some tall ones, some long ones, some pretty ones,
some bright ones.
This is just a few slides about who
we're prioritizing working with.
Large-scale public art is an industry traditionally dominated
by people that look like me.
So we're doing our part to spread the love.
And this is not something we're doing in response
to just recent things, but it's very much something
that's shown in our portfolio.
from way before 2020 when that was the thing
when people started doing that.
So, this is just kind of more about some of our history.
I'm gonna slide through all this.
The game plan, this is the fun part.
The walls, the artists, and the designs.
We'll start with wall number one.
This is the address is 1419 North Broadway.
I think it's a great wall.
has some minor challenges with the piping and things.
My personal opinion is the great spots for the murals
are the walls that aren't beautiful unless you paint them.
I think sometimes you'll see beautiful brick,
and then people want to paint the mural over it.
To me, those aren't the walls that need the attention.
It's walls like these that are a great canvas
but have some character.
general dimensions, it's about 12 feet tall
by about 70 feet tall.
What I did here is I put in kind of our,
like a high end budget and then what we're requesting
from the city to get this off the ground.
And you'll see that as we slide through all of these.
And like I mentioned, we will happily accept any portion
of these amount that you guys are able to allocate
but this is what we're requesting.
Because of the challenges, we felt
like Steve Anderson was an amazing artist.
The tenant building ownership wanted
to do something celebrating local flora and fauna.
Steve has a large portfolio doing just that,
with local connections here in Walnut Creek, and also
his mixed media between using traditional bucket paints
and then spray paints.
So I think this would be that style lens to him
being able to easily get around some of these tough objects
and incorporate those into the wall.
so we felt like he's a great fit,
and the stakeholders agreed.
Here's some more like floral.
And the approved design is native florals.
Essentially, you can kind of see
some of the level of detail here
that you'll actually have rendered,
but this is the layout as Steve proposed.
Now, I don't know if you guys want to stop
and ask questions or make comments wall by wall,
or if you want me to just kind of get through this
and then you guys want to assess.
What do you think works best?
Just cruise through it, OK.
So that is wall number one.
Wall number two, so this is adjacent to the,
this is the same building.
So the first three walls are actually right all in this area.
As you might, there's some perks and some downfalls
to each of the walls.
But I think by creating this mural destination,
by being able to do all three, we're
really excited about there's a mural hot spot over here.
This tunnel is an awesome opportunity
for a bit more of an immersive experience.
They're pretty much all the same length, but different heights.
Similar budget, the windows and doors
kind of create some challenges here.
And the artists here, Walnut Creek residents,
they might have just moved, but they have ties.
So I'm just going to claim it for now.
This is a husband and wife duo, Joey and Alexandra.
They both have unique styles, but work together often.
Alex is on the right, one of Joey's pieces here on the left.
Very vibrant, always kind of has something to do with nature.
This one, we also wanted to do something
that ties a little bit without it being definitively signage.
but we do want this.
There's a tattoo shop right here.
It kind of fits the vibe of what's
happening here in this tunnel, which we're excited about.
So they took the time to put this design together.
Another completely different style,
but kind of local flora and fauna theme around the doors,
just adding some color to this tunnel here.
And you can see kind of how it would interact
around the windows and doors.
This is the third wall.
So this is also right in that same area.
This is just the other side.
So you have wall one, a tunnel.
And then wall three, which is on the other side
of that building.
This one is probably traditionally
the flattest location.
I think foot traffic-wise, all three of these locations
get incredible traffic.
The first one probably gets the best, I think, driving traffic.
this one gets a ton of eyeballs as well.
I will say on the first two walls,
because I think this is something for you all
to keep in consideration.
Some of that $16,000 that we have committed
is wall specific.
So, you know, this building owner says like,
I would be happy to fund a portion on wall one,
I would be happy to portion, you know.
So the first two walls, we do have,
I'll say a higher buy in from stakeholders than this wall.
But this wall we're also very excited about
and we do have the permissions.
But I just want to kind of,
there will be some engineering we need to do
as far as if we just want to fund this one
that has effect on what contributions we have
from the building owners.
So if you guys have questions about that,
I'm happy to explain.
On this one, we wanted to do a bit of a,
it's a cultural mashup.
So this is the one where I am putting on my artist's hat
and working, collaborating with another artist.
He is a mixed race Chinese person.
He's kind of like the character's characteristics
and culture he's pulling from for this design.
And here's his work on the right, right on the left.
We've done many projects together,
and we're excited about this one.
This is essentially a project where we're going kind of,
These patterns are essentially fusing
through different styles, where you have this dichotomy
of what you see on the right versus the left matching,
but also having this unique play as you go through it.
I do think that will probably go a little less saturated
in real life than this one when we see it on the wall.
Some of these colors are really coming through
because of the rendering.
it'll be a little bit more smacking the face a little bit
less, I think, when you're seeing it in real life.
Our fourth wall, which is just a street over,
is a bit smaller, maybe even higher traffic area.
This one's really cool.
There's a new shop here in 1372, North Main.
This one we have, they're excited about it.
the building owner who actually owns the walls,
excited about it.
Then the tenant inside is excited about it.
And then Brian, who's a local developer,
his sister-owned, like there's so many people
that want to make this one happen.
So the artist here is Zoe Adia Boston.
They really wanted to do something that kind of also,
I think in a lot of ways ties all these together,
where there is some like flora and fauna
but also some cultural pattern work.
This piece is contemporary plant traditional idea,
something playful and fun,
while still seamlessly fitting
into the Walnut Creek art collection.
And then this is some,
well, it's the back of her head,
but this is Zoe and some of her work.
I think this one on the left
is kind of a good stylistic interpretation
of just how she's doing this surreal scene
where it's something not purely traditional,
but still lends to something that's a bit,
I'll say safer in style choice.
And so this is essentially the proposal she's making,
like painting this kind of faux archway
with the scene happening behind it.
And you have of course like the rolling hills
and local foreign Fauna here.
And this I'm just throwing out there.
I'm excited to have been able to put
some of this legwork together,
hoping that we can make these walls happen.
And also, here's lots of other boring blank walls
around Walnut Creek that maybe next year
when there's more funds, we'll go knock on more doors
and continue some of this momentum.
So just food for thought, wanted to end it there.
I think that's it, yeah, thank you.
And yeah.
Thank you.
We'll open it up for Commissioner questions, right?
Yep.
Like, I have a few who wants to go first.
Go ahead.
Yes.
I've got some sort of process questions,
and then questions about some of the actual sites.
These are intended to be permanent murals.
Is that right?
Yes.
OK.
I only ask that because one time somebody told me,
well, murals are just considered temporary.
So we're not going to get to that.
I think it depends more on your definition of temporary,
then I think generally you can expect 20 to 30 year lives
out of paint on a wall.
So it's more than temporary.
Okay.
And I don't know if I'm reading the report right or not,
but it looked to me as if the public arts committee
recommended wall three and the staff is recommending
all four, did I read that right?
No, he's presenting.
I know you're presenting all four of it.
So staff met with the Public Art Committee.
And at the time, there was discussion,
strong agreement that wall number three and rendering
number three was something that they all liked.
And then later, staff received an email saying one
said all of them, the other said just still one of them.
So if that makes sense.
Did that answer your question?
I guess.
OK.
And OK, well, I could stop there and then come back
and do the walls, or I could do my whole list.
Up to you.
OK, I'll just keep going.
Can we take it wall by wall?
Yeah, that's a good idea.
And then you go to wall two and get it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'll do wall one and then.
Do we have any just broader questions
the proposal itself before we go down each wall. Or maybe just maybe like
general program questions so we can as I mentioned there's there's some there
might be some like strategy here you guys want to talk about. I just have a
question because it's it seems to be a secret who the building owners are and I
know that the building owners have to be on the application who are the building
owners for 1419 Broadway and 13 not a secret at all I have we have I have like
specific names I think so for the you can talk more to the first three walls
is all one building owner but then different tenants involved I don't
actually care about the tenants because tenants come and go the building owner
owns a building who is it Terry ring is a 1419 and how about the 1372 north on
Main Street let me put I can pull up all of the is it a number of owners is
that's why it's hard I have a I have a question about the budget so on one
One slide in your deck, you made a note of $16K fundraised.
Then during your presentation you talked about wanting to match the $16K from your building
owners or your tenants plus a request from the city.
So are you operating with, ideally, in a perfect world, you'd have $62K for all your murals?
That sounds great.
I was asking for less, but you can, if you got it,
we'll take it.
The math was nothing for me.
Essentially, when I started the legwork of putting this program
together, there was the assumption
that we were looking for a one-to-one match.
So what I presented to the building owners
and anyone that funded was, if you give me $5,
I'm going to go ask for $5 from the city.
So that's where I fundraised $16,000, which $32,000 would not
be enough to completely fund these, but then Mariah had told me that the program was restructured,
no longer limited your contribution to one-to-one, so I'm still coming to you with that $16,000,
but inviting you to contribute more, and then we can make this happen.
It's lower.
Okay.
Yes.
Got it.
I think ideally, bluntly, I think you guys have $30,000 to spend, that would be the ask.
Okay.
Should we go mural for mural?
He's looking up who the building is for 3272 North me and then just to make sure we're
today look, our decision as commissioners is around granting them something we can't
necessarily get into, if I'm incorrect me if I'm wrong, the actual mural changes.
So you can provide feedback but our focus today is your decision which is on whether
or not grant funding will be awarded to any of the proposals in front of you.
So just in kind of efficiency of time, keep in mind we're looking for consensus around
funding and then you can also provide other feedback but we need to get to a decision
around any grant award.
I know that we have $30,000 to spend, but it's per fiscal year.
So once we spend us $30,000 this year, the next fiscal year, what do we have allotted
for that and how would that work so that we can plan ahead for more murals?
I don't know if this is a that's Emily question who this is musical chairs
tonight good evening commissioners Emily Enders curator
Edford Gallery. These are the contributions and the building. No, I don't actually want to see the individual, I want to say who owns 1372.
Terrence Ring. Terry Ring brings on to both buildings. He owns wall one, two and three. How about wall four?
Wall four is... Okay, while Trent looks that up, I'm going to answer your question about budget. So, not to bore you, but
fiscal years for the city run from July through June, so our fiscal year we're
in the like the first quarter of our fiscal year so if we award if the Arts
Commission chooses to award all $30,000 tonight for instance that would max out
your budget for this year the next fiscal year starts in July of 2026 and
so your budget would then be $30,000 again to allocate so it's $30,000 per
fiscal year for the next two budget years which is what the Arts Commission
recommended to council and council approved and then of course when we are doing budgeting for the next two cycles or for the next cycle you
Can as a commission decide to increase that amount decrease that amount and then we would bring that to council as well for approval
So does that mean that
Once we've made the decision on these
That we would have to wait till July of next year to have funding for anybody else that comes along if you
Award all $30,000 this evening. Yes
was it $30,000 it got into the budget back in July of this year so we came to
the Commission in October with a budget development conversation and then based
on that meeting we developed a budget and brought the final draft to you in
January which you recommended to Council and that budget is what went to Council
Council approved it in June of this year and then our fiscal year started July 1.
Yeah the reason why I ask is because I know we've been we've had this program
now I thought it was three years but two years so I thought that we would have
oh like it amasses year over year? Right so what generally what happens and this
is what the Arts Commission decided when we did do our original budget is that
that money does not carry forward every year is a brand new budget so if money
is not used in a fiscal year it doesn't necessarily roll over unless that
request is made to finance and that was a conversation that the Arts Commission
had but we just as a commission you decided that you just wanted to allocate
thirty thousand dollars per fiscal year and not roll that over so how do we
because I believe a project like this is gonna be successful but I I want us to
carry forward the momentum and not have because I and not have zero dollars so
like would the staff then come back to the commission if somebody else should
show up after these projects may be done and then ask for more money before like
because it seems like July so far away from now. Sure so you're saying if someone
comes to us in January with the application we would come to the
Commission. Yeah. That's for the Commission to decide so we would present
the mural most likely and then the Commission would decide whether or not
to allocate new funds to that but as far as our budget stands now there's only
30 not only there are $30,000 allocated to this particular mural project. Thank
you. I have a question. I understand we are going with this your business as a
whole to get the momentum going and we need murals happening in town I
understand that but piggybacking on not being able to have funds in case someone
and other business come up.
Are we deciding on these buildings right now
because there are no other mural opportunities
that come up in our town?
Are there not other things that we,
are there any other future mural opportunities
that we as commissioners have the opportunity
to sort of see and decide if these are actually
gave all our friends to all before, which they're great, so I'm not minding that part,
but I just wonder if there were any other opportunities that had come up.
There were a couple of applications received prior, however they did not go through because
the building owners could not reach an agreement with the artists, and so none of those were
pushed forward for review for the commission. We have no indication that they would come
back to us. It's been a long time. That said, we see walls in the city where
definitely we would love to see more mural work, however no one at this point
has come and applied for the mural grant. So I don't see, I mean if somebody
does come and apply in January that would be wonderful and we hope that more
people do apply, but at this point no we don't have anybody in line that I know
know of. Can we give Trent a list of addresses? Yes. Okay I do I'm gonna go
back to Jill's question here so the owner on the other one is La Marinda
Development and Investment and the principal that I have the agreement here
is Laura Odom. Let's just walk through wall one so you're requesting 10k can
Can you show us one more time, this is the, if I'm facing zebra, this is the left wall
with the little baby parking lot.
Correct.
It's got the little kind of circular built out sculptural bench kind of thing as you
turn in.
Okay.
So 10 for this one.
They're all, I think they're requested, I think this one's 12 and all the other ones
are 10.
Okay.
And it's just the complexity.
Yeah.
which to your point it adds we're requesting more than more than you have
allocated assuming it's just the $30,000 we we added that request here because I
was told that there was some inclination that not all four would be funded in
which case I wanted to like this is what we would actually like to make it happen
that being said if you need to if you want to do eight eight and we can I don't
You're flexible. I'm flexible. I'm here saying we have the train is moving. Okay, please jump on
And these would be like good target numbers, but we'll take what you what you wanted
Would you go back to all one on your screen? Yes
And I'm also still unclear on what we're actually doing today besides maybe allocating $30,000. Are we not?
We're doing it wall by wall, but we're not discussing the art on the wall
In other words, if we vote yes for a wall,
it means we're good with the art that Trent's showing us.
These murals, from my understanding,
have been approved by the artist and the building tenants.
But they haven't been approved by the art commission.
But there's at least two players in.
So I guess we would determine our grant allocation
could be based on the art we do or don't like.
If you are awarding a grant, that
would be a good opportunity to provide
any additional feedback.
or if there is feedback that you feel your fellow commissioners should
hear as part of the discussion of whether or not to award a grant.
That's great.
If we're trending in the direction of not wanting as a collective,
a consensus, not wanting to award a grant for a particular wall or concept,
then we want to limit the amount of time we're spending on that discussion.
OK, I understand.
OK, my question is on wall one. I have a lot on wall one.
First of all, this wall to me has one of the lowest
visibilities for both vehicular traffic and pedestrians.
Partly because there is a very large and old Heritage Valley
Oak sitting right next to the wall with, I call it,
the Joe Bologna art, who's an artist, bench in front of it.
This wall is only 12 feet high.
And the times that I have both driven by this wall
and walked by, believe me Trent, I
I've been walking by these locations many times
since I've known about this.
And there's typically cars parked there often,
not always as high as this box truck here,
but often SUVs.
So fully a half of the wall is obscured by cars.
So it becomes to me a wall that,
and it's more complicated
because of the utilities that are there.
So it's a wall, and it's also a place
that people don't typically walk through.
When they're next to SAW,
you can walk through this wall, through this area and see a wall mural across
from Sasa and walk through. I don't typically people drive through here
because that's the direction of traffic. People if they're gonna walk through
typically walk through the zebra little arcade if you will. And the other thing
is, guess is I'm just undone by, is that this is supposed to be native leaves and
these are tropical leaves and none of these plants exist anywhere in Northern
California and they're under a heritage valley oak and it has to me the mural
has no relation to the place it zips. It's a beautiful piece of art that to
me doesn't sit underneath a native valley oak so that's my problem with
this wall. In your presentation I saw another rendition for this wall and it
it did not include Hawaii type plants.
Did you remember that?
Because that might address what Commissioner Dresser
is talking about.
I would feel really silly if I put the wrong one in there,
but it's possible.
Oh, I did put the wrong one in there?
Oh, OK.
Like one of these, you're saying?
And now would you go to the rendering?
So this is tropical leaves from Hawaii?
Yeah, no, I get it, but when he was presenting.
So I want you to confirm to us what is the chosen art
for this?
Is it this one or is it up in the air still?
It is this one as of now, like I said,
I think that there's, at the end of the day,
it's like the building owner, tenant, artist,
all have to be in alignment before we come to you.
So this, they all are in alignment on this
that we're coming here.
I'm sure if it was approved contingent
on adding this flower, this flower, and this flower,
everyone would be happy to do so.
For me, it'd be contingent on having none of these leaves
and having all native leaves of some sort.
I want to go back to one more thing, Trent.
I love your mural that you did for Trinity.
I have taken so many people by the Trinity mural,
and every time I go, there are freaking trucks parked
in front of it, and fully a third of your mural is obscured.
And there's actually important information and art
on the bottom of your mural.
I do not like murals that are on pretty short walls like this being so obscured by vehicles.
You just can't see the art and part of your Trinity mural is lost every time people see
it because there's cars parked in front of it.
Do we have additional folks on wall one?
Additional questions?
Question questions questions questions. Okay, so questions. I
Think the question has been addressed by
Commissioner dresser I'll wait for statements about that. Yeah, should we go into wall two?
Do we have questions about each one we need to discuss or should we go into statements?
I had a question about wall one. I feel like that's a pretty dark area, especially in the evening that wall specifically
Would the mural be illuminated somehow or what do you plan to do with that?
We don't have a plan currently to illuminate it I think adding some lights to it would be a great idea
Definitely something I'd be happy to to suggest to building ownership or tenant
What do you think about lights?
Want to know why the
building owners or why everybody's excited about the specific space because I
shared
Commissioner
dresser's perspective, I went to see it in person.
I do think anything we do there will get lost.
I do appreciate being able to drive and be surprised by it.
But I wanna know why it is, it's exciting for everyone.
What is it that we're missing?
So I think on this one,
truly this wall is the catalyst for all four of these walls.
because of the multitude of stakeholders that want it done.
So it's the parking lot owner wants it done.
The tenant, Zebra, wants it done.
The building owner is excited about improving
the somewhat blighted wall.
And then Sasa, the restaurant owner,
adjacent on the other side, is also contributing to this wall.
So I think as far as which one actually has the most momentum
outside of this commission, it would be this wall.
And ultimately, this was kind of the foot in the door
to be like, what about this chimerical wall?
What about this, which is wall number three?
That's how I was referring it to it.
So I think, ultimately, this is the one
that I think helped get the ball rolling.
And there's four different parties
that have all been excited about making an improvement
to the city.
Even if I think I want to just make a presentation
and not be hard selling.
But to your question, I think about the opportunity cost
of funding these murals.
I think that the two years where the funds was sitting idly
and then also not rolling over,
I think is testament to the opportunity cost
of funding these is very little,
unless it takes somebody like myself
to go make these things happen.
And so not that somebody else might not,
but I think that, yeah,
that would be kind of the one sell I would make is like, if
there are other walls that you think are better opportunities,
I think there's no better way than to build momentum through
murals and make more people want murals. So that when this funds
are available again, next time, we have more excited artists and
more excited building owners and more excited commission. So
this is more of a general question, but is big on
diversity and you mentioned diversity. What what does diversity mean to you and
how do you bring artists diversity into your group? So it's... I think be delicate
about my answer. I don't I don't think we do it in a way where it's explicit
unless obviously sometimes it calls for that. We we don't we're not in the
business of saying, we want a black woman for this wall.
Obviously, there are situations where that makes sense
when you're doing anything that has native anything
or things like that.
But I think my point was more about organically,
that is what our network is.
Organically, those are the artists that we work with.
Organically, we are working with artists
that traditionally are not looking like me.
So I think in this, I mean, if you
want to get kind of specific demographics on this project.
I think it's a pretty good split.
You got a white dude, a Chinese dude, a white woman,
and a black woman.
I think it's like we, and that's not something
that we're intentionally saying.
Like, we want her for this.
Because of that, it's just more about that's organically
what the business that you're contributing towards is doing.
Thank you for that answer.
I appreciate it, and I'll leave it at that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I have a general question also now that you brought that up.
So does this start first with Trent you saying,
look, there's this cool building
and it's got some interesting walls.
And then do you start the process of saying,
hey, this wall number, we'll call this number one,
I'm gonna call Steve Anderson because I know he can deal
with pipes and blah, blah, blah, pretty well?
And I mean, and then you can see-
Like how are the artists selected?
you get, do you select them and then you go to the owners
or do you like to, the owner's like,
hey, I'm thinking about this wall one,
like, what do you guys wanna see here?
And then you go find the artist.
I mean, I just say, I figure you know
Walnut Creek pretty well.
You would've seen this oak tree,
so you would've known kind of what you're looking
for as an artist underneath it.
What I've found works best is to give
each kind of cook in the kitchen a decision
that they're making or that they're heavily involved in.
So typically what I'll do is I'll engage a building owner
in this position and say, okay, what do you guys want?
Okay, they want XYZ.
And then I'll say, they'll lean on me as a curator.
I will go and put together a proposal
for that building owner of here's,
let's say eight artists that we could work with for this.
This one's great because they're local.
This one's great because they can get around these edges.
This one's great because they wanna do it for less.
This one's great because they have a big name,
whatever it is.
And then I like to have the building owner
very heavily involved in who they're selecting,
what style they like, because I find that that then
allows for the artist to feel more like themselves.
So naturally I'm like, you guys pick the artist
that you like their body of work,
and then I think generally it works better that way
than the artist isn't trying to be somebody else.
And then at that point, I reach out to the artist
and say, hey, I have relationships with all these artists.
this building owner is interested in creating a proposal,
I'll get a design fee from the building owner
to then engage that artist with the building owner,
and then I do my best to step out of the middle
and let them figure out where they wanna land
as far as design, and then we come here
once they kind of get there.
That answer your question?
Yeah. Okay.
Do you think that the folks that are your collaborators,
they'll say, you're artists, like do you think that they could, you could possibly add like
indigenous groups of artists that could be selected to provide a, you know, different
spin on art versus the, I don't want to say typical but, you know, Asian, black or that
is, there's more than that, right?
For sure.
I think for, well, yes, I would be very excited to.
We have some collaborators that we've
been intentionally building and doing things with,
who are specifically Ohlone or Miwok.
We're doing a project, actually, right now,
creating a monument to a burial ground in San Ramon,
where we're collaborating with a handful, with the tribe
that land was desecrated, and then artists
that are like directly tied to that land
and then pulling in a whole bunch of natural.
Anyway, yes, we would love to do that.
It was probably in a handful of these presentations
to the building owner and ultimately wasn't the route
that they chose to go, but it would be something
that I'd be very excited about bringing to Walnut Creek
in the future and we definitely have some collaborators
who would fit the mold.
Sorry, I have another question.
So let's say we decided as a commission
not to approve wall one is a building owner
and the tenants are and you and the rest of the
collaborators strong enough to say you know what we're doing this wall.
We don't don't need the Arts Commission permission
and we'll get the money together to put it in.
Do you think that that will happen with this wall?
It depends what you say to wall, too.
I think would be the would be the answer, because I think it's similar.
It's similar stakeholders on those two.
So I can't I can't speak to all of them.
But yeah.
Commissioner Dressor addressed the two questions I had
but raised another issue in the process.
And that is, you presented this artist as doing native flora.
And it is native.
Everything is native to something.
This just doesn't happen to be native to Walnut Creek.
I'm just wondering whether there was any discussion when
you're talking about this artist who
specialize in native things at your level or at the committee level about the fact that
this is not native.
Sean, do you want to weigh in on the back and forth with you and Steve and the flowers?
We have Sean as the tenant of that building who is heavily involved in that process.
If you could come up to the mic.
For wall one.
And also introduce yourself at the mic.
My name is Sean Delfani, I'm a part owner of Zebra, Tattoo and Body Piercing.
we've been here since 2008. So your question was why those flowers for Wall
One essentially? Yeah, what was the nature of the discussion about that ended up
with you presenting this as a native fauna or flora mural? Right, well I mean
in terms of you know our brand I mean it's obviously we're named Zebra and I
know we don't own the building we've been there since 2008 and we have a long
lease established. And we wanted to go with something not straight, some sort of zebra
wall or zebra print or very branded. But we wanted to kind of go in the direction of kind
of that jungle theme. But, you know, we are we're not 100% set on anything. We're obviously
we have an open mind. We want to we want to get it done. So we're open to any and all
feedback so yeah I know he's already spent some time on that but I'm sure
Trent it's not your first rodeo so if there's any other you know feedback down
the line we're happy to hear it and make whatever adjustments I'm happy to hear
that but also I want to say that you guys did a great job with my granddaughter
last week I see your ears nice happy to hear that happy to hear yeah Shawn I
I know your name from Los Alamos.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
You guys are a long time Walnut Creek family.
I know you know what Walnut Creek native plants are.
I know that your lobby is tropical plants,
so I'm having to wonder if the artist kind of riffed
on the tropical plants lining the walkway,
and that's how this ended up tropical plants out here.
Yeah, that means.
Yeah.
I'm gonna speak for Trent,
but I think it was a word salad moment
when you said native plants,
it was not native to Walnut Creek,
it was tropical plants.
So I think we're getting a little hung up on that.
I just wanna clarify, not native to Walnut Creek plants.
Should we, is there additional public comment?
So we should finish any questions on remaining walls
and then open for public comment.
Do you want, should we move to the next one
or do you guys, okay.
Questions, questions.
We'll do questions, then public comment,
then your statements.
Let's go to Waltu.
Waltu, I've got a question.
I was going to ask how the artists, why they collaborated.
Because I really like their art separately,
but they're a married couple.
Is this a pretty new thing for them
that they're doing all the collaborations?
I saw they did a huge collaboration
for the Emeryville, the Seawall project, which was fascinating.
So when you approached them, was it your intention
to get both of them?
It was.
So you spoke of the Emeryville product.
So that's the city of Emeryville is a client
we're working with at the moment.
They're doing a cultural district founding initiative.
So we've been working with them
and worked with Joey and Alex on that.
And they actually, they got married
like a little less than a year ago.
And that was like one of their in conversation with them.
They were like, we want to start doing stuff
like together more.
So that is, I presented them together
and separately to the building owner.
And this is the route that made sense.
I think it seems like this design leans a little more
Joey than Alex, I'll say.
But I don't know exactly how their process works.
But yeah, that's how I presented it, the two of them.
And can you tell me, can you go to the art
that they've proposed, please?
I wanted to know what kind of floor and fauna on here.
They do native floor and fauna.
And I'm understanding, I think, that this
is a mountain lion, which is native.
And we got the snake.
But I wanted, could you tell me what snakes we have on here?
I see one of them is a two-headed snake.
It's probably in my text somewhere.
Joey could tell you.
Alex could tell you if they were here.
I feel like the conversation might go similarly to wall one,
where we're trying to walk the line between doing something
that's explicitly branded and doing something
that is like a direct ode to Walnut Creek native.
I think that, I don't know if I'm getting anyone in trouble,
I think that there's in conversation also with you both,
you had expressed the desire to not,
they didn't say it like this, these are my words,
but to just do a little less like cow on the hill,
like basic, we've seen this before type of artwork
and push the envelope a little bit.
So in me relaying that to the artists,
this is where we landed.
Any idea what kind of flower this is?
have to look it up. Okay, yeah, I guess I assume we'd have the artists kind of on
the phone or whatever zoomed in we could ask them questions about the specifics
of their murals. I have a question about the breezeway. Are you doing the entire
breezeway all the way to Main Street or just that first half? The whole thing
both sides, all the way to Elia. Well to the stairs. To the stairs. Yeah. First half.
Yeah okay okay so that's the thing that's your arm that's him standing on
the stairs there so it'd be everything from there down and it's not you're not
gonna erase that piercing sign I like that sign you could come to the mic
thank you yeah I mean this this space here we are planning on doing some of
uh the ceiling as well uh just with you know the whole mural being this you know beautiful
art on the walls and we can't we just really don't want this kind of plain white ugly ceiling
so there's some incredible skylights there that we were uh going to be you know continuing to
artwork up on the ceiling as well to make it a whole immersive experience. Do you have that
artwork here or is this continuous of the snakes or did I miss it? For the
ceiling we don't have any renderings yet or but it's- You have an idea what kind
of art is it? Not as of yet we've only discussed the size of the walls but it
probably wouldn't be something like super intricate up on the ceiling but at
least something to kind of tie everything together. And you're gonna
and keep the plants?
Plants, yes.
So we've talked about, as you see,
where the red part of the wall, the plants go up to that level.
So same kind of idea as the ceiling,
as we want to have something more simple on the lower half
of that wall, because we do plan on keeping
the plants in the alleyway.
But then most majority of the artwork
being on the upper two-thirds of that wall.
Would the art extend all the way to the ceiling
or just to the tops of the doors and the windows?
Top all the way to the ceiling.
To the ceiling.
Yeah.
Anything else on wall two?
Questions?
Let's look at wall.
Should we move on to wall three?
The plants are blackberries.
For all the ones that grow along the creeks,
the snakes are garter snakes and the birds are a crow.
From Joey.
Maybe that was an earlier iteration.
Garter Snakes though, for sure.
Do you want to take us to wall three?
Sure.
Wall three.
Questions?
How did you choose to collaborate with the other artist?
He is my business partner, and we do lots of things together.
So it was an opportunity for us to do something
that we felt like was cool.
We had this idea of weaving these designs together,
And this was like a unique opportunity, we felt like,
to do that.
Yeah.
And the other question is, just I
guess to make sure you know, ask, do you know that we're
trying to only have representation
from one piece of art and one artist at a time in the city,
so we can spread the art around to different artists?
And so this will be your second piece of art,
although I know that Trinity Center art may
be a little bit more temporary if that building gets torn down.
So this would be your permanent piece.
I just want you to know that you were aware of this, correct?
I had heard it alluded to.
OK.
Yeah.
I think speaking candidly to the commissioners,
taking the initiative of this, my option
is charge somebody or try to get paid as an artist.
And then that kind of works for us to build this legwork.
And so truthfully, this is the wall
that doesn't have external funders.
And so, yeah, truthfully, we're trying
to make the program work, and one of the ways
that I can engineer it is where I can put myself
in the artist budget, and I don't need
to charge additionally for the legwork.
So that's part of why we're here.
And yeah, I hope that you would see that as a, yeah.
questions on wall three, let's look at wall four.
This is our Walnut Creek wall.
I have more questions.
When we first saw the rendering for this wall,
although it may have been a different wall,
there was an awning that was going to get put up.
Is this wall, because there is a courtyard in front of this,
going to have an awning put up?
I can't definitively say yes or no.
I can say that they're looking to make improvements
to that front area.
There's a bit of a, I'll call it a parklet that is designed.
They have renderings.
In one of the renderings, there is an awning.
That being said, the people that are contributing
to this mural are excited about the mural,
and I'm sure would make an informed decision
about whether or not they put an awning,
what type of awning they put.
It's the same people who own the wall,
who own 1372, who are also invested
in making the mural happen.
So I'm sure, yeah, I can't definitively say like,
this is what they will be constructing,
but I know they'll be constructing
with the mural, intentionally.
Okay.
And as I said earlier, tenants don't matter,
but do we know what tenant might be going to this empty space
and there's a new coffee shop in the space across from it,
but any idea who the tenant is
might be going to this empty space
that we see the windows of?
I don't believe so.
This one is, Walnut Creek's a big little place.
The person that owns the parking lot,
sister owns this building, she was excited,
they both are excited about contributing to this
and the new coffee shop is also excited
because they're the ones who are gonna be
doing the parklet there.
I don't know who the tenant of the actual building
that is being painted on is expected to be.
Okay.
Can you show the artwork?
Sure.
And then my question about the art is,
Do you know what the significance of Zoey's,
like smoke rings are?
I've seen that in a couple of her other art.
They're African patterns.
I don't wanna call them traditional African patterns.
I don't know specifically, but I think it's directly tied
to her culture and identity
and just kind of her artistic expression.
You see them, I think, often throughout her work.
Yeah.
Maybe not in these references, but.
I think I read somewhere online
was about like futurism and kind of looking toward the future.
And what about those hieroglyphs on top?
I think that's all kind of in the same, we call it,
language as the kind of like smoke ring patterns.
And is there any reason that you
know that she did not design the mural
to cover the entire wall?
Yes, because they want to eventually paint
the full building and they felt like they wanted to be able to, I think they wanted
to be able to paint around it later if they were doing it and they might be doing, adding
something to the top side of the wall and they didn't want to have to remove it. They
didn't want to cover up the mural. It would be great if they could paint before
the mural goes up. I agree. And looking at this, just I'm trying to imagine
that awning that we saw in one of the original pictures.
about the height of the bottom, like the top of the black awnings in that
rendering. Oh yeah, okay, okay. So you, the arch might, you kind of like maybe lose
the top of the arch kind of thing, but it would, you wouldn't lose the vast
majority of the mural. Okay, thank you. So earlier you said you pick artists
based on what you feel like their work is as fitting for the mural, for the, for
the space, why do you feel like this artist work fits this area best?
This is such a busy area, it is, my kids practically live there, there's all kinds of stuff.
So how does this excite the area?
Yeah, I think they also, flowers are popular, I think that the style that the stakeholders
could agree on as we were going through things, they wanted like something that was bright
color, one person wanted something that was more of the almost like the faux window, like
you look through the window and see the vineyard kind of thing.
And then another kind of stakeholder was imagining something that had a bit more umph to it.
And so then as I was going through artists that I felt like could walk that line, Zoe's
work spoke to that group and they decided to to move forward with her.
Thank you.
Additional questions on wall four?
It's okay.
It's fine.
I like what I do.
Okay, do we have any additional public comment?
Great.
Should we move into Commissioner statements?
I really like wall four.
It's really pretty.
I think it's my favorite.
the poppies. I think it's like exactly a scene from Walnut Creek. I think it really adds to that
area of the city. Well I'm of two minds here. I really like two, three, and four, and I like one.
I think it has high impact, but I am troubled by whether that impacts could exist with, you know,
with all those trucks and cars parked in front of it.
And I really appreciate your willingness
to kind of come to terms.
But I guess my question is, is there an opportunity here
to not spend the full amount and save some for later?
Or is that even important?
Because these opportunities take a long time to develop.
And I'm not personally concerned that we're
gonna miss an opportunity if we if we spend the money now but I you know I'm
I'm definitely comfortable with two three and four I'll see what what the
overall feeling is on wall one. Commissioner Tespe did you want to go
next? I just want to say I'm especially excited about the zebra breezeway
project. I would love to see what the ceiling would look like because I'm an
artist and it's just my nature. But I am excited for the opportunity. I am
concerned to in case, you know, I feel like July is far for other
opportunities, but we can't wait for what potentially, you know, people are
gonna do so. I am excited to get something going, so thank you for being
here and I'm just excited that's all I wrote an email and I'm gonna put it on
the record I think it's appropriate so I wrote I wrote these things down because
I had the chance to be part of the Public Card Panel Committee and we
We discussed this, and I had a lot of time to think through.
So I want to vote for all of them, the person who I thought I was going to go three, and
then I decided this is a time that we must seize the opportunity.
I've been a proponent of our program.
And I was really happy when we came up with the partnership, the private and public program.
We put it together.
It took a long time to get there.
And then I thought it was three years, but I guess two years, of really nothing happening.
So I am very appreciative of all of your effort to get to this point, and I'm super happy
Anyway, so, for all practical purposes, this is the only program, the first programs, first
offering since this program's inception.
So I think we need to recognize this opportunity when it arrives.
The ABG Art Group has invested significant effort into submitting a comprehensive professional
application with four fully rendered concepts by established artists rejecting most of at
risk discouraging future applicants and under utilizing the $30,000 fund which could lapse
or be reallocated away from murals.
Our goal is not only to fund perfect murals but to catalyze a culture of public art participation.
Approving one wall while rejecting others may signal that the bar is so high as to be
unattainable especially for private owners who are volunteering their walls at no cost
to the city.
So for wall one, we've heard that parked cars may partially obscure the base.
the upper two thirds remain visible to pedestrians
in southbound traffic on Broadway.
So this isn't a compromise, it's contextual intelligence.
It reflects how public heart functions best,
not in isolation but in conversation with its surroundings.
I approve the mural at that location,
but its thematic focus on lush tropical Hawaii and flora
feels culturally and ecologically disconnected
from Walnut Creek's local identity, which we discussed,
especially given the proximity to the heritage oak.
And a native, this is just a suggestion,
a native and symbolically significant tree
that is the valley oak should be, you know,
this is not decorative art,
But it should be something that doesn't completely clash with that.
And, yeah, I feel it's important to say that it's not about limiting your artistic expression,
right?
Just said.
And it's just for contextual relevance.
And so that's what I have to say about one.
For wall number two, it's a lot shorter, I don't feel that the murals or the rendition
that's being proposed overwhelms anything, that they complement the existing tropical
decor that's there.
I don't think that there are allowed graphics, but subtle organic patterns that extend through
the ambiance there and the in fact such enclosed spaces benefit from artistic treatment.
I think of the alleyway murals in Denver and Seattle where confined areas become immersive
experiences, proper lighting and maintenance will then ensure the openness of that.
And then I'll move on to number three.
I think it's a super sound choice
because of its visibility.
And even if it were less visible,
I think mural programs thrive
when they create district level transformation,
not isolated highlights.
In cities like Philadelphia, Santa Fe,
they prioritize clusters of murals
that turn neighborhoods into destinations.
And I think that's really important for our town
to create this buzz about Walnut Creek
where it excites people to come here
and it's best for our commercial businesses.
And for living purposes, you know,
for those of us who reside here, it'd be much more exciting.
And then for wall number four, this dialogue between art
and permanent structure, to me, it isn't a flaw.
It's an opportunity.
And it just makes everything much more exciting.
The rendering shows the full composition pre awning,
if there's an awning in the future.
And I feel that public art is not
meant to exist as a pristine, controlled gallery environment,
and so forth and so on.
I've seen this done in cities, all the big cities, Chicago,
LA.
And the most beloved murals are partially covered by fire
escapes, signage, scaffolding, or awnings.
And they're really cool to look at, and I appreciate it.
So I would like to thank you again.
And I would like to express my full approval
to move on with us.
Thank you.
So we'll make a motion later.
Thank you.
Trent, your package was amazing.
I want a Heather Day mural here.
First, I thought you were proposing a Heather Day
mural and how you showed some of the slides, but nope.
We need another $60,000 probably.
but you let me know and we'll make it happen.
Yeah, okay.
So wall number one, we've talked about it.
I feel that it's the least good wall
because of how obscured the mural can be.
And I think the theme doesn't fit with the heritage oak
and the heritage oak takes up a prominent position
at the sidewalk with Joe Bologna's art
around bench and art on it.
And the tropical plant leaves just don't fit.
So I'm a no on putting city money towards wall one.
Wall two, I feel like it's a really crowded breezeway
with the plants, and the tables, and all the windows,
and the skylights.
And while I'm not up for putting city money up for it,
I think if Zebra and your other collaborators want to do it,
that'd be fine.
I just don't want to allocate city money for that.
because I feel like it's just too crowded,
I think it's gonna be claustrophobic,
and I'd like to be proven wrong on that.
Wall three, the most perfect wall,
one of the most perfect walls in the city
you could put a mural on.
No parking in front of it,
kind of unobstructed by everything.
You can see it really well,
both walking and driving southbound on Broadway.
And it's perfect, perfect wall,
and I like your combination with your partner,
almost like broken pottery put together.
And I do not want you to turn the saturation down on that wall.
I want you to keep that saturation of color up.
This mural that you guys have proposed is what we want.
Unusual, impactful, different, bright, stands out.
This is what I want to see more of in murals in Walnut Creek.
So good job on that one.
Wall four, I originally did, I think, voted no on it.
I think because first we thought it was a different wall,
and then I was a little bit undone by the potential awning.
But this is a very high visibility wall,
especially for pedestrians.
And it's a wall that would, I think,
do well to have a mural on it.
That said, I really like the mural
to go to the top of the building if possible.
And here's where I think I feel for you the most
is in having to do a collaboration
with building owners and tenants,
it's almost dumbed down what the final product is.
And I think if you could have just gone an artist
and said, hey, I got a wall for you, do your thing here,
it would have been a better product.
And I think I had a hard time finding other work by Zoe.
But if you would please put up one of the Zoe murals
that she did as an example, can you get back to it?
Was it the one with the fabric?
This one with the puppies that are big and the hummingbird
and the butterfly.
Sure.
That's what I want to see on this floor.
I don't want to see this Trump-Lloyd window with a bow on it.
It looks too contrived to me.
No, that one.
Yeah, I want the whole wall there, maybe not palm trees.
Maybe not a tree.
But that's like, oh, wow, I stopped in my track some.
Look at that.
But it just sounds like all these collaborators
that had to agree to give their dollars to do this
brings the product that you get less good than what the artist
may have wanted to deliver and you may have asked for,
if you could have just said,
hey artist, I got you and I want this wall.
So that's my feeling.
I want big, I want the whole wall there.
I want it bright.
I want all her images to be bigger.
I think, I don't know if I'm good to respond.
Sure. Yes, okay.
I do think, I think,
well one, to your point about loving this one,
I think this is very much stylistically
in Zoe's body of work,
this is the one that this will end up the most similar to.
There's no way around the fact that the actual magic
of making the design happens on the wall.
And so some artists are incredible painters,
some artists are incredible at rendering
what their paintings will look like.
Zoe probably leans more in the first basket.
So I would just say I would be really confident
about what she puts up on the wall is going to be incredible.
I've never seen her do something that I felt like she
mailed in or dumbed down.
Is there a chance it can cover the whole wall or is that out?
You know that for a fact that it's only
going to be this high.
I want to be working on behalf of everybody.
But if you said we will find a contingent on it going higher,
I'm sure we can make it go higher.
I think that if I go back to building owners
with some stipulations, they can say yes or no.
So I think I don't see why that wouldn't work.
But if you go higher and it's larger,
you need more funding because that
requires hard to do more time, correct?
The money would change.
There's a couple of different ways we could look at it.
One, we could talk about having the background of the painting
go higher that doesn't take so much rendering happening.
The other, yes or no?
It depends how much you guys do.
I think if we have a decent budget,
I can call her and be like, she's a gamer.
She'll want to do it.
So if it calls for a little bit higher,
we can go a little bit higher, yeah.
But also, certainly, if you want to justify a higher cost,
I think all of these are within.
Typically, if it's a well-paying client,
and they ask us how much a mural goes,
we're always basing things based on square footage.
It's real estate.
You buy more, you save more, you do bigger walls,
the square footage price goes down,
depending on the level of detail and things like that.
So certainly, these all could justify our much higher budgets.
But I think we want to make them happen.
I believe artists should get paid for their work.
So I appreciate it.
OK, I'll make my final statement, and then we'll move on.
I just want to say, Trent, the only murals I've seen in Walnut
Creek are yours with Trinity and this.
So thank you for finding the opening
and helping with capacity that the city doesn't
have to scout these relationships.
I think the legwork you keep talking about
is the work of a creative director, and a curator,
and a producer.
And unfortunately, we don't have that on staff here,
so it's really what we need.
Overall, I just want to underscore the area of Zebra.
Thank you for attending tonight.
It's been here for multiple decades.
It is a hangout spot for youth.
It is a place where young people congregate
to either get pierced, to talk about getting tattoos,
to hang out in the hallways, to get their nails done,
to go to their 12th birthday party
to get the second ear pierced.
It is a place where young people connect in our city,
which we have very few places like that for them
outside of consumerism and very expensive shopping.
That said, I also really like that it is small business
that we can support, that you are taking an initiative
to beautify the space.
I hear the oak question.
I do think it's a subtle and nice way
to do branding around zebra without it being zebra print.
So I'm less hung up on Walnut Creek fauna
for this particular piece,
but I do hear all of our other commissioners' feedback.
I think what's really important about this mural project
is that we have a moment
where people can walk through something
or see the top portion in their drive home
and there is that subtle shift in consciousness
that we want kind of artists to wake up inside of folks
as they're commuting through our city,
walking through our city, meeting for coffee.
I'm really great with walls being obstructed
even though they're painted on.
It's just a part of public art.
And I think we could all name five better walls
that are taller, higher, and more visible,
but those people are not coming to us
and they're not applying to this grant program.
So I'm in favor of funding all of these walls tonight
and really upping the budget for this program,
because these are under market value.
We just did a Wilshire corridor, the work that I do,
and this is a very small budget in a city
with the socioeconomics that Walnut Creek has.
So we are looking for a motion and a second.
There are some recommended language in your agenda packet.
And I think given the depth of conversation,
you might want to do each motion if there
is a nomination for a motion, one at a time.
We're at the bottom of page three, right?
Yeah.
Yes, the commission action recommended section.
Bottom of page three.
Someone who is a commissioner would need to make a motion.
I can make a motion.
I make a motion to move to approve the recommended site
location, the artist, design, concept, direction,
and funding request proposed for walls 1, 2A, 2B.
You want them separately?
You can make the motion as you wish.
And we'll see if you receive enough support for it to pass.
Yeah.
Request for proposals for wall one.
I'll rephrase it.
Move to approve recommended site location, artist design,
and concept, design concept direction, and funding request
for the following walls.
Wall one, wall two, A to B, wall three, and wall four.
I second the motion.
We'll call the roll.
Commissioner Perelman?
Aye.
Commissioner Drescher?
No.
Commissioner Clobber?
Aye.
Commissioner Tesfaye?
Aye.
Vice Chair Magnani?
Aye.
And Chair Bultazar?
Aye.
Motion passes.
Almost set.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Ready for your next item, or take a break?
Whatever your preference.
Do we need?
All right.
We'll take a quick five minute break and be back at,
what would that be, 7.33.
Great.
I'm on here, right?
Yeah.
Okay, commissioners.
In our enthusiasm to make the previous motion,
we exceeded our authorized budget
for the mural grant program.
So we are going to revisit with a new motion
and looking for a commissioner to make a motion.
Thank you.
I was hoping we'd award higher value for my murals.
All right, I moved to approve recommended site location,
artist design concept direction,
and funding of a total of $30,000
for the proposed wall one, wall two A, wall two B,
wall three and wall for a second and we'll do roll call Commissioner
Perriman I mr. dresser no mr. clobber I
mr. test faith I vice chair magnani I in chair of all design I motion passes
thank you now you really get to go home okay run run next on the agenda is an
Item four, commission consideration.
Item four, B, consideration of next steps
for Heather Farm aquatic or park aquatic
and community center public art project
following artists changes.
At this time, I invite staff to provide the presentation.
Thank you.
All right, so second item on the agenda
is update on Heather Farm Park Public Art Project.
As a refresh, in November 2023, City Council approved a $953,500 public art budget for the
new aquatic and community center at Heather Farm Park. This budget includes the required one percent
of construction costs, which comes to $538,500. They also approved an additional $415,000
from the Public Art Fund to be spent to make it a bigger budget.
At its January 2025 meeting, Arts Commission approved three public art
concepts and artist teams for the project.
Currently, one of the projects will be moving forward.
That is Haudenosaunee, and staff is now seeking the Commission's input
on how to allocate the remaining 716 hundred thousand in budgeted public art funds allocated
for this project at Heather Farm. So the recommended action is to return to the
top semi-finalists to invite them to submit a new concept proposal for the remaining budget of 716
thousand. So we can go over as a reminder. This is the space that we are discussing.
The project that is moving forward is titled Poppy by Hoda Sousa. These are the renderings.
This is one of the projects that will not be moving forward by Alexandra Prova,
and this is the other project that will no longer be moving forward. It was the mural
on the side of the building by Stephen Galloway to which one? Oh I wasn't quite there yet in my
yeah got a little ahead of myself so yes so we've been thrown a loop so up tonight for
discussion basically is how to proceed. And so you'll see in your agenda report our focus
Tonight is on artists in the RFP process to submit new concepts.
Tonight is not for discussion about site locations.
Any discussion on that will return to the commission
and be an agendized item.
So no commentary, please, tonight on site locations
focusing on next steps for artist selection and concepts.
We'll start with commissioner questions.
Do we have any indication that those artists are still
interested?
No, we would have to go back to them and see.
And then what happens if they aren't?
It would be standard industry practice
to go then to the top 10 candidates
that we interviewed initially and invite the five remaining
ones that were not invited initially to submit proposals.
So, if you'll recall, there were 10 finalists,
or semi-finalists, and we invited five
to submit formal proposals, five we did not.
And why would we be inviting how to SUSE to submit again,
since we've already accepted one of their pieces?
To be equitable and fair,
they are still, they would still be an eligible contender
in that they had initially submitted proposals
for the full budget and partial budget,
and then it was up to the artist selection panel's
discretion to recommend to the commission
and the commission voted to only go forward
with one of their proposals.
I have no, I can't predict whether they would actually
want to submit another project for this or not,
But they're not disqualified.
So it sounds like what you're saying, the next steps
are that you are going to reach out to those three
semifinalists and see if they're interested
and submit a proposal for the remaining 700 plus thousand.
Am I correct?
Correct.
And if they do say yes and you get proposals,
will the two of you be the ones looking out
their proposals to present for us, or will it go back to the artist selection committee?
It will go back to the artist selection panel, provided all of those people are still available
and would like to participate in the artist selection panel.
At the time that we assembled the panel, there were alternates also indicated and approved.
So if the original artist selection panel members are not available or do not wish to
to participate, we would try to assemble a new panel based
on the other people that were approved.
And for spending that money for the first round,
two of those that are no longer interested
divided up that $700,000.
Are we going to specify in any way
that those submissions that come in spend the end?
They do one piece or whatever, one piece that
spends a whole amount, so we're not breaking it up
into smaller amounts like we did the first time.
We didn't break it up, but the 900,000 basically got split up
in three.
I used to see this 700,000 go to one artist
to do one bigger piece.
Staff would recommend that it would be one artist or artist
team for the entire budget, whether they in however they
choose to, you know, it's possible they have one main piece and then a couple
smaller pieces, but yes. Thank you. And on the location thing, I understand that
that's not in order for tonight, but at what point do we or anyone else get to
weigh in on location, because I know some of us have some opinions about that. I
think that definitely since the initial call for artists came out, there have
been some changes in the landscaping and the signage and we've heard people
express opinions so we would probably be bringing that to January is that
correct to the January meeting prior to requesting proposals correct so that we
could have the artists make informed decisions is it possible to also have
public works and or anyone involved in the city who has jurisdiction over
Heather Farms to take a look at any locations before those locations are
proposed so we know that if a location is proposed it's actually feasible from
all sorts of different directions. Yes we could certainly take it back to them.
I thought that was already done. It has been done but I think that based on the
new locations we could definitely take it back again. What about going back to
the artists that applied, like a much larger pool of artists. What would that look like?
Yeah, more work. So it would be, I think, that given we've already spent so much time
and we had these top contenders and we did take the time to interview them, it would be,
number one, the right thing to do to invite the artists that have already taken the time and
submitted and spent time interviewing and showed strong interest. If we arrive at a place where we
realize that all of the seven parties who, you know, it would be the 10 or sorry, right minus the
other people that are not participating. So eight. If none of them expressed any interest, then we
we would have to open it up again.
We would have to consult with an artist selection panel
and go back to everybody.
But at this point, it's been so long
since so many of those people applied.
I think that we would probably have to do a whole new RFQ.
So what I think I'm hearing you saying, Ray,
is you're now talking about eight possible artists being
invited to submit, not just three.
First, I think we need to...
Go to three?
Go to the three.
Okay.
Right.
What's the budget for the artists to resubmit
to the 715K because they were previously invited
with stipends, right?
And it was five...
Correct, it was $5,000 each.
So if we invite, let's say we invite three back
and three are very interested,
we would have to compensate them $5,000 each
for submitting a new proposal.
What if they submitted the same proposal?
We will tell them that is not permitted.
It has to be a new concept.
And in hindsight, it's always, what
are the learnings from this?
Because we're spending a lot of time and money.
So could we do something different
so that we don't have contracts that can't be signed.
I understand personal situations, something happens.
But other than that, what have we learned?
I think every opportunity presents learning moments.
And it's tricky with public art because every project
will be different.
We have definitely taken notes on,
maybe we need to be more explicit
in certain things and others,
but like you said, sometimes things arise
that are unpredictable, the unknowns.
Yeah, I don't know if you have anything
you wanna add to that.
I think one of the major things that we've learned
is that when we have a large budget like this,
lots of times it behooves ourselves
public art professionals and also the Arts Commission to look at that budget
holistically and to make sure that really if that budget were to be split
into two, three, four, however many projects that it does make financial
sense and that maybe on these smaller project budgets that the roommate the
amount needs to be remain intact so that we can kind of get proposals and
concepts that really fulfill a million dollar project so that it feels very
impactful and successful in that way.
Can I drill down just a little bit on that?
I mean, the Stephen Galloway thing is perfectly understandable.
Things happen, but the Provo one, can we pull back the veil a little bit?
It seems like six months of negotiations is a lot, considering how closely we drew the
parameters in the first place.
What were you guys talking about for six months?
And I'd also like to know, if you're willing to share,
who pulled the plug as to them.
So the artist arrived at saying she could not
do this project for the amount that we had initially
discussed.
I think that she has not realized any municipal projects
before.
So when we've asked her to show records
of how much materials and fabrication would cost.
I asked her, I said, you know, as a government agency,
we really need to be able to justify our costs,
so we need to be super transparent with the public,
with this as being paid for with taxpayer dollars.
And I don't, it doesn't seem that that has been asked
of her before, so she was quite shocked,
And I think that it created a tension in the relationship.
And I think she perceived that as mistrust on our part,
rather than that's just how municipal projects work.
I think that having the work fabricated abroad
may have been a stressor.
I'm not sure.
But she did ask for a deposit of 75%, which in industry
practice is just that's really unheard of. So it just got to a point where after so
many negotiations and back and forth that it felt like you know we just had
arrived at an impasse.
I have my sympathies. It's not a pretty picture. Appreciate all the work.
Yeah.
And also I think with the cost of things and the tariffs on foreign goods and
foreign-made goods. I think that would that like make us select artists based
on where they produce their art and because I remember that she was talking
about how she had a relationship with the manufacturer and and she wanted to
keep that, which I understood. But going forward, do we want to do that again? I mean, in light
of everything happening in the world with, you know,
I think we can't state a preference on where we want the artists work to be made. And we're
trying to be inclusive by opening up these calls to anyone. And many artists have their
fabricators, it's hard to predict that the tariffs were
going to go up and that people were going to be impacted this
way. So it was just kind of this recipe that led to those
considerations. So that is why we're really adamant on keeping
that contingency in the budget to allow for the unknowns and
setting aside the funding so that in case costs do go up.
Does that answer your question?
It does, but in terms of our budget,
our budgets is not going to go up.
In fact, we're eating through the budget because of this.
So now we're going to be negotiating again with artists
and if they're going to be bringing
goods from wherever their fabricator is. We know that's going to be a hurdle, so
when we be better off with
artists who are able to have their art fabricated in the USA,
I think to be clear the artists did not state that the tariffs were specifically the reason why they could not proceed with the project.
It was their understanding of budget and contingency that did not align with our understanding
And then they stated they could not move forward with the budget that had been approved
additional questions before we move to public comment, is there any public comment?
Yeah on these artists the three
Other than I know that they arrived at the table and they became part of ten and then it was whittled down
to five semi-finalists but can you explain who decided that they were
going to be part of the 10 that started or the 20 because we had a list that I
think was at least 50 or 80 people on there. The artist selection panel had the
opportunity to look through and we I'm trying to recall now I've got a few
numbers from do you yeah okay that would be helpful thank you so in round one I
believe we had a hundred and sixty one total applicants to the process the
first time the artist selection group came together 77 percent of that pool
had been disqualified. So we looked at 36 artists. From those 36, it went down to 10
and then went down to 5 and we used a rubric voting system across everyone. I mean, there's
a lot of lessons learned that I'm at an impasse with in terms of what we need to decide here
today because of the breaking up of spaces,
because of the site selection, and also a lot of people's,
I think, the way in which the RFP was written.
We got a lot of corporate structural things
that were not in my opinion, not maybe the whole group,
like public art, fringe on the building, things like this.
That said, I think going back to just these three of the top five feels really small.
Knowing what we know about the sites and so how do we work within an RFP process that has been
closed. I hear the sentiment of like we have a candidate pool to go back to but knowing what we
know is there some sort of revision around how we actually want to play with these sites. You know
I think the tension that the artist group kept seeing was like give the artist free will to do
the da-da-da and then the full budget because you might get a better end product but what
we found was like actually if we had a curator that was involved with this process and had
like a community lead on vision that worked across city parks and works and arts and rec
maybe we would be like not sixteen spaces three spaces and we actually don't want to
work with more than two artists and we want to funnel our money this way right so I think
because we had so many different decisions
on the scale of this project, here we are, right?
And we thought it would be a better way to move forward
with diversity of artwork and collection
by having three different players
and breaking up a million dollars.
But even in our top 10, we had someone drop out
that was sick, that is still battling with illness.
So of that group of 10, I don't even
know if they would even be able to come back around.
And just thinking about the budget, if we go beyond the three,
do we have to offer five?
Could we say, hey, we know this is crazy in a long shot.
We don't have five.
We open the pool up to seven or eight of the top 10,
and it's a smaller budget to be able to accommodate more people
in potentially resubmitting.
for consistency in process,
we should offer an equal amount
to what was previously offered for the same work.
Okay.
So it's 15K for three people to participate.
And then of the top 10,
we would take out Matthew and Alexandra,
not Matthew, Stephen Galloway.
Oh, sorry, Stephen.
Steven so then there's only in the top ten so I can I can I can show you the
slide these are the top so they're separated their group so the first top
five were the ones that were invited to submit proposals and the grouping on
the bottom they were in the top five or a top ten that were not invited to move
to the next step but all ten were interviewed. Is there any way to get it
so you and Emily can also have some sort of weigh-in on the art before it comes
to us and Erica whoever is. That's why we have a selection panel because staff is
here to carry out the wishes of the Arts Commission and we are in the room of
course with the selection panel and provide you know logistical information
and structural and procedural information but we do not vote on whether
or not we would like an artist to move forward. And that's that's to keep the
process fair and to make sure that our public art program isn't the Mariah and
Emily show it's actually you know a group of community members who are
coming together and making these decisions collectively so that we have a
a very robust and diverse public art program, and that lots of different artists and different
voices are being heard and shared in our community.
For the sake of clarity, Sarah, if you could just call clearly for public comment, and
then we can close that and move to Commissioner comment.
Oh, I thought we had moved, sorry about that.
Yep.
Okay.
Is there any public comment?
There's no public comment.
No public comment.
I should move to commissioner's statements.
I'll remind you you have two minutes to comment, please.
Well, I'm not hugely optimistic about it.
I think you've got the right process.
An alternative would cost more, but worse than that,
it would take a lot more time than everybody in the community
is anxious to move this project forward.
So I think that's good.
With that said, I'm not optimistic about the results because, as you recall, I wasn't
100% crazy about the three that came to the Commission, and so I asked you if we could
see the other two, and you were kind enough to share them with us, and when I saw the
other two, my conclusion was that the committee had made the right choice.
So, I don't know how, you know, I don't know what we're going to end up with, but personally,
I'm not optimistic.
But I think it's the right thing to do.
I am against this because it feels like we're not
fully with a choice.
It's the choice that we didn't choose.
And now we have our hands tied.
I also, as the world has progressed
and things have happened,
I think that we should do a whole lot more vetting
of like the type of art and artists
and back to the diverse background kind of thing.
I think Walnut Creek deserves more than
just established artists who tend to be privileged and I feel like we didn't we're we're not
going to get a fair shake out of this um um and fairness doesn't mean equitable and so
I don't see that going down,
the ones that are laughed is what Walnut Creek deserves.
So I would vote for us to start this over and do it properly.
I think that we're going to spend more money,
more of the amount that we have trying to go for this next step,
then be back here, and I'm really unhappy with the choices of the artists that
We are having to select now, which is not right. We didn't select them for a reason
For me, I trust the process and the community of people that it takes to make these decisions, so I respectfully
Appreciate not having to start over and moving forward the way that you have been working on this
That being said I do wish to I
understand the how dosa
team is
going forward and we are happy with them and
Just because they can
Doesn't mean I feel like they should get another opportunity
for this project, especially because it costs money to get these
ideas coming forward to us.
So with that
being said, I do wish that we would look into the other artist that
may be below and perhaps give them another chance
and see
what that looks like just because
this other group already is
allocated and
You know, we love their work and I think there's no doubt they will probably give us another thing that they seem to understand
what is expected
but I think it's such a huge opportunity and
Diversity does matter
So I would love to see that going to someone else that opportunity and see
Why not give them a chance?
And that's sort of my two cents about that.
I agree with all of that. I think
that it's a good idea to start like with these three and then the ten artists because we already have these names and then if
something doesn't work out we can always start the whole thing over again, but if we already have these why not?
Yeah, I think we kind of have no choice but to go back to
Some of these this ten whatever you've got at the ten that might submit again
But I'd like there to be such
clarity in
The message that goes out to them of what we're looking for
So I guess that's my thing
I'd like to be clarity and what they're asked to do and give us and for how much
to charge
And good luck. I have a question based on what?
Commissioner Balthazar said
Is there a chance?
for this city to hire a
curator and spend some of the money on that and then
Create the specs for these artists based on this versus just
What we've had done before like can we use that as a learning?
So if we were to hire a consultant that's the correct term
It would come have to come out of the budget
Which would drastically reduce the budget of the funds that would go to an artist
If you wanted to increase the budget decrease the budget any of that all of that has to go to the City Council
You would recommend the change in budget to City Council. It would go to City Council for approval or not
So any consultants hired either it would be an additional budget that would have to go to council or it would come out of the
716,000 dollars that's been allocated to this project
And then there would be a process for hiring
Consultant and decide what type and except all right. Yes
No pointing fingers, but what why was that not done to begin with?
Budget is a big consideration
For whether or not a consultant is hired
Also, this is a municipal project versus a private project
So private projects that have you know million dollar-plus budgets generally have a consultant that they hire
And you know it's up to them
Where that funding comes from but it generally comes from outside of the public requirement
Municipal projects are different and that of course the money is coming from the city
Thank you
Let's see, I have a few comments.
Of the $716,000 budget that's left,
I don't feel great about it,
but I actually do think we should offer it to the eight.
That means we'd have to spend 40K up to 40K,
leaving the budget at more like $676,
to propose artwork for.
I don't think I can in good conscious
just be down with Hodesuza, Matthew and the other artists.
I think there was a lot that we learned
and a lot of time already spent in this process
that are, you know, it just does not again,
going back to the fair and equitable,
doesn't feel like an equitable group,
looking just at the top five.
Well, there's a Hobson's Choice for you.
We either take all that money, 40 grand out of our budget,
for a heart, or we go with the top five,
or which is now top, what, three.
I think I agree with you.
Attempted emotion.
All right, I can try.
I, let's see.
I move to return to the top eight of the top 10 Semifidelists from the RFP selection process
to invite them to submit a concept for a new project for consideration using 40K of the
budget of 716 K to finalize this next round and move forward with 676 K of
artist budget for the Heather Farms Park. Would you entertain taking Houdou Suza
out just to leave a little more money in? That's a great question. It hits me as
like this question of like is it fair is it unfair I don't know. I think as a
As a reminder, the artists would need to say they are interested before we would offer
a $5,000 stipend towards the concept.
So it's possible that not all of the ones you wish to move forward with would even choose
to submit.
And then there is still a process with the artist selection panel, reviewing concepts,
recommending concepts to the commission.
So there's many levels here still in process.
So we do have a motion on the table.
I'll second it.
OK.
Roll call.
Commissioner Perelman?
Aye.
Commissioner Dresser?
Aye.
Commissioner Clauber?
No.
Commissioner Tesfay?
Aye.
Vice Chair Magnani?
Aye.
And Chair Balthazar?
Aye.
Motion passes.
All right.
Thank you all very much for your consideration and your discussion.
We appreciate it.
At this time, I invite staff to provide presentations, reports on projects.
Hey there, again.
Hello.
All right.
Okay.
So this is brief, just some updates on things that have happened since the last time we
met.
public art walking tours have really seen an increase in attendance which is
fantastic it could be attributed to some of the marketing efforts that have
taken place but it's been great to see more people we have a dog-friendly
public art walking tour coming up it's actually all sold out
Paws-on pot. We call it like pot. So those are the cute little dogs. So we shall see how that
goes. And just this fiscal year, so that would be July of this year, we changed
the structure. We moved to a pay-what-you-can model to kind of copy what
the gallery is doing. And with that, it's been really interesting to see. And a lot
of people have been super generous and paid even more and we also moved to an
online pre-ticket sale formula. You're also welcome to buy tickets day of still
as previously but we shall see next year at the report next year what what the
final numbers are but so far it's been really great and these are just some of
the tours recently that we've had so many people on the tours in fact that we
We definitely have had a need for two docents and splitting it up as Jill will attest to.
Also, finally, if you'll recall, last year we had a call put out.
We collaborated.
So the city collaborated with Public Works and Walnut Creek Downtown and Recycle Smart
to realize this project of the big belly refresh of these cans.
Here we have an artist posing with his work and then our own Carrie Lederer had her artwork
selected so that's right across the street.
This is right near here.
So there have been 10 that have been done downtown so far and they're planning to do
more.
So this has been nice to see downtown a refresh of these bins and there are two sets that
also have a compost component to it, so they're like triple bins. Yeah, they came out really nice.
We have a new postcard, so it sounds like maybe, luckily it's an evergreen postcard.
We just changed the wording a little bit to reflect the different, rather than having the
the words matching. It's now just the mural grant. And coming
up next, we have this piece at Heather Farm Park. Speaking of
Heather Farm Park, this is a work that was acquired to
commemorate the City of Walnut Creek 75th anniversary. So that
was I have the year I think it was 1999 or it was 1989. I was
just checking to see if that was Yeah, so it was in 1989.
This is a work by Bruce Johnson, and it's titled Strata, and it's definitely in need of some maintenance and care.
So we have that set up with previously approved funds for maintenance of artwork in our permanent collection.
That'll be taking place this month.
And that is it. Does anybody have any questions?
Will Bruce Johnson stay in this location?
For now, we have no plans to move it.
That might be something we consider down the line.
And as Bruce Johnson looks like, wood below, is it bronze above?
So it's copper.
Copper.
It's copper and wood.
OK, cool.
And the big belly refresh, just to be clear, 10 were we done?
10 were done already.
and then there are plans to do an additional 10.
I think they're just going to try to keep rolling them out
in groups of 10.
Walnut Creek Downtown is heading that project.
So an observation and a question.
I see in your report that we got $83,000 plus
out of pinstripes, congratulations.
Thank you.
The year they spent here was very remunerative.
I know.
Our mission.
Yes, rest in these pinstripes.
And then, you say in the report somewhere, it says staff is preparing to implement a
new public art walking tour app platform with the intention of updating the self-guided
public art tours.
Can you say a little more about that?
Sure.
Currently, we have a walking tour that's set up through a program that is maybe a little
antiquated.
It's a dial-in, so you call to dial up.
Our analytics are showing that we don't think
a lot of people are taking the time to dial up.
And this new platform that we're looking at
would put eyes on us all over the world.
And it's a free program.
It's just a matter of having staff time to get together
and join a cohort for training and implementing it.
But it's a platform that the gallery can utilize it,
which would be great to have all of our exhibits online
so that people all over the world can see our shows
and also the public art.
So that's a goal for this coming year.
Any other questions, comments?
Water Light Plaza, is it working yet?
No.
No, so I've been in contact with the building manager
and apparently the nozzles that the artist had
initially put into that work are no longer made and so they are having to
have them handmade overseas they're very specialized nozzles and it's taking a
very long time and once they're in he has assured us that they do have a life
expectancy of seven years but yes. We've also noticed that there appears to be
like bullet holes in some of the tiles I think we have a treasure trove of extra
tiles from our artist. Can we get some of the tiles repaired as well, the ones that
are broken? We can contact the building owner that would be under their purview.
Great, thank you. Okay, now the further questions and with the chair's approval
I'll roll together my strategic plan and other Lesher Center Center rep updates
all in one. So I have come to you before to share our new ticketing system
which we implemented in March, which has been very exciting.
That was one of the initial top priorities from our strategic plan,
but government procurement processes are long.
And so we are still in the process of fully integrating
Davila Regional Arts Association into that system, so that we have a full picture of our patrons and our donors.
We did successfully move CenterRep into launching World Premieres,
world premieres, as well as developing new co-production partnerships.
We expanded the Lecher Center in your neighborhood program and continued to further the commitment
at the gallery of sharing artists who have diverse backgrounds.
And we increased our Pay What You Can offerings, which started with Center Rep preview performances.
Then more than a year ago, we moved the Bedford Gallery to that model and now the Headliners
series this past season also had Pay What You Can options.
And as we go into our next year, I shall share with you a copy of our season brochure that's
inclusive of all of our internal programming, so headliners, the gallery exhibitions and
center rep productions, as well as our cornerstone producers who are our professional nonprofit
organizations that present seasons at the center.
We just this past weekend completed our Diwali celebration first ever, which was a combination
of Hari Kondabalu as the headlining comedian,
followed by a drone light show above the Lesher Center,
which was thrilling, and then a street fair
with local artists and organizations
from 12 to four on Saturday.
The fair was really packed.
I know the gallery was overwhelmed with interest
in the workshop, which was great.
So we had a lot of synergy between what was going on
indoors and out, and we're looking forward
to planning for a return of that celebration next year.
This coming weekend, another of our new festivals
for this season, we have an improv festival
in collaboration with a number
of local improv organizations.
So we're hosting workshops, jams, performances,
and then we have a headlining performance
by the Groundlings out of LA.
They're an improv school and troop that has launched
many, many comedians that have gone on
to SNL and other stardom.
So we're looking forward to that.
From Center Rep, coming up next is Woman in Black
in November.
We're here for all the spooky vibes.
It's a thriller.
And it is the West End production of that work.
So we're bringing that here to Walnut Creek.
And then we follow that up
with the brand new Christmas Carol,
which is the West Coast premiere
of this adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
We will still be in Victorian England.
There will still be ghosts.
It's still holiday magic.
But it is a different lens of the story,
looking more from Tim's perspective
and looking more at how our community
can be more inclusive of all different types of people.
So we hope that you will all join us
for the inaugural year of A Christmas Carol.
And that's my update.
I think it's so smart that you're doing the collaborations
for Center Rep, to bring costs down a bit.
And yay to whoever got SF Jazz to Walnut Creek.
We went to the show, I can't remember his name right now,
I'm so sorry, last spring, were you announced it?
Terrence Blanchard.
We went to Terrence Blanchard,
and was shocked to see that the attendance wasn't full,
and then we went to Brantford, Marcellus,
it was so great to see a full theater.
So that was a wonderful collaboration,
and it's gonna bring lots more people into Walnut Creek
be able to hear jazz here and not have to go to the city. So thank you.
Okay. Should we move into commissioners announcements and brief reports on
activities? Does Emily have any other staff? Oh, sorry. Sorry. Staff.
Emily Emily. And then I've got a couple of things from Miley.
Here I am for the 50th 10 this evening. Um,
but from a gallery perspective, uh,
observations of a still life opened, uh, at the end of last month. Um,
So that show has been doing very, very well.
I think we're pretty much booked up with school tours,
if not completely full.
So that's pretty exciting for us.
If you want to see my face again and hear again from me,
I'm doing the cocktails and conversation event
for this exhibition.
So I'm going to do a curator tour on November 6 at 5.30 to 7.
And you'll get to learn kind of about how myself and my staff
developed the exhibition, how we chose the artists,
and then learn a little bit about the artists in the show
as well, and also treats from Montesacro and drinks too,
if you're 21.
And moving into the rest of November,
we have our annual craft fest.
It's its 16th year on November 22nd from 10 to five.
Vendors are already selected
and we are advertising that pretty heavily,
so please attend craft fest if you're around.
It's really, really wonderful.
We have over 30 vendors every year,
and it's kind of that holiday magic
that happens in the gallery.
We'll close observations of a still life in mid-December,
and then we are very, very excited
to open Viola Fry Foundations in early January.
So Viola Fry is a legendary ceramic artist in the Bay Area,
and she has a book that just was published a monograph,
and so we developed an exhibition based on that
to focus on her early career.
There's lots of focuses placed on her later career, her monumental works, but we're really
showing kind of her journey to how she got to these monumental works.
So we're very excited for that, and that opens January 10th, and it opens from 4 to 7, and
if you're interested, Arts Commissioners get to come for preview from 4 to 5.
Questions?
I have a question for the... will someone send us an email about the November 6th gathering to discuss?
I can. Perfect. Thank you. Sure.
It's the first I would seek that the Viola Frei is going to be the subject.
Is that the first time you've done a one-person gallery exhibit?
No we try to space out our solo shows a little bit just to kind of provide
variety for the people coming into the gallery but we're actually doing two
solo shows this year so Viola is the first and then we're hosting Yumeniz
sorry Inascensio Yumeniz Chino's first ever retrospective and that is a gallery
first we've never done a retrospective for an artist before so that is coming
out of the Bedford's curatorial staff and that show will then travel all over the
U.S. Oh, sorry, one more update. Rediscovering Native America, which was
our traveling show from last year, just opened at the Mills Building in San
Francisco for its first travel venue. So if you didn't get a chance to see it
here or you want to see it again, now is your chance. It's open through January
and then it heads out to Pennsylvania after that. Where's the Mills Building?
The Mills Building is in San Francisco.
Okay.
Is this an info we can find on the website?
Yes.
Yep.
Thank you.
Okay.
Now, I'll just share a few things from Miley at Center for Community Arts.
Also on November 22nd, it's their annual Chili Bowl fundraiser alongside the Clay Arts
Guild.
So, guild members have made lovely ceramic bowls, which you can eat chili from.
And there will be over 200 handmade bowls to choose from and the proceeds, 100% of the
proceeds go towards student scholarships for ceramics.
And then December 6th through 7th is the handcrafted holiday sale at the Shadelands Art Center.
Local artwork from over 60 student artists and teaching artists.
Wide range of offerings, ceramics, paintings, prints, jewelry, fiber arts, a little bit
of everything.
And a portion of the proceeds from that event also benefit scholarships.
Now for Commissioner announcements and brief reports on activities.
Should we go down the line?
What have I done?
I haven't seen the Bedford Gallery new exhibit yet, but I really want to.
I'm definitely going to go to it really soon.
And then I don't know if this counts as city art,
but I got here from rehearsal at Northgate High School for the fall show.
It's Carrie and it opens tomorrow.
So I need to mark it for that.
Everyone come see Carrie, thank you.
How long's it playing till?
It's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
That's right.
Now or never.
I also attended the Bedford Show and it was amazing.
So please go see it before it closes.
It's remarkable as always.
I had the opportunity to be on a panel today
to speak a group of BSU students from the district
about art and what our career looks like.
And I tapped into some of our staff here
for some volunteer opportunities,
what that looks like from our city.
So I learned we have so much to offer for young folks
and also learned that they're very interested in art
and that's several questions.
So it was a really artistic empowering day overall
for the community, so I was grateful to share that.
I'll put a plug in for the California Symphony
because I am married to an audiophile.
And so it's been our second season
with the director Donato Cabrera,
who's really creative in the way
that he conducts and invites young conductors.
So it's inviting a lot of like a younger crowd to come
And it's a really cool symphony because you can drink,
you can raise your hands,
you can do different things in the past you couldn't do.
So I highly recommend it.
And they're getting booked and booked,
but I think you can still find solo tickets.
So yeah, come to the Lesher Center
for the California Symphony season.
I've been doing public art walking tours.
I typically do tour number four.
I am doing that on the third Wednesday in November,
third Saturday in November at 10 o'clock,
and the mayor will be joining me
along with one other doe, St. Carol Fowler, who's amazing.
And I also did tour number two recently,
which is not my normal tour.
And it was great to have
some very long-term Walnut Creek residents on the tour
who had never stopped to notice some of the art
I was showing them.
shocked like this has been here for this long so I highly recommend that all
commissioners and any future commissioners especially if they're
watching this meeting make it a point to go on all four tours so they can learn
the collection and know where everything is and nothing is a surprise when they
hear about it from somebody else. Well I've done one of the tours now the
second one I think so I got three more to go. The last quarter's been busy
I've had the really awesome opportunity to work
with Sister June Hamamoto, who's a master origami
and Zen Buddhist monk out of Plum Village International.
She has Folding for Justice,
which is a project at San Quentin Penitentiary.
And on September 6th, we held a full-scale Dave piece
that involved all of the men that reside there
at the facility, showing their artwork,
having origami, music, dance,
and kind of the power of the arts
in transformative healing spaces.
After that, been supporting another local artist, Erin Yoshi.
She was commissioned with grants
from the Little Tokyo Business Association
and the Neighborhood Council
and Arts District Business Improvement District
Los Angeles where she completed a 200 foot around full rap 15 foot tall walls in Los Angeles in
Little Tokyo. If you're ever around the Mary Knoll area you should check out her art piece.
And then most recently in Denver at the Denver Art Museum working with a national network
Latinx therapists that really kind of center healing and the Latinx migrant
people's experience and servicing that community and kind of the power of this
particular art exhibition that they were supporting and kind of human migration
as a whole and kind of this notion that what we're going through today in the
current political climate with ICE, with immigrant blaming.
Just the larger historical context
in not only this country, but in the world
of how people have moved.
And I highly recommend the Denver Art Museum.
I had not spent a lot of time there,
and we did quite a few different events inside the space,
and they have incredible galleries.
Thank you.
Do you know if that's a permanent collection?
My folks live there so I'll be visiting them so much.
No, I think the the particular one that we were collaborating on them with is only until the end
of this year, but I think their permanent collection on the fourth floor is worth seeing.
Supposed to, can we adjourn? Is that what I say?
All bye.