Okay, Ms. Bax, I believe we're ready to start. Thanks, everyone, for your patience. When we get to Ms. Kisler's presentation, I ask for your extended patience to give her the full opportunity to participate. And so without further ado, I'll let Ms. Vax call the meeting to order. The May 20th, Ashland Public Art Commission meeting is called to order. I would like to open the floor to any citizens who'd like to have citizen input. And with there being no interest in citizen input, we're going to move forward with the third action item which are Ashlyn Gateway art proposals. Ms. Miller? Okay, so I just want to just start before we hear from our three artists who are here with us this evening. Just do a quick recap for our Public Art Commission as well as any members of the public that are here about this project since it has been a few months since we started this. And just as a reminder of the RFP requirements that the commission set out and kind of the process and the budget for that. So just so refresher, why did we decide to do this project? It's a great first opportunity for the public art commission because it's aligned with the goals of the town's strategic plan, which is emphasizing creative place-making. It supports existing economic development and tourism initiatives specifically around the planned improvements in the future to the England Street project and the Street Skate project. That is going to eventually bring roadway and sidewalk improvement improvements all the way down to us or at one where this Public art piece will be located To recap currently we have $60,000 in the budget half of that is American Rescue Plan Act money Which must be either fully expended or contractually obligated by the end of this calendar year, that's 12.31.24. The monies can be spent after that date, but they must be contractually obligated at that point. There is a possibility to expand the budget for a very compelling proposal. So after we issued RFP and speaking with not only several of the artists but members of our council, they expressed that there is potentially some funding, some American Rescue Plan Act funding that could be moved from projects that aren't going to be realistically completed within the time frame, over to increase the budget of this project, but that's not just a granted. Council very much feels that it needs to be a compelling design. It really needs to bring additional value for them in good conscious to increase the budget for this proposal. So you will see at least, and I think two of the three, and then potentially a third of the proposals, I gave each of the artists or artist teams heads up that that was a possibility. Some of them have included the potential for an expanded budget in their proposals and others are prepared to talk about what they would do if there was additional funding made available. So just to recap quickly about our timeline, the RFQ was issued in February and then the Public Art Commission subcommittee which consisted of council member Barnhart, Mr. Brill and Chair Ms. Bax selected three finalists and issued the RFP to the finalists and they are presenting here tonight the concept proposals. The subcommittee would then work with an artist on any revisions to that plan, whatever if the finalist chosen for the to go forward, but we can also discuss the process. If the larger commission would like to be involved in that final decision as well, we can always call a special meeting. June and July, the ideal is that the final design would be submitted to our town council for their review and approval, and then we would proceed with contract execution so that the artist could then begin fabrication and then hopefully by the end of the year or at least well underway we have site prep fabrication depending on the project you'll see some of the artists have different timelines for installation depending on the scale the medium being used but at minimum, we should be in good shape regardless with ARPA funding because it will be contractually obligated at that point. So even if installation doesn't happen by December 31st, 2024, from a funding standpoint, that doesn't put us in a bad spot. So RFP highlights, the commission decided on the goals for this particular project is to celebrate Ashland, tell the local story, strengthen community pride, evoke inspiration, joy, encourage, fun, and play, promote unity and connectedness as well as instill a sense of home and place. And specifications of the footing available is 6 feet by six feet. The height, a minimum of 15 feet for adequate scale for the side, but also for safe passage of large vehicles since it is a major roadway. The idea is to create an arch or archway effect with an understanding that an full arch may not be possible given the funding provided, but that some sort of entrance way effect could also achieve the same goal. Safe visibility for vehicles and pedestrians. That includes keeping in mind any reflective principles coming to or from when you're in traffic, glare from the sun, as well as sight lines when turning in and out of adjacent businesses, the wall greens, the wall wall as well as the tobacco hut that is right there. Dark-cut sky compliant if there are lighting elements since we are a dark sky community. It needs to relate well to the sound surroundings and be enjoyable up close as well at a distance. There are sidewalks in the area so there will be some pedestrian close as well at a distance. There are sidewalks in the area, so there will be some pedestrian traffic, as well as people going to and from their vehicles at those adjacent businesses, but the by and large, the majority of the traffic that comes through there will be in vehicles. So you'll see on my staff report attached with the proposals that the ultimate ideal for this evening is that staff is requesting that the Public Art Commission consider the guidance set forth in the RFP and following presentations by each of the artists or artists teams select one concept to proceed with or without minor revisions. So I'll just emphasize that we're looking to select a finalist with a concept that we could then move forward and refine that concept tonight, not necessarily accept a design as is. I will just say, you know, no exact numbers on this, but we're also not looking for a complete redesign of a project. So revisions within reason. You will also see, I'm just gonna add a footnote two before we get into presentations. There is a motion possible on the staff report of not proceeding with any of the three finalists, if there is not consensus among the commission, and then re-issuing the RFP, either completely out as another open call, or to the fourth, fifth, and sixth ranked finalists for the RFQ process. So I wanna make sure everyone is aware, of course that would add a lot of time to the timeline, and we kind of have to start from scratch, but also while we wanna be good stewards of dollars and make sure that those dollars are contractually obligated before the federal government asks for them back, we also don't want to go forward with a design that the commission doesn't have confidence in or doesn't feel as the right fit. So striking that balance. So if there is the ability, inability to kind of come to consensus tonight, that third motion is an option for you all to consider. And if you, I will just say if you do go with that option, we'll have a very busy summer. So think about that as well. Okay, and with that, I'm going to turn it over to our first proposal. I am going to run presentations from up here for them. So I'll just look to you for guidance when you're ready for me to advance. If that's OK with you. And then once the artists are finished presenting their concepts, we'll have ample time for you all to ask questions, make suggestions, get some more clarity around anything you may want to ask them. Okay? Sound good? So I would like to introduce the team of Harper and Lively. This is Mr. Timothy Harper and Mr. Matt Lively. You're one or both of you are welcome to step up to the lectern. And if you, while you all introduce yourself, I'll bring up your presentation. You just give me a second. Sure. You guys can hear me. Correct? bring up your presentation. Just give me a second. Sure. You guys can hear me. Correct? This is intimidating. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm Matt Lively and Mrs. Tim Harper and we've been both studio artists for a long time and have been working together on projects for about 10 years. And we're able to, working together keeps us, keeps our egos out of what we're working on when we work together. So the focus ends up being on the projects rather than, you know, making our own work and presenting it in the world. So we have, there's a site specific quality to the public work that we did. So one thanks for having us here. It's really a thrill for us to be in the final three. One thanks for having us here. It's really a thrill for us to be in the final three. I looked at the other proposals and they're really great. You guys should be able to figure this out tonight and not have a terrible summer because all of the work was really, really great. the work was really, really great. When I read the RFQ, I noticed that the word unique kept popping up and it might have only been one, but it stuck with me and I thought that that was what we should focus on. So when I come up to Ashland, I've been coming up here for about six years because my son went to school and ran off making so we'd get a football game and stuff like that. But whenever I go into like a town, a small town like Ashland, there's always a point in the road where you're wondering when you get to Ashland, like at what point you feel like now in an Ashland. And sometimes it's a store for me. It's that little corner barbershop. It's kind of tilted funny. And that's when I feel like, okay, now I'm in Ashley. It's not when I go all the way up to Rhyrtrics, whatever, that's where it is. So Tim and I came up and we took all of those visual characteristics of the town, and we thought instead of us coming up with a something, let's let the imagery of the town sort of build itself. I forgot we have these toys for them. You can probably skip two pages down in first parts. Yeah, that's good. So we did drawings of all the buildings and all the things that we saw, there was all the things that we sort of deemed important as we were touring around town. And then basically made collages of those images and whatever, however we cobbled together the collage and a three dimensional sense we wanted to stretch that visual plane to the other side. So, but there's it's not the same. to my professor. I am. I am. Look at the inside and inside. It's funny, too. So what we were excited about is the fact that the imagery of Ashland made the sculpture. And then we were just making it come to life and when you spread out that plane to match the corners on each side which is not as easy as it sounds especially when we were doing what we did make several attempts on the other two sides to make completely new imagery and then match the corners and it would have taken it would have taken months and months in order to do that so stretching that plane we decided that that's where we would put the the center of the universe and the what we're planning to do with that aluminum is drill holes in it instead of that being painted I'll get to the pain in part in a second is drill holes in it instead of it being painted. I'll get to the paint in part in a second. This drill holes in it, they have this stainless steel mirrored, stainless steel that would catch the light from during the day and then at night when headlights pass it. There was sort of twinkle instead of being painted. We're going to in previous projects, we've done two other ones that were painted with an Amel's industrial enams and marine enams and they are in Richmond and they're holding up really well and they can be cleaned. It was interesting. We did an experiment. One of them was coded with a anti-graphedie coding, which I didn't think was necessary because most of the time graffiti kids won't. Graffiti is something that's already painted. But the one that's coated is sort of looks dirty from the buses and traffic and stuff because it's a clear coat that has a texture to it that's kind of sticky. The one that didn't get coated looks fantastic still. The other, since I'm getting into the technical side of things I'm going to pass along to Tim who's a lot smarter than I am. So he's going to talk about that. Oh sure. Well I guess you can see. Oh yeah yeah yeah sure. I got you. I got you. Sure. And when Matt was talking about cutting through the side to the aluminum, we're talking about small holes, nothing really big so that it would be glaring in your face. But just tiny pinpricks that could catch the light that you're going to buy in your car and make little stars, that would be a little more fun than painting it on. But the Essentially those shapes would be cut out of aluminum one piece of aluminum and then we would paint them Although there is there is the opportunity as we get into details if we give forward this, with the fabricator of cutting some of those front pieces out, so it's the back of the caboose there, and sticking it on the front to add a little more dimensionality to it. Our idea in working up the drawings we made before we made the collages was to purposefully not try to match all the perspectives because pushing them all together and collaging them all together, you get a flat plane that looks sort of dimensional and you can't quite tell what's the right perspective and it could be kind of fun to look at in that way. You can move on down, get together, and this is how it will be painted. This was our, we came up with several painted schemes. Some of them were sure in the back of the pandix, but this was our sort of favorite hitting of the trains and some of the buildings in town right off the making and the secretary, a little nod to the secretary at sculpture, which is really cool to see. And the, the, the, the, the, really cool to see. And the other key, or the... Oh, right, right. Some of the other options. We have a little... One thing you could do, we've got that marquee of the theater at an angle there. One option would be either to leave office in our universe part or you could cover over it. If you had a special event, I don't know about Christmas event or something, you could actually get final signage and stick it on there to announce events. It's fairly cheap to get those, you know, sign makers and whatnot. It might be a fun way to kind of update it for the season or if you have a big event going on. And so there's sort of just a couple of the sort of extra add-on options as well as cutting some of those shapes out and adding them on and that's something we can work out with the fabricator if we move forward with this that may or may not be too difficult. But these would be aluminum welded and painted and would fit. We then, these were, we modeled it on about 12 feet high but it's sort of, we could go high, I think basically we would, we want to make it as tall as we can within the budget so it would be working out some of the details with the fabricator to decide on that. And the fabricator that we worked with on the last three projects is here in Ashland. And I'm hoping to be here in Ashland if the budget. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah. I'll skip you. I'm hoping that if the budget didn't allow for higher than 12 feet that the local fabricator would help us out with that to make it larger. That's what I'm hoping. And I'm saying it publicly now. Right. Thank you. I'm saying it publicly now. I guess. Right. Fresh and sous vide. Right. Right. I think I think we've covered most everything on the artwork. I mean, you've got a couple of sort of in-place images of the model. And then these retain some of the other options. So that bottom option would be, you'd see this or two kind of similar shapes, but they're not the same shape. We could work with the navigator to try to actually, we thought it would be really fun to actually attach the opposite shapes and it's doable with, but it's just take it a little more welding. As you can see in that bottom, sort of example, a little triangles, that could be a kind of an interesting side to have all those little angles. Yeah, and the last part is the, it's the boarding part to read the budget in the timeline. I'm going to go ahead and read it all right now. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's good. Sure, and just at the end we added a couple different other color schemes and then just a little library of some of the images we drew up and trying to make our collages more fun. And Ashland means different things to different people like the things that I think of when I come up here and say that is Ashland. That is Ashland. Everybody thinks of something different when they're in Ashland. So having the menu of imagery really it could be a whole different set of imagery if you would want it to be because maybe we were wrong in our choices, but those were our special Ashland things. Any questions? Sure. Thanks so much for coming. I love your presentation. I think it's an awesome design. So thanks so much. Do you have any pictures of the painted? You said it was turtles in Richmond, or a website that we could go to just to see what that looked like, what you were talking about, the graffiti repellent versus. Oh sure. Just so we could see what the pain in sculpture would look like. Yeah, livelyharper.com. Okay. So we do have both of those. Pylon is sculpted. Okay. Pylon. Okay. Sure. The marine coating that you're using, the paint. Yes. How long have you been using that? I've been using industrial, for the animals for, sorry. I've been using industrial and animals for probably 20 years. The marine and animal for about 10 years. If you scroll back up, you can see the two. The one, the Broad Street Pylon and the Scots Edition one. They're both, that one is the coated one. It looks great. That was the day of install. So it looks really nice now, but that bottom half is sort of grayed out because of the graffiti coating that they put on. I suppose if you host it off enough, but they're not doing that. Do you have any indication of how long it would be before it needed some kind of touch up refreshing? It takes, it's sort of like on a mode of paint. It lasts a long time. Some of the colors like blue and some reds tend to fade faster, so we would try to avoid those. Being I am in town, I'm not going anywhere. If selected for the project, it would be, you know, I think it could be a maintenance schedule where I come and even repain it every, it's unnecessary, but every five years just to make it so that it's fresh and looks good. I have a question for Martha, maybe you could jump in here, but as far as the actual location of these things, because we haven't seen a site plan. The artists get a, they know exactly where they're going. Is it going to be like where the sidewalk is or offset from the sidewalk or? So the easement agreements that we have with the property owners is for a pedestrian easement. So the structures themselves, if they fit within that six by six foot footprint, then they will fit in the right of way the current right of way But that will require us to read the town to relocate the sidewalk into the property owners space and so that's what we would end up doing is we're gonna end up moving the sidewalk Okay, wrap around I think you're rendering showed it kind of sitting in the sidewalk and I was curious about right okay Martha on the Wawa side of the street the north side of the street aren't there Large sicklemore trees that are only gonna get larger In that look the actual location if there is no tree there, okay Blood will trees obscure the art eventually? I think the closest one is like a little bit to the west of it. But when I went out there with our planning director and our engineers, they didn't seem concerned about locations of trees. So, I'm another question. engineers they didn't seem concerned about locations of trees. So. Another question. Can you elaborate a bit more on the drilling of the holes? It would be on only these sides or. Yes. OK. So everywhere I see a dot would be a hole. That's right. OK. Thank you. Right and inside. The stainless steel would be. The different sizes. Well, I think that it would be. Different sizes? The fold? I think that it would be good to sort of make a sample measurement of the sky, because some of them are some of the stars look brighter than others, and some of them are tiny, so you could get pretty accurate with the size of the hole and how much light would be reflected from it. This one is, you know, it's a toy version of this thing, so I just painted it and I didn't look at this guy as a reference. You know, it could be recognizable constellations and things like that. Oh, I love that idea. I have a question. I know you visited the site and as you know, visually it's very busy looking west on England Street. Would you be open to the idea of making your sculpture a little less busy with regards to imagery? Because you have a lot going on in this, which is you've captured a lot of the key elements of Ashlyn. But could you see revising the design to maybe pull an element or two out of it, to simplify it a bit? Sure. And I think that in revisions, I think that altering the color scheme could help with that as well. Keeping fewer colors or a color family that works together really well and doesn't separate out. It's not a mess. We're artists. We have fun making the stuff. Yeah, piling up, we're artists. We have fun making the stuff. And we're filing off, filing off. But you can always pull it back. And our artist job is to, you know, throw it way out and then reel it back in a little bit. Okay. Any other questions? I'll go. Because I don't know. How is this installed? How is this installed? What I what we've done in similar installations. Sorry Tim. No go ahead. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Similar installations they've had an internal structure that the aluminum is attached to and inside I would Venture without having gotten into details with the fabricator, but what they did What we would do probably on here is if you look straight up inside You would have an internal structure like that that then would be bolted down to the concrete. For the, the, the pile on that you saw on the screen on Broad Street, there was a 500 pound plate that had holes pre drilled in it and they had a way to get inside of it to then go and bolt that down into the concrete and onto that 500 pound white, sort of like a giant washer. And with the, you know, insect screws, sort of like you think about when you see the, some of the light poles, just general light poles out in the world, you can see those bolts that will come, put those bolts into the concrete epoxy, the bolts in there, and then come bring this, which we'll have, pre-cut holes, it's not very drawing, but in the bottom internal structure put it down and bolt it down and what we you probably do is that some part of that either on the side or on the front wherever it's convenient have some of that aluminum open. So basically you can get away and it would be open there, you would bolt that down in place and then put that back on. And once you painted it over it, you wouldn't see really, you see that I did it just a little bit. You wouldn't really see that edge, but then that gives you also a way that unbolted if you needed to move it, it's widening the street or something later. But probably I would think they might bring it in with the crane or could be a floor left in there. Probably. Probably a floor. Yeah. Does that answer your question? You had another question? Yes. Similar to what Mrs. Bax was saying with the simplicity of the design, would you be open to a revision of right now it's all one flat so like in my mind there's a bit of like obstruction what's behind it you know I'm thinking like of shapes the ones that you were talking about that you could cut out but maybe like have some You know, so so it would be the bike and then you could see through you know like something like that I would be very excited about working on that You know we were focused on we were very mindful of the The budget and we didn't want to we didn't want to come and promise a bunch of stuff that wasn't going to happen because of the budget restrictions. So we edited and edited. But it wasn't until I got here today that I remember the fabricators have been here for a long time and I think that they would work with this stuff. So yes, to be able to have, to be able to have holes through it would be, would be super fun to be able to do. All right, thank you. I just thought I'd point out the question about how this thing is mounted. There is $2,000 in there for the structural engineering design. So you guys would have a- Right, right,000 in there for the structural engineering design. So you guys would have a... Right, right. Yeah, we have a structural engineering work with. We designed a foundation and then hired somebody to support his specifications. Any other questions? I apologize if someone already asked this because I'm in a little distracted. But visibility in terms of turning in and out, did somebody talk about that already? Since this is, even with some kind of see through, do you anticipate any issues with folks trying to turn out of wall, wall, or wall greens with there being kind of a pillar, you know, that in that space. And if so, kind of what would be your ideas to potentially remedy that through a revision? Well, I think a revision in that case would have it, would have the object curve more to be more of an art shape. Right now, there's sort of pointing at each other at an angle. But if it was an issue of it blocking people's visibility there to be able to turn left or right, if the sculpture couldn't be moved like the sidewalk being moved and a revision to make it curve more would also be fun for me as an artist. Yeah, I probably could be there as well. I mean, to some degree, whatever say it's gonna block some of the view because it's gonna be something there, there isn't there now, but we could because it's going to be something there, there isn't there now, but we could be slimmer as well. So maybe there's not quite as much at the bottom that you're trying to look past. Yeah, and that kind of gets at my follow up question, which we did very intentionally write the RFP that's to say archway effect, understanding that with the budget provided a full arch was not probably possible. So I was going to ask as well about a revision to create more of a kind of an entry way shape rather than to straight up and down pieces. And if you think you went slimmer with the budget, you would also not allow you to change the shape, but increase the height a little bit for scale because there is, there's a huge light stop light right there. And so something that commission spoke about a little bit with me individually, but also at meetings is really making sure that this, whatever is there, doesn't get lost in everything else that's around it. So being of adequate scale that it does make an impression on people, right? And it's visible from the idea being, as the RFQ stated, to kind of draw the eye even from people coming in off of Internet State 95, right? So people could kind of see it as they're coming into that stoplight and peek their curiosity and say kind of what's beyond that space. Right. And I think that's what we were doing with the vibrant colors and keeping it as planes on the front sides to be able to make the color appealing from a distance but also things to be discovered in it if your pedestrian are walking up close to it. I have one more question. Sure. I know we talked about kind of like durability with weather and everything. Talk to me about the structural kind of integrity of the materials because again it is next to a roadway. So how structurally sound it is if say a truck, it. Obviously it would be placed safe enough away from the roadway that you'd have to make a big mistake as a driver to do that. But as the staff person charged with replacing the way-finding signage that gets knocked down in this town, it actually happens quite often. And so I would hope that that would not be the case, and we will do everything we can to make sure, working with engineers and you all, to give it that more than enough buffer from the roadway. But talk to me a little bit about structural integrity as well as ease of repair. These structural integrity is sound kind of like the pylons that we did and the the the the easy Jane Cooper sculpture. If a truck dings it will probably be all right. We can get it prepared by the local fabricators. If a don't truck, runs over it, then we'll have to rebuild it, I would assume. The one that we just did was structurally sound to the point where they it will survive a tornado because it has holes in it or something so it wouldn't explode with the pressure chain. Right. I didn't think of that but they thought a bit ahead of time. So there's not a whole lot you can do about a dump truck running over it, but with the local company being right here, I think that repairs will be a big deal. And then of course with the painting on an entound. And I love painting stuff. Okay. And just to hit it to the structural integrity of the inside, as we've evolved working together, once we started getting building things that were bigger than us that were permanent, that's when we started working with people like this fabricator because they have expertise in that and engineers on staff, we bring them this and say, how would you and rely on their knowledge to start building the air control reception because they do that? So as part of the process, we could also share some of their, as they dropped the CAD plans for building this, what they're going to build inside with all that. Maybe we have to point building things when we say we can't, we need to be, this is beyond our ability to build safely. It's always, the wind is the thing that does the most damage and they have calculations for that, all of that stuff. And it's interesting to me to a point. And then I get lost in the math and stuff. But they know what they're doing as far as that goes, thankfully. Other questions? OK. And assuming that you all are going to stick around, I assume, for the rest of you. Of course, you're welcome and encouraged too. Yes. I love these other proposals on here, but. Absolutely. So if any, I kind of at the end, if you all think of other questions, just please jot them down. You'll have an opportunity to, if you think of something while you're discussing kind of your thoughts towards the end here. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And now we're going to move on to Ms. Kisler. And let me just bring up zoom. There she is. I'm gonna turn off my audio my friend. Yes, can you hear me? So would you like to, this is Mr. Tady Kisler and she is joining us from Reminding Ohio? Yes. Lombus Ohio. Yes. Lombus Ohio. Thank you so much for coming out. The entry or patient with our time for this video. If you'd like to go ahead and get started and share your free tape from there. OK, great. I think you have to enable sharing. Yeah, again. Okay. I can have a talk. Okay. Here we go. All right, perfect. Are you seeing my presentation? Yes. Okay. All right. Well, as Martha already told you, I am Virginia Kisler. I am an artist in Columbus, Ohio. I've been working full time as a public artist for about the last four years. Before becoming a public artist, I spent about 20 years designing interactives for children's museums and science centers. I worked for a few different firms in the Columbus, Ohio area. The firms both designed and built the interactives. We did work all over the country and all over the world. That experience was perfect for, was a perfect education for designing and building large interior and exterior works of art. Two, I got my MFA in 2012 from the Columbus College of Art and Design and so I do have a personal sculpture practice in addition to my public art practice. coming up with a concept for this project. I really latched on to the idea of Ashlyn being the center of the universe. I really love the slogan. I think it's very fun, it's playful, it's funny. I don't know of any other community that is claiming to be the center of the universe. So I really like that idea and I wanted to use that as inspiration for my concept. 2. I wanted to layer in imagery that makes the piece unique to Ashland. So as I move into showing you my concept, I'll talk a little bit more about this, but my intention is to layer in photography from Ashland, whether that be people, buildings, etc. Text that would be layered into the design to make the work specific to Ashland. So the piece itself is meant to be suggestive of one entering through the universe, right? So whether you interpret this as a spiral galaxy, whether you interpret this as as a spiral galaxy, whether you interpret this as orbiting heavenly bodies, stars, planets, etc. It's meant to be suggestive of space. And so the piece, much like the slogan, is meant to be playful, vibrant, fun. You can see the concept is very colorful. The piece would be fabricated from mild steel that would be powder coated. The colorful areas are a resin sheeting, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but the resin sheeting is would be a quarter of an inch thick. It's an architectural material that's made for exterior use. It's used a lot in the architectural industry. The material, too, is custom, and so it can be any color I come up with, and it can be any graphic that I come up with. So again, I'll talk a little bit more about that here in a second. The circular pieces that you're seeing scattered throughout both sides of the piece would be reflective in nature. And so the intention is those areas would be mirrored. And so as automobiles and people were passing by, there would be this kind of additional layer of reflection that would happen. And so it would just add, I think, another layer of fun to the piece. The piece would set on a concrete footer slash pedestal to give the piece some more elevation. The overall depth would be determined by the structural engineer, but as is the pedestal is about 16 inches high. That of course is flexible. Putting the piece up on a pedestal does a few things. It helps to protect the piece, not only from potentially someone running into it, but salt on the sidewalk, et cetera. So I think that elevation would work to the pieces advantage. The imagery, so the colorful areas of the piece again are this translucent resin sheeting embedded in the translucent sheeting can be any graphic I come up with and so this graphic would be translucent and so what I'm suggesting and this requires everyone to use their imagination a little bit. I am showing these dots, right? And right now the dots really don't look like any specific imagery, but my intention is that if awarded this contract, I would go back and do kind of an additional layer of design and really kind of work out what that imagery is. And that is where when I would layer in imagery and text that spoke specifically to Ashland. And so you can see here in the upper left hand corner, I'm showing an image of an eye, and I'm not suggesting that I would put a giant eye in the resin material. I'm simply showing the half-tone technique that I would use to incorporate imagery. And so this kind of dot process, I'm calling a half-tone technique and I'm using this for a few different reasons. It allows me to take an image, right, and take a pixel image and convert it into vector line work that allows me to scale it up to any size. The other thing that I think it does is I love this kind of dot style because I think it adds to the suggestion of space, stars, heavenly bodies. And so I think it kind of, it adds in that way. So there might be some questions about this imagery I do realize, but that is the idea. There would be an additional layer of design. So the material, again, is an architectural material. These are examples that I pulled from the company's website. The company is three-form. They're in Utah. Their work is used by architects, designers, artists. It exists all over the United States, all over the world. It's, again, it's a resin that's meant to be a replacement for glass. It is very durable. You could throw rocks at it. It would be fine. Again, endless color options, endless graphic options. In the bottom left-hand corner, you can see there's a gradient. And so this is in fact a custom graphic that has been embedded in that material. So it's very vibrant, it looks really great out in natural light. And so I think it would add a really kind of dynamic layer to the piece and make it very eye catching. The piece overall is just under 13 feet high, not including the pedestal that I spoke a little bit about. The pedestal is in this drawing 16 inches high. I think there's some flexibility in terms of the exact height of that pedestal. But again, I think the pedestal adds another layer of protection for the piece. The piece would all be made of tubular mild steel. The piece would be powder coated, which is an incredibly durable finish that's used regularly for fencing, you name it, in outdoor situations. I would be working with a fabricator in Columbus, Ohio. I would be working with a two-binder that exists here in the city. It's a fabricator that I used several times before. It's a shop that's been around for many many decades. They do incredibly high-quality work and I have complete faith in their ability to build anything I put in front of them. So the overall budget I think is fairly self-explanatory. A large portion of the budget goes towards metal fabrication and finish. One thing that I would like to know that Martha mentioned a few days ago is there's there's potentially a little more room in the budget to ensure that the piece has enough presence vertically. And so one of the things that I said to Martha is that, yes, I would love to make this piece taller, so it had more of a presence. And two, I would love to make the piece out of stainless steel. I'm simply using mild steel due to budget constraints, but my preference is to use stainless steel. Obviously, stainless steel is corrosion resistant, incredibly durable. I would not finish the stainless steel so there wouldn't be an issue ever with abrasion of finish and then have it be to recode the piece. And so that that truly would be my preference. Two, I've included a line item for the pedestal, which I've already talked about, and then LED flood lighting. I am not showing the flood lighting, but the idea is that there would be flood lights on both sides of the piece. The overall timeline for this work, again, is fairly self-explanatory. There would be a kind of a space before the resin-sheeding fabrication where I would work out the design of the graphics embedded in the colorful resin-sheeding. That would take place as the piece was being fabricated. So again, this is fairly self-explanatory and I don't see any issue getting this done before the end of the year. So that concludes my presentation. I'm going to call Martha and I'll open, I'll open it up for questions. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay. Does anyone have any questions? And I just asked for patients because I'll ask you all to speak into your microphone. And if Virginia, if you cannot hear them, will you just let me know and I'm happy to repeat either the beginnings or end or the whole question, whatever you need. Yes. Yes. I'm curious about the size of the mirrored circles. Size of the mirrored circles. Great question. They vary in size. Some are I think the biggest one is about 18 inches but they go down to I mean they might be like an 8 inch diameter that's somewhat flexible. Yeah but that's kind of roughly the range. Thank you. Along the same lines, the sculpture would face east and west. So in the morning, the morning sun would be hitting these mirrored surfaces, which may be problematic to drivers. And then in the evening, the sunset would be hitting the mirrored surfaces. So what other types of material could you use besides something highly reflective? Is there something that might take a little bit of the luster out of that sunlight? Without compromising your design too much? Sure. Two thoughts. So my intention for the mirrored surfaces I'm sorry, I, I, I She was still talking. Oh no, you're good. She's done. Okay. So two thoughts. The mirrored Surface would be a metal, a Mirror of Surface and so that Could be. it doesn't necessarily have to be mirror quality like you're seeing in a glass mirror. That could be kind of, I don't know, say degraded or kind of a blurry area, blurry or reflection. The other option, and I did debate this, those areas could be the colorful resin or it could be images as well. That could be the material, the colorful material. And that's something that would be revised during the second phase of the design process. So that could be an option that I would simply use the resin material instead. If you all were concerned about something too reflective. Thank you. I love the embedding the imagery in the half tone because it allows you to keep your color palette, your curves consistent in color. And I've seen this employed before, and it's just really a strong way to present outdoor art. And then it's for as the productivity goes, yeah, something like a brushed finish on it would tone that down as opposed to being like a mirror finish or something along those lines. Other questions from Ms. Kisler? I have a question for you. Talk to me a little bit what the, if the shape would stay intact or if you think it would evolve or it could do either as it grew in height. Would it maintain kind of that central circular shape or would there be an opportunity if there was an interest in creating an even more deliberate arch look where maybe the two outer bands kind of extend beyond the steel pole, like is there a structural way to accomplish? So they appeared to arch a little bit more over the road. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Sure. Yeah, as long as it was above that 14 foot mark, certainly there definitely could be. And I'm happy to explore the overall shape. I mentioned earlier, I spent 20 years working as a designer. So I consider myself pretty flexible in terms of design. I don't, I'm not an artist that creates something and this says, oh no, it can't be changed. I think that there are many ways to explore the overall form if that's desired to that central pole. I mean, that could potentially be art as well so yeah there's certainly opportunity there that's something I would be happy to explore that would be an issue. Is there a height you would recommend going up to for scale either in the pedestal or the structure or both? I would prefer that the pedestal be at least two feet high if not, you know, 30 inches. And I think that what it does is obviously it elevates the piece, but if an automobile ran into the piece like creating a buffer that took the dock, although I will say I mean obviously a lot of pickup trucks are really tall at this point. So you're probably not going to get a pedestal that is going to take the blow from a very tall pickup truck, but potentially a lot of automobiles that layer of protection would be nice. And what is the estimated distance between those consent-centric rings? Something about visibility, which is what we asked the first team, you know, if we have folks turning in and out, would it be pretty fairly easy for them to kind of see through those rings, if needed? Absolutely and that's that's something where the prance loosensy of that material can be dialed up or down. So it's I've done this. I've used this company before for other projects and the translucency can go, you know, either way. I mean, there's a lot of flexibility. And so if the desire is that this piece maintain a lot of visibility for automobiles, that's certainly an option with this material. So that's kind of the upside of it. And to answer your question, I know like the outer ring, the biggest circle is roughly 18 inches in diameter. So that roughly gives you an idea of the spacing. That might be, I don't know, cheese, you know, the dead space, the open space, that's certainly all flexible. So, I mean, that could be whatever we want in terms of dead air, in terms of just openness. So yeah, there's flexibility there. With the opacity of the material, am I understanding you correctly in that, at the top of the structure, those colored areas could be more opaque than, say, the areas towards the bottom, like a gradient of opacity as you go down the piece so that the lower part cars people can see through it more than they could see through the upper part. Oh, the opacity would be uniform throughout the entire piece. Okay, so if we wanted a ring to be 20% opaque, so 80% see-through, that would have to be uniform to like the entire blue ring, right? Yes. Okay. Okay. And I'm unfamiliar with the resin product, so I know you said that you could throw a rock at it, and it would withstand that. How about people walking up and punching at it or kicking at it? We have pretty well-mannered citizens, but you never know. What? It's located in a really busy section, so that would be my concern for any of the artists here tonight. Yeah, it's a pretty durable material. It's slick. It wouldn't, you know, if someone took a pin knife and carved it through it, unfortunately, there would be, you know, damage there. I don't know that anything would withstand some of taking the knife and carving it into it, but it is used quite a bit as a glass alternative outside. So it's used a lot on bus stops. That's a really popular spot. So bus stops certainly take up a lot of abuse. And so it is a very durable material. Does it fade? I'm sorry. Is it prone to fading? It is UV resistant. Now in 20 years would there be some fading probably? Yes, but that's true of even automotive quality paint. There would be some fading over time, but it is again meant to be used outside, so it is a pretty durable material. And in terms of vandalism, some of that could be discouraged as well by making sure the pedestal is tall enough, right? So that be you know, it's not necessarily super accessible to someone Sure, sure. I mean it could even the design could You know kind of narrow down at the bottom to make it harder to get to at a higher height That could be an option certainly And then the last note I'll make about the visibility aspect is just mentioning that, you know, your option of curving that kind of bar also could help with visibility as well. Kind of having that curve alongside would create a little bit more space between the roadway and the piece. Yes, absolutely. Last question for me I promise and then if anybody else has something please speak up. Talk to me about maintenance. So like washing it, you know, we don't have a super dense public art staff here and by art staff it means it's about 10% of my job. So what is cleaning look like? Is this something with proper instruction our public works team could accomplish to get, we are in Virginia and it is pollen everywhere. So I'm expecting that to be an issue with some of our public art. So what does cleaning and kind of ongoing maintenance look like for something like this? I would suggest yearly power washing and then certainly just inspection to look at, you know, if it was made out of mild steel, any type of abrasion of that powder coat finish to look for any any type of rust to stop that. So they make touch up. And so simply inspecting the piece and power washing it, it is that outer curves I think would not be as appealing to birds to set on. That's always a big thing. It's like, well, birds land on it. And then go to the bathroom on it. Certainly, I could look at birds spikes on the top of that center pole to deter birds, but that's a big one. But simply power washing it, that would be the maintenance. Okay. Any other questions from the commission or council member barnheart? Any questions from you? The other question they have is about climbing on it. Oh climbing on it. Yeah, that gets the pedestal right we could know I'm thinking If I'm reading this correctly They're flat is that right? Are they flat or pedestals? No, no the color colored strips. Are they flat or are they thin? You know, are they, are the colors on the inside and flat? Or are they vertical? Does that make sense to you? Are they, like, are they perpendicular to the steel kind of outer rings or are they kind of inside, like the, the inside of like a, of like an orange peel. Is that how where is the color laid? Does that make sense? Yes. It's in the, I think I'm understanding you. So if you imagine if that tube is a two by two piece of tube, it's splitting that center line. And so it would minimize a foothold there. Okay. Other questions? I wanted to speak about what Ms. Baxe her comment about the opacity. So if I'm looking at this correctly, where you have the white space, that's actually going to be completely transparent. And the colored space is where you'll have the color. So if we're concerned about visibility, we could creatively adjust the images that we're using to make it more visible for the cars. Is that correct? Yes. If I heard... Yeah, the white... Oh. You're good. Go ahead. Oh, so yes. The white area is open in the colored area that trans-luucent can be up. If that answer nothing is the correct answer. Yeah, that's what I think that's my solider's that what you were asking. Nothing's in I'm talking about the, because I don't see any half tones in the images that you have, like that you've done. I just see it in the images that you have, like that you've done. I just see it in the rendering. The half tones would be on the colored bands, correct? Yes, and she's right, it's, please take this with a grain of salt. It's simply a placeholder. I didn't, you know, it takes time to really develop I'm not sure if you can see the picture. Please take this with a grain of salt. It's simply a placeholder. I didn't. You know, it takes time to really develop something that looks really good and I didn't want to just grow images on there and have it not look so great for the presentation. And so that this really would need another layer of design development, but the intention is all the colored areas could have images built in. So, tastefully, of course. I see. I found an example that you have. I have a quick question based on Miss Hollander's question. The image on your bio page of the curve sculpture with the, we think that's the resin. Is that right? Like the bottom two images, it's like semi-circle almost looks like a snail. Is that inside colored part, what you would use on this piece? The same material? No, that is actually black. But the resin is in the top four images. So the company makes the material, makes material for indoor use and outdoor use. It's similar, so yes, that close, the top port is close, but not the bottom. The bottom is glass, which I don't think would be a great gift for this setting. Okay, thank you. And how wide or how thick is the, what do you call it, the resin glass type material? It's a quarter of an inch thick. Oh, I was thinking it might be thicker, but okay. Thank you so much. Yes. And then there was another piece that you had in here that showed kind of sunlight coming through it. So I assume this would operate from another piece. Yeah. So even in daylight, depending on the, we could get some kind of rainbow effect on the road or sidewalks or something. Yes, absolutely. Like that is kind of a nice quality material, depending upon the angle of the sun, great, you get color on the walkway or roadway. All right, final questions. And again, I think, Ms. Kisler, you're going to stick around correct if they think of something after our next presenter. You'll be able to answer. Is that right? Yes, correct. You might know, you're going to stick around correct if they think of something after our next presenter. You'll be able to answer. Is that right? Yes, correct. You might have to yell my name. I'm having a little hard time hearing. So yeah, but I will be on the phone. Well, if it's any consolation we can't tell, you've done it great. So you've done a great job on our end. OK. Good. Good. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I'll leave the line open here if you don't mind muting yourself on that end so you can hear our next presenter and stop sharing your screen. But thank you so much. Thank you. Good. Great. Thank you, Wayne. Thank you. Okay. Pull this down. All right. I'd like to introduce our next presenter. Thank you. Thank I'll pull this down. All right, I'd like to introduce our next presenter who's been waiting very patiently. We have Mr. Harry McDaniel, who is our last presenter. Harry is joining us from Asheville, North Carolina. So thank you for making the trip up here. We certainly appreciate that. And I'm happy to run the presentation and pull up your proposal from here. I do have some images in this slide show of your prior work. So you let me know what order you'd like me to go in or I can pull up the PDF first. What do you think? If you wanna run through the images of past work first, that might be a good start. So I think we did see some of these. Am I correct? Maybe in your RFQ submission as well. Some of them look familiar a little bit. Some of us appear maybe familiar with these. I think all of those were in the RF in the application. So this gives us a good feel for the finish, right? That you would have. Right, and scale. We'll see. And so with a spire of the one in the center, that one is the very tips of that are 30 feet tall. That's the tallest piece I've done. The, let's see, braid is about 17 feet tall. Around the world, I believe is 16 feet tall. So they're all kind of in the same ballpark as what I'm proposing here. Great. All right, I guess I'll pull up your presentation. Everyone just bear with me. And with my models. So I said yes. I was wondering when you would like me to. Where's that one? I hope everybody. See you again. I hope everybody can see what I'm doing. Thank you. Had a chance to look at these close-knout ready? Not yet. So they probably want to, I've been keeping them safely in my office away from Sticky Hands here in town hall. Okay. So my presentation is roughly in the order of the proposal. So I think you will follow me through this. So first of all, thank you for selecting me as a finalist for this project. I'm excited about it. It's been enjoyable to look at the criteria, think about it, and develop a design that I thought would fit well. Also, echo something Matt said. A lot of public art presentations don't have an opportunity for artists to see each other's work, and I really enjoyed being able to see what the other artists did after spending lots of hours and lots of thought energy on it. It's really fun to see how other artists have approached the same issues. And I think you have a really diverse range of proposals, and they all seem good to me, so I think you're going to have a tough choice. For me, right from my first read through of the prospectus, the thing that really stood out to me for this project was scale, making two elements work on opposite sides of a 5-lane road is a pretty big design challenge, and especially with a fair amount of background visual distraction in the area. So in real estate they say the three rules are location location location and for me, with this project I felt like it was scale scale scale. So that was my priority as I was doing my design work. And of course style, color, and other factors play into that ability for two pieces to feel connected from a distance, but my focus was on scale. So with that in mind, I basically tried to develop the largest sculpture I could within a $60,000 budget and still trying to consider the other criteria that were asked for. Thematically, I developed my design around the concept of Ashland being the center of the universe. That was a fun concept to be able to work with and I Hope that in looking at my design you can Can have that sense of the ellipse that sort of is Imagine in your imagination completed between the two pieces and the the sense of four different paths kind of whirling around through that same elliptical path. As a sculptor in all of my design work, I am very concerned with having a piece be interesting from all sides. And with this piece that was certainly something I considered and with the open space and the inner trying design, if it creates a lot of interesting openings and overlaps that if people are walking on the sidewalk, they'll take time and really look up through it and enjoy it in that way. Another concern for me with all of my sculpture design or not all, but many of my sculpture designs is a sense of motion. Some of my sculptures have been kinetic pieces, but even if my stationary pieces I tend to have some sense of motion going through them. A lot of my pieces are sort of inspired by plant-like designs. So they have pieces that are sort of intertwined and generally have some sense of life or some kind of life energy running through them. Let's see. So getting into sort of basic description to each pieces would be about 20 feet tall. I have proposed working with 8 inch and 90 thousand thick aluminum for the walls of the pieces. And I also presented an alternate proposal for increasing that thickness a little bit, which I'll talk about in a minute. I'll see an engineer would determine the footing dimensions. And I would do the installation myself with the help of one or two assistants. Doing most of the work myself is part of how I keep the price or make the size work within the price. Generally, I can work at a little lower rate than a fabrication shop and in many cases produce a better results. As I'm working, I tend to do a lot of both aesthetic and structural adjustments as I go along, just kind of fine tuning the pieces I go. I would be transporting each piece separately on two different trips. I can fit one piece on my truck, which will max out my truck in terms of the size, not so much the weight of the size. So I would either be installing a few days apart or I could bring up the first piece as soon as it's done, install it and then a few months later come back with the second piece. That's something that could be discussed. Let's see on safety issues. That's something I think a lot about. I think about a lot with public pieces and in particular climbing. And with this piece, since the lower eight feet or so are pretty close to vertical, those would be very hard to climb. If someone's determined to climb, they will climb. But those would be very hard to climb. And then with the issue of traffic visibility, as I was developing this design, I went through a number of different designs of traffic visibility. As I was developing this design, I went through a number of different designs getting to this and some of the earlier designs were more solid kind of forms. And I kept thinking about that issue of traffic. In particular, coming out of the Walgreens parking lot and looking left. That would be, to me that's the only spot where that would be a real issue. But I felt like just keeping the lower part of the sculpture open was gonna take care of that. And that basically led to the design, sort of a more open design all the way up. But with this, you would have kind of a straight through view and then also an angled view as you're approaching the street from the Walgreens parking lot. Aluminum is generally a low maintenance material. I typically do a brush finish on it and that holds up well over time. It tends to start out fairly shiny and it develops a really subtle patina that tones it down just a little bit with time, but 20 years later and it still looks good. I have done a number of painted pieces over the years. I've had pieces powder coated. I've tried some other things. Powder coating is great in terms of adhesion and resisting abrasion and that kind of thing. So far as I know, any kind of paint tends to start fading after five years or so. I've had to go back and repaint some of my pieces and I don't enjoy doing maintenance. I will do it rather than let a piece start looking bad, but I tried to design so that very little maintenance is needed. My small model here, let's get up here, we're so easy to see. You're welcome if you wanna set it up here on the diodes. They can see it closer and they can even pass it around. They'd like'd like Thank you To really help visualize the scale issue because I feel like you know when you're looking at something like this It's sort of hard to see it in relationship to the width of the road and The other piece so I hope that helps with that. And as you consider scale, if you're having any trouble visualizing, if you go down to the site and look at the tobacco hut sign, I measured that. That's slightly over 14 feet tall and it's about a foot above the sidewalk there. So the top of the tobacco hut sign is basically 15 feet above where the foot of the sculpture would be, unless it's on an elevated footing. But I think that can help visualize the size of a piece there. So my larger model is basically like a zoomed-in view. It just gives you a little more detail. It helps you really understand the sculptural form. Oh, I'll put that up here. And in that case, the square at the bottom would be just sort of the top part of the footing. It would be attached to the footing with one bolt inside each of the four strands where they come down, and the bolts would be hidden inside the pieces with a little cover plate. I've done a few sculptures that way. I feel like it makes a graceful connection to the ground and also it provides some protection from vandalism by hiding the bolts. provide some protection from vandalism by hiding the bolts. As far as timeline, I expect it to take about a year to complete. I would aim to move it along a little faster, but it is pretty rare that a project goes faster than I expect. I think a year is a pretty good estimate on that. I emphasize that my ability to produce a very large sculpture is based on the fabrication all happening in my studio. Again, I can do the work at a little more reasonable rates and a lot of fabrication shops. So then going to my additional proposals on wall thickness, while the thicknesses I've proposed would be safe, structurally sound, having a little bit of extra thickness would make it more resistant to vandalism if somebody comes up and hits it with a hammer or something, it just thicker walls resist that more. So for another $2,000, I can increase the thickness of the walls. And I hate to even add on that kind of ridiculously small addition, but I pretty much maxed out the budget just trying to get it to that size and so I still like to do that. Can I ask what is your ideal thickness? The thickness as I gave in that supplemental proposal would be ideal in my opinion. So I believe that was I think what I said was a quarter inch for the first foot, three sixteenths up to like six feet, then eighth inch for the next eight feet and then 90 thousands for the very top part. The bottom part is where we need the most strength to top part, having it light way it actually makes it less likely to tip if it were going to tip. But one thing I'll also emphasize is with this design, the center of gravity, some are great about here. We'll be close, on this side a little bit, but it would all mean over the footing. So even if this piece is not bolted down, as the model will stand up, it's very stable design. Then the last thing would be the, my second supplemental puzzle would be for lighting. And I know that in the perspective, you specified that lighting either on or in the sculpture would be desirable. And I agree that lighting would be great. And I prioritized scale to make it, for me to make it work best for the site. But I'm certainly willing to add lighting. And I've done some with lighting on previous sculptures. It would take a fair amount of research and experimentation to work out just the right approach with that. But my initial thought is to use commercial string lighting, running up inside the sculpture with holes drilled to the surface, particularly concentrated right at the upper tips to create sort of a bright spot at the tip, going along with the theme of orbits and to give the sense of like comments or asteroids going through the sky that sort of thing. So there would be the bright spots at the tip and then trailing away if you were in fewer lights as it went down and probably could also reinforce that with colors or using a sequencer on the lights to get some pulsing or that kind of effect but probably going with hotter colors right at the tip and cooler as it goes down. So again that would require more thought but I'll say I proposed an additional $10,000 to add the lighting and that is pretty much it. Do you want to put on the animated walk around? Yeah, and I also have the close up that you provided of the footing. Do you want me to pull that up as well first? Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure if I really needed to include this bit. Yeah, I'm not sure if I really needed to include this, but if we, I thought if we got talking about possibly moving it at some point in the future, I wanted to emphasize that the four feet of the sculpture will be connected to stabilize it for moving. And so you can see the bars connecting those. I'm just going to loop this display or this animation that he provided but are you done presenting or are you open for questions? I would like everyone to just leave this up here and please ask away. Thank you. It's a great sculpture. How big is the platform? How tall? The way I've represented it would be about six inches. I mean, I'm flexible in terms of making it taller if that were desirable. It would be money because it's fair amount of concrete, but it probably wouldn't make a huge difference. Thank you. And would you recommend, it would need to be concrete if you were to increase it just because of the weight of the sculpture, is that? I'm not really sure how, I guess, I mean, I guess there could actually be an aluminum box. I think concrete is probably the preferable way to go. Also for issues that Virginia was discussing in terms of a car hitting it, concrete would be better. Yeah, I was just thinking as well as if you had a taller platform that would provide an opportunity for signage of some kind perhaps like Ashland Virginia center of the universe, you know something that kind of immediately kind of centralizes you and gives direct meaning to the shape of it right for folks coming through towns. Yeah. I'm not familiar with building metal sculptures. With your supplemental plan, you mentioned the thicknesses of the metal as it goes up. So at the bottom, it would be thicker and it would get lighter thinner as it goes up. How does that happen? Is this, is each face of each shape a continuous piece of metal? Or are we talking sheets, different sheets of different thicknesses, being joined together somehow as you go up? I think yes and yes. Yeah, each surface is continuous, but you can't necessarily buy it in that length. So they have to be welded to create that length. And so what I tend to do for a bigger piece like this is on each side as it goes up, one side might come up about a foot with the thicker material and then transition to the next material, be welded there and ground down. For the next side, I try to offset that by a little bit. Either a little bit, a few inches lower, a few inches higher to kind of stagger those joints, just structurally that makes it less likely that something's going to crack in the future and have a kind of a weak point where it could fail. So each face of this is multiple sheets welded together and then surfaced on the outside to look smooth and continuous. But on the inside, it kind of steps from... Right, yeah. If you were to add that commercial kind of LED string lighting, what's the life on that and how is that? If one, if some strand burns out or something, what does that look like? I'd have to do more research to give you a really good answer to that. But looking for a good quality product, going with a commercial grade, let's see. I did, in doing a little research, what I read for one product was it predicted a 50,000-hour lifetime, and if I calculated that out correctly, if it were burning 24 hours a day, there would be about five years, but since it would only be coming on at night, and then there could be some variability in terms of whether it had a timer and shut off at midnight or something. But presumably it would last at least 10 years according to their prediction, and with research I might come up with something that's better than that, but that would be a ballpark anyway. And then I assume you would, when you get into that design phase, would be thinking longer of like how the structural, so you could change them out somewhat easily, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think to be able to put them in in the first place, but then to be able to change them out, I'd have to put little ports basically along it that they would have cover plates and I would make them as inconspicuous as possible but I would definitely be thinking about somebody in the future having to replace the light strings. I have another question. Oh, I had missbacks because I want you all to ask the question. Sure. What type of maintenance do you feel this would require? Just general power washing from time to time? Typically, I recommend annual or well, pressure washing as needed. Annual peak at the anchor bolts to make sure everything looks good or just a general inspection to see if anything's been dented or graffiti or that sort of thing. But aside from that, it's as needed, you know, I don't anticipate any regular maintenance. And would you be open at all to fine-tuning the shape of that arc if we wanted it to arc a little bit more over the road if that were possible depending on the exact. I'm open to talking about that. In designing it, I brought it pretty close to the 15 foot clearance limit. I think it could probably come down a little bit more. It might be able to come just a little more over the road, but I don't think I'd be able to change it a whole lot and still keep that 15 foot height. But I'm up into talking about that. Thank you. And if it was raised up on a higher pedestal, it would kind of naturally create more of a heart rate. It could have a different arc if it were up higher, yeah. What about the tips of the arch or the strands? It's very delicate looking. It looks very, but would there be a way if there was interest of kind of rounding those or tapering those off a little bit rather than having that kind of blunt edge or there was interest there? You mean up at the very top. I could do something different with that. Yeah, I'm open to discussing that. And then in terms of the finish, you know, we've asked the others, um, glare from the sun, right? So what do you think about the possibility or any risks in here with that? I know you said it kind of like starts off kind of shiny and then comes down as it kind of weather's a little bit. Right. But I mean, a brush and aluminum is definitely reflective. Um, so there would be light coming off of it. Because the pieces twist and curve, the light's going to be going in all different directions. It's not just a giant sheet of aluminum shining light in one direction. So in previous installations with other pieces of this size, people haven't complained about light being a problem. So I don't anticipate complained about light being a problem. So I don't anticipate that that would be a problem. I have a question about the pedestals. So with deep respect to your design, do you think, because I mean, the way I look at it, you've got almost the center point of the ellipse is at street level, right? So you get the sense that it's continuing to curve like underneath the road. Do you think artistically that the pedestal would detract from that, from what you've done? I don't think it would as I've represented it. Having a bigger pedestal, I would kind of have to think about that a little bit, it might. I don't know if I see that as a problem. It's not a trivial consideration, right? It's gonna change something about it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, so. Other questions? Ms. Miller, would this sculpture or any of the options here before us tonight? Are they would they be sitting in grass or are they sitting in the sidewalk area? That would depend. I mean that would kind of once we get further on down and it would depend. I mean I wouldn't imagine any of them will be sitting in grass. There would be some sort of concrete footing that whatever the base is, whether that's a pedestal that is two feet tall or four feet tall or 18 inches would sit on top of. I'm thinking about like a zero turn mower like banging it, having the opportunity to bang into this. It would sit high enough off grass, like it probably, but we could look at when we get to the site plan aspects, depending on the final design, that would be something to talk with the artist and our engineers about as they design the sidewalk around it and maybe some landscaping or something to, as a buffer, there's a lot of options. Okay, Thank you. And my experience having at least like six inches of elevation tends to keep the moors away. I've had to repair sculptures in places where they've been a little lower. So are these all well together so it's one piece? Yes. So if one part was damaged, what does that mean for, I guess, the whole? How would we address that? That would be pretty specific to whatever the damage was and sort of how high up on it it was and how extensive and that kind of thing. You know, if a car or truck runs into the sculpture, it's probably going to do some pretty serious damage. And even if it's just hitting one of the strands, it's probably going to tweak the whole sculpture a little bit and affect the others. So yeah, when you were talking earlier about a truck dinging, I don't think there's much dinging. I think it's heavy damage if a truck hits us. I was trying not to make anyone panic, but clearly that's it. I have a question. Would you actually have two questions? Did you name the sculpture? And then my second question is, would you be open to any lettering name the sculpture? And then my second question is would you be open to any lettering on the sculpture such as, you know, the center of the universe, you know, or would that disrupt your vision? I would be highly resistant. Okay. Okay. And have you named it or I have I have not given it a name. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay Other questions Okay, well, I'm sure Mr. McDaniel is gonna stick around unless he's trying to go back to Asheville right now I Mr. McDaniel is going to stick around unless he's trying to go back to Asheville right now. I can stick around a little bit. Okay, yeah, no pressure. I'll follow up with you regardless. If you need to get on the road, I completely understand. We can't completely understand. And so let's open it up to questions, and especially in discussion, especially with the idea that Mr. McDaniel maybe is not going to be here for the full extent of it, but I'm going to leave it to you, Ms. Bax, to maybe kick off the discussion about the three different designs. And if anyone wants to kind of jump in with their thoughts and feelings either way, but the floor is yours. Thank you. We do have a couple of Ashlyn's citizens, I the floor is yours. Thank you. We do have a couple of Ashland citizens I'm hoping they are in the audience. Do either of you would either of you like to say something or comment on the sculptures you've seen this evening? Please. Yes, if you don't mind stepping to the microphones of Vague, we can get it on the recording. I know it's a little intimidating but we'll take that. Would you mind stating your name and what the street that you're here, Robertson, the 707 South Center Street. Thank you. So I'd like to congratulate all the artists for bringing their concepts here. I've found all of them interesting in different ways. I have no idea what art is for new mis-appality. I've seen it, but I can't define it and I can't say what is best for a particular Community Having said that I'll look at the first presentation and it It's exuberant, I think. It's memorable and as the Martin Agency always says, you have to fight invisibility. And that's one way I think it's memorable in its presentation, I think. But I'm also thinking it's familiar to all of us, so we probably warm up to it because it has all those familiar elements. Having said that, however, I noticed that in the background of the presentation number one, there is a, what appears to be a church with a cross on top. I think in time, maybe it's already here, that it would be like putting a Confederate soldier up there in time, it might be. That time may already be here, but there would be a question for other faiths about why that's there, I liked number one. At first I thought I didn't like it at all, but I do like it. Minus the church symbolism in there, and there probably should be another element in there. I wouldn't want to see a yellow jacket on top of that church, but there might be some other way to express a community feeling toward it. I think the second presentation has a lot of possibilities in terms of, but it's incomplete. We don't know what the secondary not do over, but lay over, I guess, what the layers would be, what the familiar aspects of the town would be in those things, so it's kind of hard to get a feel forward. But having said that, all things are up to debate. The third presentation I found very interesting. It's not controversial, it's interesting. I think the lighting is a big part of it. I think it always, I mean, it's an important part of it. So if you have to spend 10 or 20 or whatever it is, it has to be something that fights invisibility and that is memorable to people. Because once you die by anything, any monument, any kind of sculpture, anything, if you drive by it a hundred times, it would be like it's a post office box there or something you won't, you may not remember. So I think I'll have a tough job in trying to select something that will convey the hard and soul of the community if that's what you want to reveal. Certainly in presentation one, you have the train and you have the bicycle although we know we kind of know what the bicycle is. We don't have a walker but we certainly have a falling, a fall line trail that's going through town now. Now, and so all those questions come up to me. I wish we had a brilliant person who could tell us what we how we should proceed on that. But I think all those presentations have great possibilities. And you, I don't envy you and your job. And my gather would be as you move forward on this, whatever you come up with, you're going to have to, I would say there would be a wall there from council or someone because there, although we have a lot of artists in town and a lot of darn good ones, I think. Some of them, one or two of them are famous, so maybe they could help out on just an impression on that. But I wouldn't want to choose any of this, especially when council is thinking about an arc, an arc. That comes to my mind, St. Louis, the kind of thing like that. But we're not St. Louis, you know, we're not that. The thing that we emphasize is that the trains, we get put less emphasis on the fact that we're the only community in the United States that has two of the national bike trails running through it. We have to explain that to everybody, except when you see it at the, usually in the fall when those folks come in having already written 3,000 miles or more some of them with their packs on their bags, the bikes and everything like that. Ashland is interesting for a lot of different ways. You just have to think about it and find out if what you choose are recommend to counsel and believing there be there's nothing more controversial than art. Nothing except religion. And have already brought that part up and there. So I think you have a tough job. I would expect pushback no matter what you do, because nobody agrees on what art is or how it conveys. But I'm very interested that all the folks that presented the night took a shot at it. It's not a big budget. 60,000 bucks is not a big budget. 60,000 bucks is not a big budget, especially I think some of the artists here in town, I can take a couple of them who have done a couple of four million, five million dollars. I know one that's done that. So it's not a lot of money, and the ideas are hard to present. Ashville is known as anybody that's ever been to Ashville, know that it just lavishes in artists. Artists, you can't walk down the street without finding a few artists, I don't think. And they were everywhere. So I just wish you very much luck on this and expect to have more vociferous pushback as you move forward. I'm just observing it and I think everybody did their best, took their best hit on this thing and you all just have to take your best hit. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate your comments and that's a tough, tough dialogue to follow. So I'm going to open it up to the commissioners up here to share some thoughts and not exactly sure how we should move forward with this. Go ahead. Yeah, so I had a similar concern about the church, but from what I understand, given your appendix, that you can interchange elements in there. So we could switch that out for something else. And that's clear. Yes. Okay, that's what I want. I want to say that I think the town would be lucky to have any of these three proposals. these are all fantastic. They all have different strengths to them. And I love the fact that we have the range of representational to abstract, to kind of a blend in the middle with the half-ton photography and incorporated into the abstract sculpture. So let me say that I think the process of getting here from town staff, town council, what we've been through, this has been like getting shot out of a rocket. When did we have our first meeting? October or something like that? Yeah, so this is all coming from trying to craft some kind of policy, putting together our first RFQ in a way that respects the artist, you know, and trying to at least in some way compensate you for all the wonderful creative energy you've put into this. So, oh, I can say whatever we come up with out of these, I'll be happy. So I'm very excited to be here at this stage. Thank you. Thank you all of you. If you don't mind, I have a question for you all. So with that arch in mind, you mentioned you could change the shape of your piece to make it more arch-like. And I'm wondering if you could almost change the orientation of it so that it arches with artwork underneath and on top of it, so as you drive through it almost, it feels like an arch and then there's kind of art on the inside. Does that almost like a tunnel effect. Does that make sense? Where it's maybe a little bit more less busy as you're coming onto it. So you have all the visual clutter of the vape shop and all the other stuff. And then the kind of artistic, the painting, mural elements are actually observed from the side. So as you're driving through it or walking past it, you can appreciate it, but from far back you still get this idea of an arch and this center of the universe theme. Yes, and that instead of this facing oncoming traffic, it beat to the side. Like the imagery, be kind of on the inside and on the outside. I had a lot of considerate, but it would be a matter of by doing some drawings and figuring out what, just like that. You know, a lot of times things look perfect if I had a lot of, when you make a miniature drawing, you know, a thousand told that, but I would certainly love to try. Yeah, I was just thinking of some of the concerns where like all the visual stimulation are around the piece that if you're looking at it east-west, turning it this way makes it more simple looking, like cleaner and then kind of coming through it or walking past it, you get some of that really detailed, vibrant, energetic. I'm a real noticeable thing. You know, I couldn't help but to think that people might take a picture in front of it or something like that. The concern would be driving through it and quickly seeing the imagery, you know, that stuff sort of gets lost. I think that I'd still been the drawing just to see if it's on Chrome, but I would rather make it thinner and make it much more the other way so that you could have the visual of driving in and coming out. Yeah, and you could do painted elements on the thin side as well. It would just be, it would present more simple or clean because the dimensions would be more kind of delicate as you come onto it. Is that make sense? Am I making sense? Yes. Okay. and then man had holes in it so that at night, if it was a size more visible light, the stars would still twinkle in the headlights. But we decided it was two, it was two bison, it was two crazy looking. We had to have a rest area. And that rest area was the universe center. Okay. I have a question for sort of you I think. Okay. Miss Miller. What are our options and the rest of the commission may not wish to do this but I really appreciated this citizen input. Thank you so much. What are our options for not basing our decision on, so it's an input alone, but just getting community feedback. Where have these three designs been exposed to the community only in this meeting tonight? I would love to have us all consider the opportunity to be able to share it with the community and receive more feedback. So it's not this, you know, the idea that this sculpture just... I'm not sure how did this come from. You know, I think people are becoming aware of us, the Public Art Commission here in town. So, you know, what are our options for that? In terms of getting feedback on these pieces specifically, all three of them, that would require you to defer any kind of decision, the seafening, and then do kind of a community engagement process, which could be any, I mean, to be frank, having another meeting with more time is probably not gonna get you the feedback that you're looking for based on my staff experience. It would require a very concerted in the community focus groups. And while I am this, this offices number one cheerleader for thorough community engagement, given the decisions that have to be made in the timeline. What I would suggest as a compromise is for, and I actually think you're going to get more input if you're able to select a general concept and a final artist this evening, provide some guidance or revisions on that design, and then call a special meeting to review that final design where you solicit input on that design. And so you have one proposal out there that you're finally getting community, concerted community input on. It allows folks especially who may not be artists themselves are trained in the arts. It's less overwhelming or intimidating to kind of have one direction and then provide more specific feedback on that direction. Can I speak to that? Sure. I would think as an artist that would be a very frustrating process to go through because if they are willing to work with us to revise their designs and you go through that whole process and then at the end of that process you open it up to the public to revise again I myself as an artist wouldn't want to go through that process. Let me just say that. Well, you can do it in a different order. So two things on that is whatever, if you choose a concept tonight, we put it out for comment. And say, this is the general concept. What do you think? What would you like to see different about it? What are your ideas? This is the artist, this is the medium they work in. Yeah, I think, I think that- And that informs those revision converse. Sure, I think if we're gonna open it up to the public, the time to do it is at the beginning of this, not to go through two rounds of it. Yes, and with that, you know, clearly communicating to the public as well as we always try to do, is we wanna hear your feedback but just because it's provided doesn't mean it's 100% going to be implemented it will be taken under advisement right it's ultimately up to you all and then our town council what the final design is and the thing is that this stage of the process I mean if we had if we had more time it really would be fun to put all three of them out there into the public and create interest and awareness of what we are doing as a public car commission and all that but we don't have the timeline for that but at least if we have one that we choose and then put that out there And I think they should also see if we could can we And I think they should also see if we could, can we keep these models, those hours? Because I think it would be great for people to see what we had to, you know, compare and have some sort of, I don't know what that event looks like, but yeah, and invite that public input. But do it before putting whoever the artist is through the rigors of having to take all this into consideration, redesign it, and then be faced with another round of that. Sure. Do, to my fellow arts commissioners, Ms. Ball, do you have, without revealing what your preference is? Do you have a clear preference? Do you have, would you be able to make a decision between these three this evening? I am kind of between two. Okay. Mr. Burrell. I would be, I would feel comfortable voting tonight, yes. Okay. Ms. Hollander. I'm between two, but I would feel comfortable voting. Ms. Severin. I am more troubled by my decision. I think there are just three wonderful designs, but obviously we do have to pick one. So I would love to hear what the other commissioners think and I am having a little bit harder of a time because they're wonderful designs. So I'll share your sentiment. Okay. Can I talk about my ideas on the three different ones. So the lively Harper design to me feels the most ash ones and that probably is kind of self-evident. And I would assume out of the three would probably have the biggest community acceptance because it's familiar. There's nothing. I mean, Ashland Richmond, very familiar with murals. This is sort of a mural sculpture kind of interpretation with some really cool Ashland, Richmond, very familiar with murals. This is sort of a mural sculpture kind of interpretation with some really cool Ashland architecture. And will there be people who object? I think they would object more to something being left out than something being put in. But I think that's a very strong contender for just the sentiment of what Ashland is. The other hand, I think that Mr. Daniel's sculpture is the strongest from a sheer presence perspective because of the scale. At the same time, Ashland is not the place you think about abstract art, but we can change that, right? So we are, this is sort of a new, well not a new turning point, but in all of the, I was on the branding committee and, you know, we've been through several iterations of asking what Ashland is and it's this conundrum, this paradox, this looking back and looking forward. And so maybe this is just the thing we need to break out of some routine imagery and get people to have a very different idea of Ashlands from all sorts of perspectives. So I think they would be totally appropriate to pick that one. And then as far as Miss Kisler's presentation, I've seen half-tone imagery. A lot of times you'll see it on t-shirts, but half-tone photography, down at Virginia Beach, there's some granite memorials down there that have the half-tone photographs in them, and it's a really elegant way to do imagery. And it's not jarring being all these different colors because it's monochromatic. And it fits in with her rings. So any one of those three, I think, for different reasons is an appropriate choice. I would just say from the perspective of when we were going through this and I had given Martha some of my ideas is that the things should be visible from as far away as possible. When you come off of I-95, when you go in to get gas or whatever, right, you want it to be like, oh, there's something down there. And when you are walking next to it, it should also be engaging. And one of my dear friends, Tom Wright, was a sculptor in Richmond. And he said exactly what you said is that sculpture should be interesting from every angle. And you certainly is that sculpture should be interesting from every angle and you're certainly does that so and if we maybe I don't know if there's anything that could be put up close to it that would be maybe just some sort of in little informative sign or something like that but You know the more interest there is when you're walking by it, the better. What the Harvard-Lively sculpture does that the others don't do is it kind of teases you that all of this stuff that you're seeing is straight ahead, down there, quarter mile, down the rarer tracks. And Ashwin has a very big problem that I know people who work on the east side of Route 1, who have never crossed Route 1. I know people who work on the west side of Route 1, between Route 1 and the rarer tracks, who have never gone one business further west than where they work. They leave and they come in but they have no idea. They're working in the middle of England Street and they have no idea that there's railroad tracks and all that stuff down there. So it's a tough choice but there's not because there's three bad options but because there's three great options. that, because there's three great options. Does anyone that is waffling between two want to talk about which two and what you're thinking is? Sure, I will. I'm intrigued by the third sculpture primarily because of the scale of it. I think the scale of it really speaks to what we want to do. And it's the only one that truly gives that arcing over the roadway. And it's a big road. Five lanes of traffic is, that's a tough location to deal with. So I'm intrigued with that sculpture. However, to me it lacks, I appreciate the abstract sense of it and I prefer abstract paint a little bit and I prefer abstract paintings to anything literal. So I like abstract but I'm not sure that we're going to have to reconcile this with the citizens of Ashland and I'm struggling that there's no Ashland element in there. I don't know that. And maybe that's not important, but to me I feel like it just lacks Ashland. But maybe, as Mr. Burrell said, we need that. We need that punch to push us. So I'm torn between that one and Miss Kistler's sculpture. And I feel like there's a lot of latitude to incorporate Ashland imagery, but in a more subtle fashion. And I like that. And it's colorful. But it seems to lack the scale and the presence, although she seemed to indicate that she could get that a little bit taller. She could maybe work with the arching over the road a little bit. So that's why I'm conflicted. Okay. And just don't interrupt you, but I put this up here as kind of a reminder that this is in the RFP. And of course this can be an art represented in abstract and literal ways too, but just kind of your guide posts. Is Hollander, did I interrupt you? As an artist, I have a hard time articulating myself in words. So if I could color it, it would be better. You want me to go get you some crayons? We got some. Somebody from Ashland, I feel like it means different things. Everybody has their different experiences here. And I am familiar with all those things Ashland and there's nothing that I would like more than a lively mural or anything here. I really love the big impact, though, of Mr. Bic Daniel's sculpture. And I feel like by it not saying anything you kind of make up your own story of what you're experiencing. And you know, images it's hard to choose which one you are limited on all these different things with what you're going to put on these sculptures. If you are to put something on there. And when we put out the RFP for the archway, I was thinking of the archway. And I feel like something that is really abstract would be completely different and you're either gonna love it, you're gonna not love it. But either way, it evokes that sort of emotion where somebody's going to talk about it and they're going to remember it. They're gonna remember it. Good or bad? Good or bad? Good or bad? Others that are weighing? Ms. Ball? Okay. So I love Ms. Kisler's work. I'm a little worried about the durability in that area. No, no, but I love how playful it is, and I love the color, and I love the idea of adding the images. And then, but I, similar to what Arthur said, I feel like the lively harbor design is very much, I feel like it is very representative of the community and it would feel familiar and comfortable to people. So, you know, and again, I do love the scale of Mr. McDaniel's piece. Mr. McDaniel, I don't want to offend you. It makes me uneasy because it makes me think of twisted train rails, you know, close to train tracks. So that was my first thought that popped into my head. But with the addition of the holes and the light, I feel like it would be beautiful to look at, and it would take that imagery out of my head. But yeah, I mean, it's a really difficult decision because everything is so beautiful. So yeah, I mean, another undecided human here. One thing I will just throw out there to consider So yeah, I mean another undecided human here. One thing I'll just throw out there to consider is this is one of many projects, right? This is your first one, which also makes this hardest one to probably do. We are, you know, untraining wheels right now as a commission. And many of you, most of you I would imagine, are still figuring out what it is to be in a public position where you're going to make a decision and people are going to react to it, either to your face or on the Facebook page. And that is hard, right? To stick your neck out there, as Ms. Barnhart wells know, and I know, and everyone who kind of works in government knows. But think about just because you love one of the designs, doesn't mean you're not gonna have an opportunity to potentially work with this artist in the future. So what I would, my guidance to you would say, yes, look at the merits of the design and what captures Ashland to you, but think very specifically about the location, because that's not changeable, right? And so what is the right, what is the piece that both embodies the essence with some revisions, but also fits appropriately in that space. And then if there is an opportunity, there are going to be opportunities in the future for other placement of pieces and parks and pieces in town clauses of more mural pieces, more sculpture pieces, there's still opportunity here to work with some of these artists who have presented proposals that may not get this specific project, right? And their style and work may be better suited to another location within town. So trying to take some of the dauntingness kind of off your weighing on your head and that this is actually like a crack in the door of an opportunity to pick this piece yes but also think about ooh that one didn't make it for this one but it would be great here something like that would be awesome in this location and so you're just kind of starting this journey. So there's a lot of opportunity here to work with other artists going forward. Something. I appreciate you saying that, because that is helpful. One thing I had written down before I came and saw everyone's presentations was like classic and timeless. So one concern I do have with the imagery of Mr. Lively and Mr. Harper's piece is, is it timeless? You know, and I was listening to everything everyone said and just agreed so much with the scale of Mr. McDaniels. So, you know, just thinking of, like you just said, where the location, timelessness of the piece, I don't know, those are just some thoughts I'm having in trying to make a decision. So that's just some input I have. If anyone at any time feels like they're ready to make a motion, they can. There's no magic word that has to happen. The worst thing that could happen to you individually is that it's denied. And we go back to discussing. But if anybody feels very strongly about one design, you're welcome to make a motion. If it gets a second, it goes for a vote. If the vote passes, then you have a proposal by majority. If it doesn't pass, then you go back to having another discussion. I'll be happy to do that. I'm not suggesting you do. I just want to declare because we're all kind of you're all kind of me. I'll be happy to do that for for the consideration of scale visibility through the piece. interest in how it looks, you know, as you move around it, I want to make a motion to approve Mr. McDaniel's sculpture. Approved just one second before we do a second. Approved as is or approved with revisions. We can do with revisions. Yes. Okay. Is there a second? I second. Okay. I'm going to take a vote now. Miss Severin. What are my options? I can either agree or agree to move forward with Mr. McDaniel's or no. And that doesn't mean it wouldn't come up again. It just means you're not ready, but it could still pass by majority. Okay, so if I, so, okay. Yeah, your name? No. Okay, Ms. Hollander? Yeah. Ms. Bax. Yeah, Mr. Brill. Yeah. Ms. Mr. Brill. Yes. Ms. Ball. I'm not ready. Nay. Okay. The motion passes three to two by majority. So the concept that the commission by majority has chosen to move forward with revisions is Mr. McDaniel's proposal. Okay. All right, I look forward to working continuing to work with you all. Ms. Baxter, do you wanna say a note of thanks to the other artists? Absolutely. Mr. Harper, Mr. Lively, thank you for a wonderful presentation. Your thoughtful work that you presented to us tonight, you clearly understand Ashland community. Hopefully we'll get an opportunity to work with you in the future. In a location that really allows your art piece to speak to the community, where it won't be overshadowed. So thank you very much. Thank you for that. I'd also like to thank Ms. Kisler. Thanks for hanging with us through our technology issues and I personally absolutely love your artwork. I really hope that we have an opportunity to work with you in the future as well. I'm intrigued by the process and the techniques that you used and I think I think your piece was it was a tough challenge for me personally. So thank you for bearing with us and sharing your beautiful artwork. Mr. McDaniel, we look forward to working with you as we fine tune this sculpture. I think for me personally, the decision came down to art should hit you in the face. And what Miss Hollander said was, it's going to art evokes emotion from people. They love it, they hate it. And I think as we want people to sit at that busy, busy intersection and look at five lanes of traffic in front of them and go, what the heck is that? What? We need to go down and look at that piece. And the whole point is to try to get people to come down to this part of town and to see that there's more to Ashland and I think that piece because of its sheer scale is going to help do that. So thank you. And I'd just like to offer one quick comment as the staff person. Thank you all to the artist. This is kind of my first outing as a public art staffer. You all made it very straightforward for me by getting things into me on time and being so professional and motivated and I really appreciate that. And from I'll echo what Chairwoman Back said to Mr. Harper, Mr. Lively, we look forward to working with you again in the future. I know that we had kind of casual conversations one-on-one with some of the commission members, as well as some council, that your work definitely has a place in Ashland somewhere. And so we look forward to kind of that continued opportunity and to you, Ms. Kisler, as well. And the opportunity just to get introduced to your work because you're in Ohio. And so we really look forward to any opportunity to work together in the future with you all. And Mr. McDaniel, we will be in touch to kind of talk through the revision process. You can look forward that to me. And I will put this out kind of as a public comment and get some feedback so hold on to your hats and then we will work together to figure out a special meeting date to revise, to look at the final design depending on when Mr. McDaniel can have those revisions to us. Sound good to everyone? Sounds good. Thank you. And you all have been so patient and you are welcome to leave, especially if you have to drive to Asheville, North Carolina right now. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited about moving forward with it. Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Kisler wanted me to share. She says, thank you for the opportunity. I love listening to the decision process and I appreciate all the kind words. I'd love to work in Ashland in the future. Okay, we're going to make the rest of this as quickly as possible because to make the rest of this as quickly as possible because Christie's trying to go home. Let me just end my zoom. And the last thing I'll say is back before we move on. A plot of kudos to you all. That was tough. And it was your first time. And I think everyone had some really thoughtful things. I'm very excited about this. It is going to be a really new kind of piece for Ashland, which I think actually, I mean, if you want people to start coming to your meetings, this is going to develop some interest. I got to tell you, I did not think I was going to pick that piece. That's what happens sometimes, yeah. Mm-hmm. When you talked about scale, I was like, you're hitting it on the head, nail on the head. Like, and I might just add too. The other pieces were so wonderful. But a lot of them, I wanted to get up close and personal. You know, and perhaps, you know, while I do still want to get up close and personal, look at this, the other ones I would have to stop my car and get out and whatever. So I really can see them out other places in town. You guys have had a tough decision. That was tough. They were beautiful pieces. Ms. Kisler's piece, there were so many things that I loved about it, but those mirrored circles to get to what you were thinking Ms. Barnhardt, I'm thinking, yeah, you could put a foot there and you could put a foot there and you could climb up that. And you know, that's the last thing that we need is a lawsuit because somebody fell off of it. Well, that's what's insurance is for. As our lovely town manager sometimes says, I have train tracks and a swimming pool in my town. I think we can handle a sculpture in terms of risk. Yes. So, glad I'm not on Facebook. Yeah. Well, you know, it's all part of the process. And look at it this way, this is going to be, this has the potential to be iconic, right, because of the scale, right? And so it's definitely attention grabbing and think of a fun process so great job okay missbacks would you like to move us to the next piece on our agenda hey we're gonna move on to the reports we have public art master plan first action oh oh I'm sorry I looked right over that this will be quick. OK. What are we? Are we going to approve this? Potentially. So I'll tee it up if you'd like. So this is just kind of the second iteration of the draft master plan, kind of in a more designed format. Really all I need from you all is kind of, if you have any kind of big wholesale edits like massive structural changes or anything to it. I'm guessing maybe that's probably not going to be the case because we went through that but if you thought of something but really this is just kind of a checking the box moment so that we can I can put it out for public comment at this point. So this version doesn't mean you won't have another slice at the pie to be able to edit it a little bit, but this is just a process to approve the version that I shared with you so that we can start receiving public feedback. I make a motion that we approve the plan as Ms. Miller presents it. Hi, second. Ms. Severin. Yay. Ms. Hollander. Yay. Ms Yay miss back. Yay. Mr. Brill. Yay miss ball. Yay. All right motion passes unanimous So I'll put that out for public comment both online as well as At our whenever our next meeting is we will Receive feedback on that just a quick note on the The map that is kind of in the last section. I'm still working on that. Just a quick note on the map that is kind of in the last section. I'm still working on that iteration. What it is likely going to be for so that it can be updated because we're going to hopefully be adding more art is we have a app function on our visitor-focused website where you can create tours and put landmarks with pictures and descriptions. So if the internet would work, you would be able to see it. But I've started to create a map of public art in that app that can be brought up on mobile. It can give you routes to and from the different pieces rather than creating kind of a stagnant PDF that will be outdated the minute I save it. So that's kind of the plan for that piece. Okay, that's it on that. Thank you. Staff report is that a separate item? Does anyone on the commission have anything they'd like to share before I kind of talk through my report? Okay. I'm not going to go detail by detail. Everybody has the report. If they're interested, they can kind of go into it. I'll just call out a couple quick things. Ashland Fourth Friday starts this Friday at 4 p.m. in downtown. So hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can we'll have a good turnout for that. And as well as Saturday soundtracks as launched at Spring 2024 season where you'll find free live music downtown every Saturday. Some of you may have heard that town manager initially recommended not to fund that program going forward. It's all funded through the spring season but this would apply to the season starting in October after hearing public comment from Chris Ray, who is the kind of organizer of this, a motion was made by Vice Mayor Hodges to fund that program at $4,000. The request is at eight with the request that it'd be organized through Downtown Ashland Association rather than through private business. So it is likely that that program will continue and that Downtown Ashland will be able to find sponsorships to fill in that other $4,000. So if you hear people in the community saying it's canceled, tell them you know please help share the word and let us let them know that we're working on it. Ashland Farmers markets back for the season, those poor folks have had very rainy days so far, hopefully the weather turns for them soon. And then the Ashland Strawberry Fair is next Saturday. We are sponsoring the Kids Zone this year. That doesn't mean we're doing all the activities. I just want to say that for, we're sponsoring it, but we are setting up a booth in the Kids Zone this year with the idea that rather than handing out brochures that people reluctantly take, we have an activity. So Emmy, Richard, and I, our Parks and Rec Manager, are going to be doing some rock painting, temporary tattoos. If you're around and you want to come by for 90 minutes or an hour or however long, we could really use some volunteers to help man that booth. It's a great opportunity to kind of socialize the idea of the art commission. Our Parks and Rec Committee will also be kind of pitching in as well. I sent out a sign up genius this morning. So again, if you're around, please sign up for a slot. We depreciate it. And then Tom council is set to vote on the FY 25 budget at their meeting on June 4th, which if approved, I just want to call out that the new budget includes $50,000 for public art. So that gives you another $50,000 July 1 to start thinking about what you'd like to do with that. And along those lines, that's going to coincide well with once we get our master plan kind of an attenitive approved process, we'll start working on a work plan of what you want to accomplish in the next year with the funding available. The next couple meetings we have, July 25th is what we have on the calendar for the next one. I have a conflict that date. It doesn't mean that we have to completely reschedule. I can always have a staff person fill in for me, but please look for an email. I'm going to send out and engage kind of interest in moving that. We may end up wanting to move it anyway depending on when these revisions will come in for Mr. McDaniel and kind of the pacing out of our meetings. And then October 24th, just kind of looking for a raise of hands. I'd heard from at least maybe one person on the commission that there's a conflict for them. If it's just one person on the commission that there's a conflict for them. If it's just one person, that's okay. We can continue to hold the meeting. But if we have more than one for that date, please let me know and we'll look at bumping that meeting as well. Okay? All right. Any questions on reports? No, ma'am. Okay. I do have a question about the big decision that we just made. Is it too late to change them? No, I'm not kidding. My question is, I believe when we met informally the other day, we talked about the subcommittee could work with Mr. McDaniel or whichever artist we selected on revisions or we could incorporate feedback from the entire panel here. So do we need to make that decision tonight or did we make that decision? Yeah, it does decision and I missed it. It doesn't have to be a formal one. I would advise that you make the final decision as a group, given how high profile this is, and how different this sculpture is for Ashland. So I would suggest if you have specific thoughts about that and revisions that you would like to see, to please get those to me within the next two weeks, that's a pretty tight timeline, but I would do it when it's fresh of mind for you. I'll send an email reminder so that I can share those with Mr. McDaniel as soon as possible so that he can get working on some of those thoughts and an updated budget proposal, which will be really important as it goes to town council. And then once I hear back from him around how long it's going to take him to kind of crunch those numbers, I will reach out to you all about calling a special meeting to see the final design. And then at that point you have the opportunity to ask for maybe like a couple little tweaks with the idea either approve that it as is and recommend to council, approve with little tweaks and recommend to council or deny. Make sense? Does that make sense? I have a quick question. Can you share, like once everyone gives you feedback, can you put that on a PDF and just share it with us so we can see what everyone is doing? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I'll create a Google doc or something that everybody can see. OK. I think for me, the lighting component is going to be, I realize that's outside of the original budget. But I think that's going to be a pretty key element to this. I don't disagree. Yeah. I agree. I feel like it's going to soften that a bit and make it more playful. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. OK. Thank you. Does anyone else have any other business they'd like to bring forward? If not, I will adjourn this meeting.