Oct. 9 Akron Public Art Commission meeting
Covered by Documenter Amore Hill (see her notes here)
Earlier this year, Mac and Allyse Love, founders of Art x Love, were selected by the Akron Public Art Commission to catalog every piece of public art in the city. At the October commission meeting, Mac Love said the project is about 95% complete.
The goal is to provide a comprehensive inventory of public art assets and their conditions. An interactive map of the inventory catalog will be placed on the Public Art Commission’s website after completion.
So far, they have inventoried 487 artwork, and 83% of the pieces are publicly accessible. The rest are either in storage or in a location that requires security access.
For purposes of the inventory, art is defined as “an item that was made by an artist, creative team, or skilled craftsman that could only be replaced by such a person.”
Categories of art include painting, drawing, mural, sculpture, memorial, furniture, land art, digital art and others.
The database includes art that is either owned or funded by the city or is on city property.
15 parks, Towpath Trail yet to be inventoried
Of the more than 160 parks throughout the city, the Loves still need to inventory 15 to see what artworks are located in each. In addition they are adding the John Brown monument at the Akron Zoo and artwork along the Towpath Trail.
“We do not believe most of those parks have a large volume of public artworks, but we just need to double-check,” Mac Love said. “We just want to make sure we top all our Ts and dot all our Is on all the city properties.”
The Loves have also noted the condition of the art pieces they inventory. They’ve found that 28% of the items inventoried are in excellent to very good condition. In addition, 60% are in neutral to poor condition and 11% are damaged. Of those, fewer than half are at risk, meaning there are parts missing, pieces hanging off, etc., Mac Love said.
So far, none of the art has created a hazard to the public.
Many Akron public art pieces in need of cleaning
The number one cause for giving an artwork a neutral to poor score is that it is dirty or faded.
“Just a little bit of cleaning or minor touchup would really radically transform public perception of these assets in the public space,” Mac Love said. “We’ve also noticed that just some maintenance standards for some of the recreation centers could also improve the longevity and condition of a lot of these artworks.”
Mac Love said a bench painted by Derin Fletcher at Joy Park is being scraped by mowing equipment as it drives past.
Next steps include completing the inventory and refining the data for internal and external display. Mac Love said including 500 to 600 pieces of art on one interactive map would be a huge undertaking. Not every piece needs to be public-facing he said.
For example, there are several pieces of art by the same artist in Akron City Hall. All of them don’t need to be public-facing on a map, but they exist in the inventory. Mac Love said he would like to feature between 25 and 200 items on an embeddable interactive map.
The Loves created this interactive map for Summit County. Called “Gems of Summit County,” it is an example of what the Akron public art map could look like.
More from the meeting
Also at the meeting, the commission chose a Chapel Hill location for the traffic signal box art project. It’s at the corner of Brittain Road and Tallmadge Avenue. The commission chose the artwork last month along with other artists.
Watch a recording of the meeting here.
The next Public Art Commission meeting is Nov. 13 at 4 p.m. Learn more here.
