WHAT MAKES GOOD PUBLIC ART?

Paul Watts Photograher

Nicola met with David Harding & Clare Simpson, Senior Arts Development Officer Culture and Sport, Glasgow, to talk about public art in Glasgow and commissioning public art.

We invited Clare to write her thoughts:

Nicola got in touch with me a few weeks ago about the idea of bringing a group of people from Abbey View through to Glasgow to see examples of public art and hear about the different processes involved in their commissioning. The questions that Nicola was asking and the research she was planning was also appealing and very relevant to me, as part of what I'm doing at the moment is drafting a public art strategy for an area of Glasgow.

Nicola and I met with David Harding on Tuesday. David has had a huge impact on the visual arts in Glasgow, and in fact way beyond Glasgow, both through his own art works and through his establishment of the Environmental Art course at Glasgow School of Art. This course was established at a time when theory and practice around public art was very different than it is today. Under David's direction the environmental art course produced some of Glasgow's best known artists - in short, David's breadth of knowledge and experience put him at the top of the list when it comes to people in Glasgow you'd want to talk to about public art, and discuss such questions as:

What makes good public art?

Good public art is the kind that is relevant to the context in which it is made. Permanent public art should endure, and when it's successful it can become invisible in a good way - an accepted, perhaps even cherished, part of the landscape.

How do you provide a piece of art for the public? Who is that public?


There are many different routes to follow when commissioning art, and different ways of involving the public. 
Different sites will have different 'publics' or 'communities'. Getting to the public can be a problem in the commissioning process, as there are many gatekeepers who claim to speak on behalf of others, but very often misrepresent them. In many successful cases, the public is what 'makes' the work - not in a physical sense, in terms of fabrication, but in their interaction with the artist and their response to it. The work is only complete when its effect is experienced. (We spoke about Graham Fagen's Royston Road trees as an example.)

David Harding " Participation, I was trying to say, makes the art in soc eng practice not public art in general"

Who makes the choice? 


Within a framework of consultation and an agreed brief, an artist should be able to be the expert, and take risks. Public Art shouldn't be about giving people the ‘known’; it should be about giving people what they didn't know they wanted in the first place. It should bring surprise, change the way people see or think or experience a space. It is important that a too bureaucratic decision making process doesn't stand in the way of decisions being made. Can too much consultation stifle the creative process? (Camels were designed by committee).

If you were going to Glasgow what public work would you take people to see?

This was what prompted Nicola to contact me in the first place. Well, here are some of David's suggestions: 


Kenny Hunter's Millennium Baby and skull on the Tron Theatre 

Claire Barclay's hut in Govanhill 

Douglas Gordon's 'Empire' in Tontine Lane 

Sandy Stoddart's series of classical figures at the Italian Centre 

Shona Kinloch's works also at the Italian Centre 




Linsey Leitch in the Eco House

On Wednesday a professional photographer Paul Watts visited Abbey View Eco House to photo Nicola's 702 Dwellings artwork, it was created for the SEE EYE Event in March 2007. 702 Dwellings was constructed and personalised by 500 students at Woodmill High School. It has been re install in the Eco House. It can be view by contacting Nicola.




Nicola invited a few students from Woodmill High School to be photograph. Nicole Tate, Mark Queen, Kieran Startup, Stuart Barr, Craig Mercer, Lisa McGurk & Sarah Pickard - along with Jackie Powton the Art Teacher of Woodhill High School.




These images will be use for the Annual Report for the ROA (Regeneration Outcome Agreement) The Artist in Abbey View is partly funded by the ROA.






Photographs © Nicola Atkinson Does Fly

TAKE THE D6

Tweed Street Tour

Marisa Privitera started her tour of Tweed Street on Monday and is already producing some beautiful work for the project. Over the next two weeks she will continue to absorb and capture the D6 bus route and writes: “I am particularly interested in capturing moments of daily life where people are gazing out and watching the life outside, whether it be from their front step or from inside the bus.  I am drawn to the idea that when on a bus, the world outside is like a film reel zooming past. Our eyes fix on something that captures our attention, or peaks our interest only for seconds as we travel on. Similarly, people stand in their homes looking out windows, or sit on the front steps taking in the passing traffic.”



Marisa began her career in photography at 16 when she was hired as a photojournalist for a daily news paper in Florida. She went on to earn a bachelor of fine arts with honours in photography and art history from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Massachusetts. While in Boston, she completed a large body of work documenting Italian American immigrants that was exhibited and published in galleries and photojournals across the States. After developing an increasing interest in storytelling, she moved to Scotland to earn a masters degree in film and television from Edinburgh College of Art. Marisa is currently living in Glasgow where she works in the film and television industries and continues her career in freelance photography.


Curious About the Cabinet

Nick Millar is working his magic on the creation of the Curiosity Cabinet and everyone from the SEE EYE March Event has dropped in to give an input on the recreation of their work in miniature. In a small corner of an enormous workshop in the Scottish Opera Technical Building in Glasgow, Nick is pulling together all the projects shown in the Allan Crescent flats into one portable experience. Carol stopped by on Friday and found an amazing piece of furniture in its raw state. All the components were disassembled and dormant, just waiting on Nick to fuse them together. These components are pieces of furniture found in charity shops in Dunfermline: a sideboard, a bureau, a display unit and a standard lamp crashing together at all angles. He is building a dynamic, energetic piece that will grab your attention and pull you towards it to discover its secrets. There will be buttons to press, cupboards to open, drawers to pull and lights to illuminate, all tempting you to interact and enjoy. From its unveiling at the Abbeyview Festival in August through to its tours of the libraries and public places, we predict it will provoke and maintain a dialogue amongst the communities who will graced by its company.

Luke Fowler visited Abbeyview for the first time on Monday 11th June. Here are his initial thoughts and his work history.

'Visiting the Abbeyview area of Dunfermline was intriguing. I've only ever passed through Fife, so it was good to get the opportunity to visit a town I knew little about. Abbeyview seemed impossibly quiet when I arrived and whilst we walked around. Nicola is employed as part of the regeneration scheme, set up because the estate has comparatively high unemployment levels and a low health rate. We spent the afternoon discussing what role invited artists could play in this scheme. Artists that make work in Abbeyview will provide a platform for contemporary art, in a place where one had not already existed. My proposal is still developing, though I'd like to consider something that looks at the particularities of the environment of Abbeyview and its current regeneration process.' Luke Fowler

Luke Fowler is a visual artist who makes experimental films which interogate the documentary as an artform. As a musician he collaborates in the bands Lied Music and Rude Pravo, he also runs the record label "Shadazz".


Photographs © Marisa Privitera

WHAT A LARK!!!

It was an exciting week with ideas flying around Abbeyview. A new group of artists has been formed and are thinking about Abbeyview as part as the RADAR project. They are Luke Fowler & Sophie Pankenier. These new projects will be completed before Feb 2008.
 
Nicola had her first Artist Steering Group Meeting on 5th June 2007. Attending were Nicola Atkinson Does Fly, Linsey Leitch, Babs McCool, Jackie Powten & Ross Riddock. With apologies from Mike Payne, Stewart Christie & Joan Geddes.
 
Nicola dropped by the creche in Abbeyview and found lovely people who are providing a caring environment for children. She let them know that Hanna Tuuliki's ‘Nest ‘ dream catcher is being donated to the creche and will be with them by the end of June. It is being made out of metal for durability since the original was hand-cut out of black paper.
 
The booklet about the SEE EYE event with be jointly designed by Nicola & Chris Hladowski. Chris wrote the text for the SEE EYE event and will be continuing to work with Nicola on the booklet. It will be an A5, 48 page, black and white number. Lots of ideas are taking flight… Stevie Jackson's two songs with be written out in full, the 9 bookmarks from the booklist that the artists have created will be included and Hanna Tuuilkki, Carol Lambie & Nicola Atkinson Does Fly will create ink line drawings to represent the SEE EYE projects. Also included will be 500 of a limited edition of Stevie Jackson's two songs - 'The Electric Box' & 'Bird Eyes View' - on a 7inch single. Watch this blog for the how and when you can get your hands on it.
 
Nick Millar, the creator of the Curiosity Cabinet, has been meeting with the rest of the SEE EYE team to decided the miniature version of the individual pieces shown in SEE EYE March.  This piece will fuse the furniture of the 1950’s and 80’s together, as if items have been thrown out of a window and some force has fixed them together. It will house the SEE EYE artist's chosen books and the collection will tour with the cabinet but we are also hoping that we can order the entire booklist, listed below, for all the Fife local libraries. This will give a wide range of people access to an interesting and quirky range of reading material they may never have come across before. The first chance to see the Curiosity Cabinet in all its splendour will be the 19th August 2007 at the Abbeyview Festival.

SEE EYE Artists' Booklist

Nick Millar
"The Leopard" by Guiseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, Everyman's Library, 1991
"Neuromancer" by William Gibson, LLondon, Voyager, 1995
 
Karen Vaughan
"A Scots Quair" by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Canongate, 1995
"The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine" by Rozsika Parker, The Women’s Press
 
Stevie Jackson
"New York Changing: Revisiting Bernice Abbott's New York" by Douglas Levere, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2005
"The Complete Beatles Chronicle" by Mark Lewisohn, Chancellor Press, 1996
 
Hanna Tuulikki
"The Book of Music and Nature" by David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus (eds.), Terra Nova Books, 2001
"The Soundscape" by R. Murray Schafer, Destiny Books, 1977
 
Chris Hladowski
"Oblique Strategies: Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas", by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, 1975
"A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction", by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, New York, Oxford University Press, 1977
 
Nicola Atkinson
"Structural Package Designs", The Pepin Press, Agile Rabbit Editions
"Edward Lear's Complete Nonsense", Edward Lear, The Folio Society, London, 1996
 
Carol Lambie
"Postsecret" by Frank Warren, Orion Books, 2006
"Ways of Seeing", by John Berger, Penguin, 1972
 
Mike Wilson
"Grafitti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England" by Juliet Fleming, Reaktion Books, 2001
"The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution" by Dario Gamboni, Reaktion Books, 1997
 
Ben Spencer
"Smart Architecture" by Ed Van Hinte, Marc Neelen, Jacques Vink, Piet Vollaard, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2003
"Fragments of Utopia: Collage reflections of heroic modernism", by David Wild, Hyphen Press, London, 1998
 
Tweed Street Tour
Nicola met with Marisa Privitera to give her a tour and introduce her to Abbeyview, looking at how to engage with the community and get them on board for the project. After her visit Marisa wrote "I plan to start my photography project on Abbey View on Monday June 11. Initially, I will be getting to know the area by walking around taking pictures and observing the details of the D6 route.  After initial contact with residents, I hope some residents will receive the project with enthusiasm and perhaps even take part by either placing special objects in their windows, or by allowing me to photograph residents sitting in their windows or outside their homes. The project will evolve and take a more definitive shape as I become better acquainted with the neighborhood. I look forward to spending more time in Abbey View over the next few weeks." This project will be viewed on plasma screens in Local Service Centres over the next few months.
 
Casablanca (White House)
This is the second part of the 702 Dwellings created by Nicola for the SEE EYE March and will involve white cardboard folded houses. Jackie Powton, Art Teacher of White Mill High School, is interested in involving the English Department in creating a text piece and possibly linking this in with her current Sierra Leone project.
 
Next Week: The artists Luke Fowler & Marisa Privitera give their thoughts and ideas about Abbeyview. Nicola will be looking at Public Art in Glasgow, as research into bringing the Steering Group & Clock people to Glasgow for a day.

Lark drawing © Nicola Atkinson Does Fly

THE FLY AND THE LAMB

This is the first installment of the Fly & the Lamb blog. It will be updated weekly and cover the previous week events and thoughts in Abbeyview, presenting an artistic perspective of the goings-on. The Fly & the Lamb are Nicola Atkinson Davidson, Artist in Abbeyview, and Carol Lambie, artist and contributor to the SEE EYE Art Event in Abbeyview. We hope it will encourage dialogue with people about Public Art.
 
Nicola became the Artist in Abbeyview in January 2007 with the aim of bringing concept of Public Art to the residents of Abbeyview in a relevant and exciting way.

There is a steering group in place to work with Nicola on this aim, namely Babs McCool, Joan Geddes, Jackie Powton, Stewart Christie, Ross Roddock & Mike Payne, with Linsey Leitch attending to take minutes. The steering group meets every two months to discuss the progress of the art projects both in development and completed. It is an interesting group gathered from the Planning Department, High School, Regeneration Forum and Fife Council. It is healthy mix of opinions and view points, each person having different versions of not only what an artist and public art is but what the outcome should achieve.
 
Kicking off with the SEE EYE Art Event in March in Allan Crescent, Nicola has created a structure of involving other artists to push the concept of taking artistic risks and to bring a freshness to projects whether temporary or permanent. It is human nature to want to please one’s audience but moreover it is the job of the artist to challenge, to not only explore the identity of a community but create objects and happenings for the people to explore. There is the question of who is the community? It is easy to refer to it as a solid entity, as “they”, and presume to know their collective opinion. This can either place more or less interesting boundaries on any creative processes involving the residents and therefor to acknowledge individual thinking will always give respect to those concerned.
 
Nicola’s approach over the following year is take a risk with the art she creates, in terms of the public’s expectation of Public Art. In turn she would, of course, like the community to take risks with her, in their participation and ownership of the projects. This will create dialogue within the Abbeyview area about Public Art. This blog will follow the progress of the ideas Nicola outlines below, while sharing the thoughts and musings of the Fly and the Lamb and all those who care to join us.

 
Clock People (Public Art Panel)
This has been named the Clock People.  It comes from the idea that a public art piece should be useful, beautiful and be the central point for the people of the area, just like a telling the time. Perhaps this is stating the obvious but I am drawn to make it challenging, for myself and the 12 people from Whitelaw Road, Macbeth Road, Almond Road & Tweed Street who will be invited to take part. They will be put into groups of four groups of three and be involved in a programme of talks and visits to inspire and inform them on art.
 
Tweed Street Tour
The Tweed Street Tour will focus on D6 bus route into Abbey view from Dumfermline. As starting point we will ask the people who live on Tweed Street, this is one of the street lines the route, to photograph the windows arrangements of the houses. For this initial stage I have invited the artist Marisa Privitera to engage with the residents of Tweed Street and to create a piece of work. We will see what happens over the next year.
 
A Public Sculpture in Abbeyview
We will start of the research, costing, best site and development of ideas to create a permanent piece of public art work in Abbeyview
 
R.A.D.A.R. Random And Dynamic Art Risks
The unforeseen happenings and inspiration in Abbeyview created by Nicola Atkinson Does Fly and three other artists. The only certain outcome will be a one colour 16 page booklet.
 
Details to follow on The Grass is Greener and Curiosity Cabinet.

Photographs © Nicola Atkinson Does Fly