Committee Aiming to ‘Beautify’ Redwood City

The Redwood City Civic Cultural Committee is hoping to ‘beautify’ the area in the not-so-distant future — all by clarifying the rules.

The Civic Cultural Committee will pitch a new master plan for public art to City Council on July 22, with the goal of streamlining the process for placing art installations in Redwood City.

The plan, however, is not a new policy.

“It’s more a clarification of existing process that the Civic Cultural Commission had in place for the selection and approval of public art projects in Redwood City,” said Lane Pianta, who chairs the Civic Cultural Commission.

“There were some questions from City Council about that process and we were asked to take a look at the process and see if there was a way that we could clarify it,” Pianta said.

Prior to this new plan, the process of approving public art in Redwood City was open to interpretation, Pianta said. That interpretation allowed projects to fall through the cracks during the approval process, getting stalled because of a misunderstanding of the rules. 

“It was very stripped down bullet points, step by step of here is what you do,” Pianta said. “We wanted to elaborate on those points, like when we say identify a location, what likely locations for public arts are there?”

Currently, the process to get art in the city can take anywhere from six months to three years to complete. To start, a work of art can be commissioned, donated or purchased. From there, officials can choose a location where a work of art is needed, or send out a request for art proposals from artists and decide on a location afterward. 

Once those steps are completed, the proposals are reviewed, selected and the chosen artist is asked to send in his/her qualifications, throwing things like prior experience under the microscope.

Then, the complete proposal is sent to the Civic Cultural Commission from the public arts subcommittee, before heading to City Council for final approval. All decisions along the way are with the goal of keeping the public aware of the projects. 

With that entire process in mind, this plan concerns physical works of art, such as sculptures and fountains, and has nothing to do with performing arts, such as the current summer concert series in downtown. There is also a separate process for approving murals.

But when dealing with new physical art, such as the new fountain coming to Jardin de Niños Park, the new plan aims to make the approval process clear for everyone involved by adding things such as the public art task force. The task force includes members of the public arts subcommittee and two representatives from City Council to keep councilmembers in the loop.  

“This allows us to have a more open dialogue with members of City Council, so if there are any concerns, we can have the heads up in advance,” Pianta said. “None of us want to go before the City Council with a finalist in mind, putting the full weight of the commission behind any particular artist or any work of art, if there is going to be resistance,” he said. 

“We don’t want projects to get started and then have them stalled out,” Pianta said.

In turn, Pianta is hoping that more projects can be approved to benefit the landscape and its residents, who are now starting to come to Redwood City for its arts and culture scene, he said.

“Our town is becoming a destination town. We think that public art has the capacity to beautify a city, it has the capacity to highlight the historical significance of our town, and we want all of that to be promoted from the public arts process,” Pianta said.

“I am very hopeful that we will see some public art projects come down the pipeline now in the upcoming months.”