sculpture walk ?'s

[iowasculptor]

I have a meeting with the downtown association in my town next thursday. I am trying to help them realize that the incorporation of art into the landscape will help revitalize the city. I plan on working up a proposed sculpture walk. I need some help.
1) What is a fair honorarium to offer? ($500, $1000)
2) How much insurance should the city carry on the work?
3) What supportive materials need to be made?
4) What other things should I suggest?
5) What about a mural project?
6) How much should they expect to spend? What are their returns?
These are business people in the heartland so I need to be able to sell them on this with real stuff not just that it would make the place a nicer place to live, bla, bla.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Matt

[JAZ]

Matt,
I was the inaugural coordinator for a micro park in Newburyport for its first two years. You can see the third year show at:
http://www.artfluence.com/fvac/somerby.html
1. Fair is as much as you can get. The Urbana, IL Parks' sculpture program offers $2,000. However, funding is the issue. For Somerby's we offered $200 per sculpture for a one year loan (not enough in my opinion), the insurance, and paid for a crane and whatever installation costs there were. Last year none of the sculptures required a crane, so we distributed the crane money to the artists for transporation expenses help. I had to raise the money in addition to everything else, hence the low amount we offered.
2. Newburyport required that the sculptures be valued at no more than $10,000 each and it cost them $462 altogether per year by adding a rider to their existing policy.
3. Because this sculpture area had to be a brick surface, we had three 5' square concrete pads put under the brick to distribute the weight of some of the sculptures. Each has four threaded rods sticking up through holes in the brick. These have plastic caps when we aren't using them. I bought stainless nuts and washers for them. Some sculptures, like Toni Schultze's 11 ton granite piece are flat and evenly distributed and very stable. so those don't need the footings.
4. A little reception. Enough money for a small sign. I liked a sign outside the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, so found out who did it and asked for a price. He said $1500. I had a local fabricator do up a stainless sign kind of like it, based on my own drawings, for $200. It has an art area of about 11" x 14" (?), two legs of square tubing and a base plate. The city parks people made the footing and installed it for us. It has a removable top affixed with bolts on the sides, so we can change the graphics (which are laminated and under plexi). I did the graphics myself (I used to teach G.D.). The current coordinator also has graphics experience.
A friend donated a sandwich board that we use to direct people to the art area, though a permanent sign at the street would be better. You can keep that cost down too if you can use an existing sign post.
Try to find a donor who will cover the reception - keep it simple. Also, a postcard would be good.
One of the values of the postcard, sign and if possible a website, is it gives a place to put donors names or credit to the city as well as give the exhibit credibility and attention. It's also an additional incentive for the artists.
5. ?
6. The returns. Somerby's keeps 30% of the sale price of any sculpture. That helps with future expenses. Wendy Klemperer's Elk was purchased for the city through the efforts of a seven year old boy and his father (city planner) who went to bank presidents, etc. Otherwise the benefits are mainly to tourism, but that is economically valuable and there are studies that verify that this is so. In Newburyport's case the sculptures are in a highly visible location down by the water and really have directly benefitted the ambiance, and consequently the tourism, which helps the economy.
It's a process, but one that has worked out well for Newburyport. The first year people were caught by surprise. Some wondered what the sculptures were all about. They were mistified. By the end of the first year they were disappointed that the sculptures were going to be removed...until they saw the new batch, then they became attached to those, and so on.
Today I gave my first sculpture class of the semester at a Community College in Lowell, which is about 25 or 30 miles from Newburyport. When I asked the students what sculptures they had seen lately the first one mentioned was in Lowell. Then a girl started to tell everyone about the ones at Somerby's Landing! What a nice surprise.
Stick with this idea (if you are willing to give it the time.). It's a good one.
JAZ

[iowasculptor]

Thank you for the info I will use this to compile a presentation for the city. I was also wondering if you knew any of the profs at U lowell mass? I spent some time with the sculpture and photo profs in Atlanta last spring. Seems like a nice place, really creative people. Arno is the photo prof and I cant remember the sculpture prof but he went to Clemson university as a young guy and was my profs first grad student, funny such a small world. I am really excited to get somthing going this city pop 25,000 only has 2 sculptures in town and is really concerned about a population loss that has been happening for a few years. I think that its time to do things a little different and bring some life into the place so that people actually want to be here and don't just end up here. When I moved here about a month ago locals asked me WHY? meaning why would anyone ever want to come here. That needs to change.
Again thanks a bunch
Matt
NSU ART
Aberdeen, SD