New sculptures will arrive in Newport Beach’s Civic Center Park this summer — the majority from artists all over the country — after having gained the approvals Tuesday of the City Council.
The installations comprise Phase VIII of the city’s revolving sculpture exhibition, which began in 2013 after the completion of Civic Center Park. About 10 sculptures are included in this wave, out of 33 first selected by a curatorial panel before a vote went out to the public in late December. This phase is expected to be installed in June 2023.
According to a city staff report, 253 people in Newport Beach voted on three of their favorite sculptures out of those proposed, casting 702 votes in total. It’s the second year residents were asked for their input, the first being last year, according to Richard Stein, president and chief executive officer of Arts Orange County.
One of the sculptures among the public’s top 10 — artist Matthew Hoffman’s “Be Kind” — had to be replaced by an alternate after it became unavailable.
The 10 sculptures selected for display are “Tulip the Rockfish” by Peter Hazel, “Pearl Infinity” by Plamen Yordanov, “Efram” by James Burnes, “The Memory of Sailing” by Zan Knecht, “Kissing Bench” by Matt Cartwright, “The Goddess Sol” by Jackie Braitman, “Newport Glider” by Ilya Idelchick, “Confluence #102” by Catherine Daley, “Got Juice” by Stephen Landis and “Inchoate” by Luke Achterberg.
Arts commission chair Arlene Greer said the most recent group of sculptures joins the city’s “museum without walls.”
“With a glance from ‘Efram’ the bison, [it reminds] us of our history as a ranch with miles of open space. Moving through the garden exhibition, you will encounter the brilliant orange ‘Tulip the Rockfish,’ the chimp ‘Newport Glider’ and the ‘Kissing Bench,’ reminding us we are a city with a fun and adventurous side,” Greer said.
“On a more serious note, you will encounter ‘The Goddess Sol,’ who presides over the 14-acre site, and ‘Pearl Infinity,’ which reminds us of the more sophisticated fine arts strain that is part of our community,” she added. “The remaining Phase VII five sculptures fill in the middle, showing us how we can reimagine our city while enjoying what we already achieved in our community.”
Greer noted a tour of the new installations will be held at the Civic Center on June 24, in conjunction with the 56th annual Newport Beach Art Exhibition.
The sculptors are granted a small honorarium for loaning their works for the two-year display. City staff are installing the art, but the artists are asked to maintain their respective works and tend to any necessary repairs.
About $119,000 went into this current phase, which includes project coordination, management fees, installation and uninstallation fees.
“I hold this project very dear,” Councilwoman Robyn Grant said during Tuesday’s meeting. “I was the chair of the Arts Commission when this project was conceived at the request of the then-City Council when they were envisioning what was going to happen at City Hall here and having the park, and I’m very proud to be part of a community that supports this kind of art; it’s only grown better and better over the years.”
She thanked the arts commissioners and the Newport Arts Foundation for continuing their work.
“I think it’s really valuable that we now have so much community input into what sculptures go into the collection,” Grant continued. “That wasn’t something that was necessarily in the original sculptures, but it seems to have grown … and it really shows through in the art that is picked. So much of it is representative of what we here hold dear in Newport Beach. It’s not just about dolphins and that kind of thing.
“Having the buffalo and the sails and the orange and just things like that invoke so much pride in our community and what we stand for and what we value, and it’s really nice to see it represented in our Civic Center, and that’s the beauty of actually where we’re sitting right now. We didn’t have a civic center of this caliber in the past, and the park and the sculptures really completes that loop.”
Post time: Feb-20-2023