Public Art Needs Creative Funding

Cheney sculptor Richard Warrington once described his abstract work, “Geisha,” as a “healing piece.”

Creating it helped him rebound emotionally from the loss of his home, studio and belongings in a 1991 wildfire. And lending it to the city of Spokane for a year was a way of repaying the community for its support.

Make that moral support. When it comes to support of his artwork, Warrington seems to get relatively little of that here.

His works have sold around the world for as much as $70,000, but “Geisha” got no takers at $24,000.

Now it’s been moved to a gallery in Lincoln City, Ore., where it’s priced at $44,000. Spokane, meanwhile, has an empty spot on the brick-lined stretch of Wall Street that the designer hoped one day would be lined with public art.

There is other public art in Spokane, lots of it. The Spokane Arts Commission has identified a Sculpture Walk that winds along the south bank of the Spokane River from the Riverpoint campus east of Division to the Spokane Public Library. And that doesn’t include art that’s installed at City Hall, Veterans Memorial Arena, Spokane Transit Center, the multimodal transportation facility and elsewhere.

Nevertheless, the removal of “Geisha” is a setback. The quiet section of Wall between Spokane Falls Blvd. and Main was envisioned as a visual showcase. Putting “Geisha” there, it was hoped, would inspire a buyer or buyers to acquire it as a permanent city fixture.

The fact that the 11-foot-high steel work was moved with relatively little attention or reaction raises additional questions about Spokane’s readiness for that concept.

Art has the power not only to heal the artist, as happened in Warrington’s case, but to restore the whole community. It can soothe, inspire, arouse and provoke. It can shape a community’s personality and enhance residents’ sense of the place they have in common with one another. It affords a community landmarks and reference points and identity.

No wonder Coeur d’Alene recently won an award from the Association of Idaho Cities for dedicating 1.3 percent of its public works expenditures to public art. That step, the first of its kind by any city in Idaho, coupled with the dedication of 5 percent of urban renewal funds, will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for public art in the next several years.

The crowds and artists who visit Coeur d’Alene’s Art on the Green each August and Spokane’s ArtFest each June offer sound evidence of arts appreciation in the Inland Northwest. But the communities’ ability to cultivate art in the public spaces as well as private will depend on reliable funding methods. In Spokane the kind of public-works set-aside that Coeur d’Alene adopted is required by state law.

But unlike Coeur d’Alene’s ordinance, that law requires the art to be part of the structure being built. Acquiring pieces like “Geisha” to adorn existing places calls for more creative funding mechanisms, public and private.