Arts Commission - Regular Meeting

Everyone, I call this meeting to order. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? I motion. Do I have a second?

I second it.

All in favor of the agenda, say aye. Aye. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes?

I make a motion to approve the minutes.

Do I have a second? I second. All in favor of the minutes, say aye.

Aye.

Do we have any oral communications for this meeting?

Yes, we do have one person signed up.

Sorry, guys. Family business is very important. I know this. I don't know about this for 40 years before, but right now I know. Yeah. My name is Alex Zimmerman.

Just a moment, Alex.

Yeah, my name is Alex Zimmerman. Pause.

Mr. Zimmerman, I'm sorry. We have a statement to read. We're going to reset your clock. If you would just give us just a moment.

What?

We're not quite ready for your public comment yet. We still have a statement to read, and then we'll start your clock.

Oh, again?

Yeah, I just have to read this out. In compliance with Washington state campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during an election, no speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for an election, which includes your own campaign. Any speaker who begins discussing topics of this nature will be asked to stop. In addition, there are new rules adopted by the city council limiting the topics about which the public may speak during our meetings. Under Ordinance 6752, the public may now only speak during public comment about subject matters that are related to City of Bellevue government and are within the power and duties of the Art Commission. Additional information about the new rules of decorum governing conduct of the public during our meetings can be found at Ordinance 6752.

Yeah. My name Alex Everman, yeah. And I come and speak to your committee for many years, yeah. First question, what does it have? Absolutely idiotic, you know, what does it mean? Why you cannot show faces of people who speak? And I speak more than 5,000 times. I speak every week from Tacoma, Seattle, Everett, you know what does it mean? And dozen, dozen places all show faces. You're only one who don't do this. So you look to me right now like debile because I'm talking about this for a long time. Where does this debilism come from? First, it comes from Mayor Robinson. You know what I mean? Because for seven years under Mayor Robinson's rules, we come to absolutely fascist government. Bellevue, number one fascist city right now in America. What they did, you know what I mean? This is a classic fascism because government together with corporation, I mean Amazon or Microsoft, you know what this means? Life miserable, so 120,000 people, you know what this means, from jungle working like a slave. But today I have something news, but this I never see for 40 years here. I'm so sorry, ma'am. Yeah. I don't know your husband as a consul, but he's come to consul position not legal. He's acting like a criminal because Mary Robinson a criminal, I call her. Chip Dory prostitute, you know what I mean? I'm not talking about trespass me for three years and cut my statement for election, yes, but for seven years I'm under her control, city come to absolutely absurd. Life right now in Bellevue more dangerous than in New York or Los Angeles. I don't talk about transportation, you know what I mean? Death come to 200% more. So last week, This is a statement, state of the city, but it's come for 50 people. And for come to this meeting, you need pay a thousand bucks. This is very interesting. Every time when this happen, you know what it means? This make me absolutely shocked. I try understand who are you guys? A debile, a slave, or degenerative idiot? I born like a idiot. I said, never seen like this before. Every state of the city, what is make Muhammad, we have new mayor, Muhammad. Nice mayor. My name, Avram, is similar here. No problem. Yeah, did something what is absolutely absurd. State of the city supposed to be good to people, not to aristocrats who pay $1,000. Viva Trump, viva new American revolution, stand up slave and happy cow. Guys, stop acting like a degenerative idiot. Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman. Yes, thank you very much. Family business is very important.

I want to let the public know that the Arts Commission does not condone hateful or offensive speech from any individual. While we would prefer people refrain from making these types of comments, the Commission respects individuals' First Amendment free speech rights. Individuals are allowed to express their thoughts or feelings whether we agree with them or not. Thank you all. The first order of business is... Partner presentations.

Hello, Arts Commission. My name is Margaret Toomey. I am here on behalf of Studio East, which is a nonprofit based in Kirkland, but serves the wide breadth of Eastside students and families with our programming. So Studio East, our full name is Studio East Training for the Performing Arts. We provide best-in-class theater education, performance skills, and audience opportunities to inspire, train, and entertain young people through engagement in the art and craft of theater. The button I push to advance. Technical difficulties. Here we go. On this slide here, we have some of our data for the 2025-2026 season. We go by that for school year as well as our fiscal year. This last commission grant was $15,000, which helped fund a lot of the programs I'll be talking about today. One of the big things that we do with the studio that we wanted to highlight are our outreach programs and our school stage programs, which are our opportunities to help bridge the gap for offerings for students in schools, either in the school day or as an after school program. So our outreach classes in the last school year, we reached 433 students over 14 schools around the east side, all the way down also into Renton this last school year. And the school stage, we worked with 15 schools to do our show in a box. So they have a title, they bring students in, and we provide the scenery, the costumes, we have a director, and for the musicals, we also send a musical director to support the performance over six weeks, culminating in a performance for the parents, the community, and oftentimes is used as a fundraiser for the PTA to help increase funding that they have for other programs. And for school stage in the following year. And you see a picture here. We have the community school school stage production of The Wizard of Oz. Very popular this year because of The Wiz and as well as Wicked coming out. Did I get it? There we go. This is our storybook theater cast. This is where we have professional performers doing a script of some kind. In the past, you may have heard of our performances. They were very rooted in sort of typical fairy tales. This year, we presented an adaptation of the storybook Me, Jane, The Life and Times of Jane Goodall. And so this production was chosen prior to Jane Goodall's passing, but was very timely in order to bring the story of Jane Goodall into schools. We went to over 32 schools in this last spring semester. This was just from March until June across 16 counties, reaching 5,300 students. And through funding like what was provided by Bellevue Arts Commission, as well as for culture, we were able to visit 12 Title I schools and give them the programming either at a severely discounted or completely free offering, which was very exciting for us because that was a new element we were able to present this year. Right now we're in the middle of our summer theater camps. We are presenting summer theater camps from June 22nd all the way to the 28th. This is just a big overview. You can see we work with students from age four all the way up to grade 12. And we work at our location in Kirkland as well as three other satellite locations in the area in order to bring programming for summer camps and help support families to have an opportunity to send their kids for amazing transferable skills and learning opportunities while those kids are out for the summer. And then the upcoming events that we have this summer, we have our Teen Summer Musical, which is the prom this year. That's running July 24th through August 2nd. And then we just had our first family meet and greet meeting yesterday for Willy Wonka Kids, which is what you see in the lower left of the slide. And that is really awesome. It's for students ages six all the way up to 12. So all the students that are too young to do our Teen Musical. And then the creative team is our older students who are looking for an opportunity to have a leadership and present their own ideas around what a show should be. So our director, music director, choreographer, all of our designers, they're all students ranging from age 15 up to 20. And then the picture that we see up there is Annie Kids, which was our other second stage this last spring, which we had over 50 students participating across two casts in bringing Annie Kids to stage in a similar fashion. And so those performances will be the weekend of August 7th, 8th, and 9th. The graphic hasn't been finalized, so that's why we don't have the performance dates up there.

And I believe that might be.

Oh, and the last thing I just wanted to bring your attention to is next season, 2026 to 2027. So these are all the shows we will have on our stage. We have it's all movie themed. So on the left, you see our main stage production, which is usually something that is fully realized, a two act series. two-hour play opportunity. And then on the right, we have our Bard series. We do two Shakespeare. And then we'll be doing one second stage next summer for Finding Nemo for the younger kids instead of two, just because we found Annie Kids was very popular, but trying to do something during the school year with that age group was a little trickier. So we're shifting that to be a summer-only program. So that is what we do over at Studio East. I would love to answer any questions or any memories because I've only been with Studio for about 10 months, so I'm learning. A bunch of people were like, I did this when I was a kid or I had my children enrolled. So I love an opportunity to meet people who have a history with the studio as I'm continuing to increase my experience with the organization.

Thank you for the presentation. So is the performances mostly held only in Kirkland or do you bring them here to Bellevue as well?

Yeah, the main stage performances are held in Kirkland. We have a space there through the city of Kirkland. partnership. It's an old PCC that was built out over the last year and a half prior to this last season to convert it into a 99 seat house. But we are with our school stage programming and also looking to the future because that property is gone going on the market or it's actually on the market now. The city of Kirkland is selling it at the possibility of what a more spread out offerings of our performances for the production side. And that's why I wanted to highlight the beginning, our school experience, because that's where we really reach out further into the Eastside community in terms of our footprint. Our productions, we do draw from Bellevue as well as North Shore School District. We had one student for Sweeney Todd come all the way from Vashon Island. So students are seeking us out for the performance opportunity, even if it does require a bit of a trek to come to Kirkland.

Very nice. I think the other good thing that I heard from you was that students not only get a chance to perform, but they also get to go ahead and practice their leadership skills and mentor the others. So that I think is great.

Do you have any other comments, questions?

Well, thank you for your presentation. Wonderful to hear it. In the next five to 10 years, where do you see the organization going from? Do you see it growing? You mentioned a new performance space. Yeah. But where do you see it in 10 years?

Oh, my goodness. That is the million-dollar question right now. My hope is that in 10 years, we lean a little bit more into what we already have, which is kind of a hub-and-spoke model, where we have a hub that is an opportunity for performance spaces, as well as our classes, and where students are finding their third place outside of school and home, but that we have more strongly rooted spaces that put us out into the community and not just this partnership with a school for six to seven weeks. But we have longer term relationships with our schools, opportunity to do more summer camps at those at those campuses, pushing them further out to that way, especially given what's going on at the state level around arts being pulled away from being a requirement. We know that we have a gap to fill when families are looking for those opportunities if it's not happening in the school building proper or sort of in the school day. And also we noticed we've done this with a couple of schools where it's cheaper for them to hire one of our teaching artists for a fractional sort of enrichment opportunity than it is for them to have a staff member on staff who's maybe teaching drama or theater as one of their periods or one of their pieces and then having to fulfill sort of other teaching requirements. So I want to lean into that and really find more opportunities for that to occur because I think that that's the future, honestly, for our organization. But as a lifelong theater person, I started when I was in high school because I fell into a drama program. I think that that's really what sort of builds the ecosystem and the patrons as much as it does sort of who's on stage or backstage or sort of starring in the artistic side of theater.

That actually leads to my question. So I'm curious, do you have any anecdotal origin stories of people who started with your program and then became like, I don't know, professional performers or anything like that?

Well, actually, one of our alumni, Zach Barr, who is currently based in Chicago, they just won a very prestigious playwriting award that was awarded in South Coast Repertory. And I don't know the name of it off the top of my head because... There's a lot of things that, you know, he has won, actually. But that was really exciting. And they were actually coming back to teach one of our summer camp programs. And they had they had to shift their planning because they are such a big deal now. So we're actually we were just had conversation with their parents and talking about whether or not they were going to try to. get anybody in the Seattle area to produce the play. So we're big proponents of that. We also have some other performers that are working locally. There is a director who just directed at act and act slash union arts house the former in seattle uh production of the taming um and they were a studio east alum so there's a really strong um sort of pipeline that happens with alumni into um not necessarily broadway we haven't gotten anybody that far but um we strongly believe that the sort of skill set that we're building is less about this sort of star studded element and more about what they can do and sort of their leadership opportunities and how they can enrich um more local communities, we find that to be very, very strong indication of success in terms of our alumni growth.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Hello.

Hi.

This.

Okay, so next agenda item is our grand connection crossing artist update.

Great.

i'm going to do my best to not get confused between my computer and the mouse that's working on her computer um. Hello, everyone. My name is Scott McDonald. I am the public art specialist for the City of Bellevue. I work with Manette and Laurie in the arts team. I have a wide range of duties. Today, I'll actually be talking to you about the Grand Connection Crossing and specifically the art plan update. I work on also cultural planning, arts planning type stuff, as well as public art projects. um and then i'll also be with you for the next agenda item as well on the emerging artist projects oh i don't have to say next slide um so today we're going to go over the uh the grant connection um planning artists, his artist scope. He has three different things that we'll talk quickly about. We're going to talk about the objectives that we've set out for the plan, how we envision the plan to be used, and then some of the different elements of the plan, as well as next steps. So Matthew Mazzotta, he was supposed to be here tonight. He had a late conflict. I was already set up to do the full presentation anyways. So he sends his apologies. So Matthew Mazzotta was selected in... I believe, May, March of 2025 to be the planning artist for this project. And he had three specific scope elements. One was the public art plan for all art on the crossing. The second is a preliminary concept for a large major artwork project. So that's sort of a refined napkin sketch of an artwork. And then the third element is design consultation on the crossing. So that's a little bit different than the specific work of the art plan. It goes beyond the art plan. So he'll continue to work with the designers to make sure that we're allocating the right kinds of spaces for not just the art projects that are in the plan, but looking for other ways to kind of get the design work to support, complement, live within the ideas that are in the public art plan. The plan objectives, they're relatively straightforward. There's not a whole lot here that is earth shattering, but we did feel it's important to list them out. We want to create a meaningful, cohesive and immersive art journey. So this is not just a piece of infrastructure connecting East Trail with City Hall, that it's actually a place in and of itself. We want to set clear parameters for artists. So this is giving them visual ideas about kind of what are the global precedents for art projects that we're striving for? What are some of the conceptual ideas that they want to try to connect their work into? So we're really kind of trying to tie in all of their work into that cohesive art experience on the crossing. We see this as a really important project as we think about Bellevue's brand and our civic identity. The artist in particular sees the crossing, and this is his interpretation, but he sees the crossing as really emblematic of what Bellevue is and where we're going as a community. He wants to, because of the incredibly complicated nature of working on a massive infrastructure project, this is way more complicated than, say, just an ordinary transportation project. But working on a bridge where you're thinking about seismic, the bridge that's on springs, adding elements on top of that, you need to get artists working with the designers early on. And so what this art plan is ultimately going to be doing is trying to develop that schedule so we have the right artists working on the most complicated, the most integrated projects into the bridge working earlier. And then the artists that we can kind of save space for can come in later. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. As with everything that we do, we want to facilitate public involvement. That's at the core of our public art collection and all of our projects. This one is no different. And then... And then I'll just jump to the last point there. It's supporting emerging artists. While we want this to be a destination, a world renowned destination, honestly, for arts and culture, we also want to think about how emerging artists can tie into this work, can tell a lot more of those local stories And we see that as a really valuable part of the plan as well. Here we go. Did I go? OK. Thank you. So the art plan, yeah, go ahead.

It was a thing. We skipped a slide. We'll get back to it. Yeah.

Yeah. So the, the art plan, we see the art plan being used, uh, as this diagram illustrates. So we'll have project start where the art plan is creating, uh, a lot of the templates, a lot of the information generating a lot of that information that's going to go into the artist call that's done by the commissioning agency. So that's, uh, project details like location, budget range, uh, There's every likely every art project in here is going to have design requirements. So that could be we need an artwork that is 50 feet tall to create that kind of visual waypoint that's bringing people into the system to artwork can't be above 20 feet tall to even weight requirements. There's going to be all those elements within the art plan, so when the city or even an organization or private developer that's connecting into the Grand Connection Crossing, they can have that place to start and get that good framework so we're not working in the wrong direction, honestly. And then the art plan also has a theme for all art. It has guiding principles, which are requirements that every art project has to work through and then design considerations. So these are options for art exploration. That's where artists can look at their own work and work and see themselves within that project while still tying up to that bigger theme that cohesive experience we're trying to get to oh i clicked on the wrong thing Here we go. So the theme, and again, this is really setting the framework for art on the crossing. I'll just read this because I don't want to butcher the artist's words. So refuge is evoked by a sense of welcoming, home, safety, calmness, health, and wellness. In this plan, refuge descends mere quietude. It is found in the vibrancy of social gathering, the provocation of new ideas, and structural protection from the urban environment. It's not simply... about creating a safe or welcoming place. This is, this is about activation. So it's a, it's an active version of refuge as opposed to a more passive version where you say maybe hide like this is active. This is welcoming. This is about people occupying the space. There we go. Guiding. Oh yeah. Go ahead.

I remember last time you presented the artist, it would be really nice if it could be here, three possible themes, how they decided to go to this one.

Good question. So honestly, all the themes that they presented, we wove them in because they were into essentially one theme around refuge. They all pointed to it. And then I think like some of the other themes were integrated in through concepts from it, integrated into the guiding principles. So I would say that the themes presented just evolved into the much strong, like the strong theme that we're presenting today. Does that explain it?

Yes, but I remember discussing something related with technology. So I don't know how, can you talk a little bit about it? How you merge into refugees?

It's going to be on the next slide.

Oh.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. Um, so, uh, guiding principles. So these are requirements for all art. Uh, we have, uh, the artist concept of radical hospitality and welcoming. So this art specifically contributes to all people feeling belong, uh, like they belong, feeling safe, intrigued, hyper local identity. So this is not just about telling stories of the physical limits of Bellevue, but we want to look at the community, uh, and say that there are international connections. So what are those threads that stretch around the world? And then and doing work about that as well. And then also just what what is Bellevue's future? And where are we going? And what's our community going to be like? What's our cultural DNA going to be like in the future? Again, as all projects, we'll have to do some sort of community engagement. We want to amplify stories of the area, of the community, of the site, its history, again, its future. And then longevity. So this isn't saying that every art project needs to survive for the full length of the bridge. It's saying that we want to be intentional about which ones we want to see stay for 50 or a hundred years. And, uh, which ones are we use as a tool for like reactivating the crossing. So there's some, uh, typologies that will live for three months. Some will be for an afternoon, summer, summer, one to two years. uh, design considerations. So, uh, adaptive respite is, uh, an option for art exploration. The image you see on the right is chosen artwork where the, the ribbons of the artwork is actually coming down, forming benches, forming places to sit, um, really taking an active role in the experience of the crossing, creating places where people can, um, lounge converse, um, read a book, eat lunch, all those kinds of things. Narrative discovery. So this is the 20 mile an hour e-bike cruising through the space. We want them to have a different experience than the person walking. We want the little details for people walking to be a driver for people kind of slowing down, waiting. Maybe it starts conversations. We want that to happen throughout the throughout the crossing, circadian vitality. Oh, sorry, I skipped over living systems. So living systems. So we talked a lot about in the previous presentation about nature and technology specifically. So this is where that kind of is woven through. So biomimicry and biophilic design. Biomimicry is being inspired by nature, bringing that into and creating innovative design concepts and applications. We want that to be a part of this concept of refuge. And then biophilic. which is about actually bringing physical elements of nature into our built environment. We also want that to be a big part of this experience. Circadian vitality. So this is artworks that address changing conditions. So from day to night, could be seasonal, could be weather dependent. Just so when you come back, you're always having a little bit different kind of experience. And then, of course, diversity and inclusion. This is really important to the city. We want to see both representation of different communities, stories, and then, of course, diverse artists as well within the crossing. So as we think about, OK, what are the artworks going to be? What are they going to look like? That's the really, really fun stuff. I will just share at this point, we are still developing opportunities with the design team because the design is honestly seeming to evolve day to day. And so because the city has brought on what's called a, I don't know what the acronym stands for. It's a general, essentially they're bringing on a general contractor who before design is complete. So in other projects, the city will design and then bid and then build. And those are three kind of independent phases of work. We're actually building, bringing the people that are building in. into the design process so we're able to get real-time value engineering and costing and then they'll also be able to recommend design alternatives so we can go into the construction process, having a really, really solid idea of what everything's going to cost eyes wide open. So, but because of that, the design is going to rapidly evolve over the next six months. Um, and so I think we'll be able to come back to you about specific locations, specific project ideas in the future as that kind of work really kicks off in August. But just to give you a glimpse of where the strategy is, the artist is thinking about three general artwork categories, foundational artworks, which are the big things. They have big moves. Let's just call them that. The integrated artwork, so everything that is completely dependent on the design. So think like the whole bridge needs to have a throw barrier fence, particularly on the light rail side so people don't throw stuff onto the light rail tracks. That's a major element that we'll have to have as part of design that can't come later, say. And then responsive artwork. So these are often rotating. These are time-based. There's ideas around a typology that's a rotating plinth. Um, there's, uh, these small panels, uh, along the throw fence that could be an opportunity to bring in art, uh, particularly emerging artists, uh, to say, fabricate porcelain enamel panels that can then be attached to these. So it's almost like a rotating gallery, um, opportunity and then time-based performance that would happen all along the crossing. Um, And then I just want to highlight this. So this graphic, with the exception of the dashed boxes that are up there, was developed as part of the urban design framework for the crossing. The strategy for art placement and, you know, is it a big artwork? Is it a small artwork? Is it a big move? Is it a small move? Is really built around this concept of these different rooms. And so each one of these boxes that you see up there on the plan. showing the whole crossing that's highlighting a different room that the designers have indicated they want to pursue as a place for waiting that has a different character than other areas. And part of that is they need to break up the length of the crossing. I mean, the crossing is seven minutes and 40 seconds for the average walker. That's a long, that's a long distance. It's over a half mile or it's roughly a half mile. Um, and as comparison, the Redmond technology center, which is that bridge over five 20 with the, um, the canopies that's three minutes and 40 seconds. So it's over twice as big as that. Um, And so we need a lot of stuff to happen to make this interesting, to make it a destination. And so the artist and the art plan and the opportunities we're going to find and locate are going to have to step up to that. Um, the art plan will also include a project schedule, um, and prioritization. So the, the schedule will be detailed on what projects have to go first, when we need deliverables by to meet the design requirements, any delay on the design, um, side of things, uh, will cost money. Um, And so I could see, just knowing the schedule going forward, I could see artists potentially coming on maybe even before we've approved a plan. I don't know. The schedule's pretty wild. And then sequencing is the big thing in terms of scheduling. We need to prioritize certain projects over others that can come later. Um, and then of course, like budgeting will be part of that prioritization will be part of the schedule, um, because there will inevitably trade-offs will need to happen. And, um, and then, you know, opportunities could also come out, out of the woodwork as part of this. Um, And then also that just the scheduling prioritization just kind of anchors the intention and says, this is a really critical project. And then there are some other flexible kind of things we can be doing or achieve over time. Um, next steps. So we're focused on plan refinement, opportunity development. Uh, it says June, July or July, August up there. It could move into September. It will likely continue to, to evolve even after we have a, we haven't agreed upon, um, general plan. I think we want to think about this as kind of a living plan. Um, And then right now, I'm not confident that we will be back here September 2nd, but the idea is that we'll come back in the fall and give you a more comprehensive update on the plan and at some point seek a recommendation to approve. And then a related scope is the artist's kind of second part of his work out of the three is to bring back a preliminary artwork concept to you guys for a recommendation to approve in the fall as well. And I think that's all my slides.

Thank you, Scott. That was great. I have a question. Does the artist already, I mean, I think I remember hearing him talk last time that he would collaborate with other artists for various different, you know how you mentioned there'd be different sorts of artwork. Are those artists already lined up? Does he already have people in mind yet? Not yet?

No.

Okay.

He doesn't.

My second concern really was when you mentioned that contractors are already also on board and kind of weighing in on the design. I'm wondering where the limit will arise for artists with the creative freedom that they may have. Is that something you're hearing about already from Matthew?

I think artists that have worked When you work within the infrastructure world, there are lots of limits. You're full of limits, honestly. And constraints, I think, often can help hone projects down to what their core thing that they're trying to say or the form that they're trying to have. So I don't see constraints as as a negative thing. But we want and as we look at each opportunity, we want to see, OK, are there possibilities if there's only one possible outcome of what something could look like? or serve, that might be a better design element. So better achieved by designers versus an artist where we have flexibility or more flexibility is where, or, or can make like the throw barrier is a, is a good example. The artist is not going to be doing fabrication. There is a requirement that you can't have a opening bigger than, uh, an inch in diameter. But there, and that is a very real constraint that could constrain a lot of artists, but it also can be fuel. It helps develop the tool, right? That then a creative artist can come through and use that variation from a little tiny pinhole to up to an inch to create an incredible mosaic.

And then when you said you're coming back in the fall with those, is that sort of already decided work that you're going to present to us? Or are those just going to be themes and we get to weigh in and give our opinion?

I think when we come back, we'll have to make a decision on where we are with the plan. I want to stress at this point, they're not decided opportunities by any means.

Okay.

Um, And so when we come back, we want your input on things as well.

That's what we would like to do as well, is to give our opinion.

Maybe I can jump in too. The plan is a set of possibilities. It is not necessarily like we have these five projects and we are launching calls for artists right now. There will be possibilities that we'll implement over the long run of the project. Some might not come up for many years yet. But we have a plan that says in this location we have considered this typology of art.

Right. Yeah. And that'd be good for us to kind of give you our opinions on as well.

Thank you.

I imagine there is a lot of different stakeholders involved in all this. So I would like to hear a little bit about how have you been coordinated with other areas, what opinions have you received about this, all the themes and schedules and all the ideas, just to see how is the general coordination that I imagine will be like a main thing that will be managed during the design and implementation of all this.

Yeah, so the way that we structured the project is the, I'd say, probably 90% of the community engagement came up front. So the community engagement came out of these themes, and honestly, the whole art plan came out of that engagement. There will be reports back and engagement, particularly the Friends of Grand Connection group, who was heavily involved in the early engagement. We don't have specific... meeting scheduled as yet but that's the that's the plan and um how about the internet coordination in between the city the city different areas of the city working on this yeah yeah um so next uh in two weeks we're presenting to the what's called the grand connection guidance group which is, um, uh, I think most of the department heads throughout the city, um, and as well as the city cabinet. So the city manager's office as well, um, uh, to date, we've, um, been working with the office of grand connection, uh, from community development as well as parks and transportation is also involved in that. Um, So that next kind of big milestone is presenting to the guidance group, which is all the department heads. And then from there, we're jumping into design refinement of opportunities, and then there'll be lots of discussions with leadership about budget and that kind of thing as well.

Yeah. Just a quick question about... sound transit, this is directly adjacent to the current sound transit bridge, not touching, not using any of its structure at all. So there's no relation or coordination or work with sound transit related to this.

Um, I don't think that's an, uh, a fully accurate, uh, statement. I think the, we have design, um, parameters that we have to meet with the bridge, um, related to sound transit, but because their, um, their line has its own seismic system, um, there's requirements on how close we can be to their, their guideway, their independent projects that we are responding to.

Okay. I sort of had it in my head that they were, it was an attachment to it. Yeah.

Okay.

Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And then we might've talked about this last time. Um, this is all about the area between the trail and just past city hall. Right. Um, It's unrelated to the long line pathway that goes all the way to Maiden Bower Beach. The plan, right?

The plan, I would say, is not unrelated. I think there's even elements and particularly even some of the typologies that are in the overall framework plan.

There is an overall framework plan. Yeah. And this is a subset of the overall framework. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because when you see this one, it goes...

It goes all the way to Main Barrier Beach. Yep, yep, yep.

Showing the map that is in there. Anyone else?

One, I thought this was fantastic.

When I was going through the report, and hopefully this doesn't offend anybody, I was a little bit underwhelmed. But hearing it and actually hearing you speak about it gives a lot more confidence, I feel like. One of the reasons when you're talking about the guiding principles, I think you maybe recognize this because you talked about it. It seems very safe. And I would hate to go through all this. We have such a huge opportunity. Everybody in the city, as far as I can tell, is backing this project. And one thing that Velby always has this stigma is it's very safe. can be like underwhelming. And I would hate to go through all of this. And like the guiding principles is, you know, we want to be hospitable. We want to be, you know, very welcoming. All sound, you know, very good, very important things. But we should be thinking bigger than that. It sounds like when I heard you talking about in the presentation, sounds like that's under consideration. So I think that's fantastic. Hopefully that's also expressed to artists as we're talking it through, because it can read very different, like what's on the report versus what you guys are actually doing or saying. So I think that was really good.

Thanks.

And then one other... I think you talked about this because you kind of touched on it regarding adaptive respite and then the integrated artworks and basically how everything can be a piece of art or it can be nice to look at, especially with the benches that you had. I thought that was really good. But just every aspect... of the bridge, whether it's, you know, a wall or, you know, whatever. And again, I think you kind of touched on it. So I'm probably preaching to the choir a bit. I just think it's really important that we keep, you know, all those things in mind. The integrated piece doesn't all have to be, you know, like this is a mural and this is, you know, a sculpture or something. So I think that's all really good.

Thanks.

And then one last thing. Uh, and this is just my two cents. If there could be like a water feature from like the start to the end, I think that would be awesome. So it might be super expensive, but I feel like that would be. Yes. Yeah. Activated or something, but, uh, just an idea.

I will pass that along. I cannot guarantee it's going to go forward. But yeah, I appreciate the sentiment.

First of all, if I pick one word, it's biomimicry. And it's an extremely hard challenge between hard and engineering. And I'm super happy we're going with that hard challenge. And on the water part, of course, we have aqueducts. from 800 BC, with a very fine 0.10 degree angle difference, we can collect the rainwater and make it cross the bridge.

Yeah, your water feature may not be visible, but it'll be there. Yeah.

No, I think it'd be interesting at the next meeting to actually see what they are to, you know, what they're coming up with. And that's what I was saying. It'd be nice for us to be able to weigh in on that and give our suggestions. I think you might get some valuable input from us.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Scott. And then, I'm sorry, go on.

A little clarification. The Office of Grand Connection has a newly hired chairperson. Does that group and person have public meetings related to their activity? Or is this the conduit for public?

This would be the conduit for public conversation around the public art elements. Other than that, I'd say that the best conduit is probably the council meetings when they get regular briefings from the Office of Grand Connection. They don't have a standalone commission, a public body like this where there's public comment.

So yeah, for the art elements, come on here, folks. And then the Friends of the Grand Connection, that's, again, a separate entity altogether. They're also not open for public comment and things, are they?

They're, I believe, a private nonprofit. I do not know if they hold their board meetings open or not. Some nonprofits do, some nonprofits don't.

We we presented both to their board and to the bigger group, the bigger group was about want to say 60 to 80 people in attendance. And I don't know if it was restricted in any way.

Do we move on to the next agenda item, which is emerging artists projects artist selections. Is that you, Scott? You're taking over for that?

I apologize for talking to you for almost an hour after the end of this, but I'm also happy to be here to talk about the Emerging Artist Projects. And I want to thank Charles, or Commissioner McIntyre, um which i'm realizing i spelled your name wrong on the presentation uh yeah sorry um uh i i just want to thank uh the the commissioner for his participation in the artist selection process so let's get into it

Okay.

Try to get my area. So I just want to point out, this is an action item, as opposed to the last one. We will be seeking a motion to recommend to artists that I'm presenting today for the upcoming emerging artists project opportunities. Today we're going to talk, we're going to, I'll give you an overview of the program. We'll talk about some of the project details for these two upcoming projects, talk a little bit about the sites. And I'll give you a brief recap of what the artist selection process was kind of how did we get to this point. And then you'll see some of their work that they submitted. We'll talk about next steps and then conclude with hopefully a recommendation to approve. So overview of the program. So this really comes from, I wanna say, I started hearing from artists back in 2019 in 2020 about how particularly artists of color, diverse artists, had been given opportunities. So doors had opened for them or they were waiting for doors to open for them. But there was no support once they got the opportunity. So it's kind of, they had felt, or some of the artists I've talked to over the years have felt that while they're given an opportunity, they don't necessarily have the tools yet to be successful. And so we ruminated on this concept for years on how do we create an opportunity that's not just opening a door, but how can we create a supportive opportunity? So we're actually building up artists. We're giving them new tools that they didn't have. this obviously this kind of program is there's inherent risk in that you're you're asking artists that that don't have the skills necessarily every piece of the the skill toolbox that they need to have to create a public art project you're asking them to do something they haven't done but the the the hope is that you can create a supportive program that has um You know, close to 15 years of professional experience, uh, in, in myself, um, and then also bringing in a mentor. To support them that has their own track record and can see projects from that artist perspective on contracting, budgeting, how to talk with fabricators, how to create even architectural or fabrication plans. A lot of these artists haven't done that in the past. And so at the time, we had a funding from Amazon. They had said, you know, we would really like to see a public art project in Crossroads Park. We're going to give you $100,000 to do a project. And that was in 2021. In 2023, when I came back to the city after consulting for a few years for the city, we took a hard look at, okay, what do we do? Do we just do the standard public art project process where we hire an artist that had already done public artwork? We choose artists based off of completed public art projects. Or is this an opportunity to finally take a stab at trying to address that long herd issue? Uh, so we came up with the emerging artists projects pilot, uh, in 2023, we hired, uh, our first artist was Anna Malazowski. Um, and we paired her who's she's a glass artist. We paired her with, um, an artist who works across all kinds of materials. She's also an architect. Um, David Price- Jill and whole who has been for you honestly as long as I can remember, at this point, then working on a public art project that we're waiting for transportation to catch up on. David Price- Out in bell read. Very, very skilled mentor. She was honestly the perfect mentor for Anna. She both served as a sounding board, but then helped her through. You have to do all this work with a state to register, to make sure that you're paying prevailing wages. There's all kinds of like red tape and forms you have to fill out to do public art. Jill was able to help with all that stuff. And this is the project that Anna had fabricated and installed in Crossroads Park in 2025. So for these, after that initial success, we said, okay, great, let's get back into this. Let's... identify two locations. We took a broad view of where our public art collection is throughout the city. The Lake Hills neighborhood has one public artwork that the city owns. So it's very underserved in terms of access to the public art collection. And then the Lakemont neighborhood, which is kind of its own little part of Bellevue, has zero. And there's different challenges with that. There's not a lot of public space. There are lots of parks, but they're often natural wetland areas that are challenging to work around. We did find a couple good spots in each of those neighborhoods that we think we can be really successful with. Each of the budgets, so this is, I want to be specific that the full budget is not $75,000 per project. There is a larger budget that will, that the city's, well, not a larger, but there is a portion of the budget that the city is managing that That goes to hiring and paying for the mentor, engineering, because we want them to work with an engineer, make sure everything's sound. The city typically will pay for permitting because it's our asset, it's our project. So that's not something that is new to kind of how we run public art projects. And then foundation construction, we decided to take that off the artist's plate So while we're doing permitting, we're also going to do foundation construction, which aligns honestly really well with the permitting aspect. So of those four bullets, I would say the only three of them, the mentor fee, the engineering calculations, the foundation construction, that would typically be part of an established public artist scope. We pulled those off to just kind of lighten the load a little bit and make sure we're hitting all the safety things that we need to hit with every project. Um, and then again, uh, because we have a lot of projects that are part of infrastructure projects that can span six, seven, eight years or more. Um, we. agreed early on with the pilot that we wanted it to be a two-year timeline, particularly for emerging artists. We don't want this to string on for years and years. We want them to have a very clear timeline of when we start. When we finish, they understand their commitment. It's easier to budget over that period of time, how to keep themselves paid and above water and not honestly paying for storage of fabricated parts, which can happen for those longer, longer projects. The first site, Lake Hills Community Park, it's just under an 11-acre park. It's a really typical park. It's a lovely park. There's playgrounds, picnic areas, basketball courts, there's two ball fields. You can see one of the two in that image. There's lawn garden areas. There's some big fir trees sprinkled throughout the park. And it's next to Tillicum Middle School. Excuse me. So you get a lot of middle school students walking through the park to and from school. As well as just hanging out afterwards after school's out. Um, and then you, that greenish blue line that runs at the south end of the park, um, along the road there along phantom way. Um, that's the lake lake trail. So that's a trail that connects Lake Sammamish all the way to Lake Washington. It's roughly 10 miles long. Um, so you also get a lot of folks that are, that are walking their dogs, going on longer walks on the lake to lake trail running. through that southern edge of the park. So we see that as another kind of valuable component for the site. And then I just like to point out that it's just north of Phantom Lake nearby, which is mostly privately owned waterfront, but there is a public waterfront. So there's a little bit, which is this, that's also part of the lake to lake trail kind of park system. So I think that's a good, good part of the character of, of that area. Yeah. Here's an image of the park. You can see the play areas in the background there. This is some lawn area that's underutilized. See some big trees, some gardens. To the left, outside of the picture, the ball fields are over in that direction. And then beyond that is Tilghman Middle School. The second site, Lewis Creek Park. I have a dot on the likely art location. There's a couple reasons for that. It's a location that's visible from the street. There's really no other part of the park that's visible from the street. And it connects in with the trail area. entrance at the north end of Lewis Creek Park. And it really stays away from the kind of problematic or lovely features of the park, like the wetlands, the headwaters of Lewis Creek, and respects that area as what it should be, which is a natural place. 80%, 55 acre park, so it's huge. 80% of the park is undeveloped. There's a mix of wetlands, meadows, forests, lots of trails, boardwalks, play areas, sports activities. There's also a community building there, which is quite lovely, that does host some events, community groups and stuff like that. So here's a, on the right, that's more in the interior near where the headwaters to the Lewis Creek is. And then that left image, that kind of portrait image, that's an image from the street of that trail entrance, which kind of really it's, it's a dark image, but it, it kind of meanders back into the forest and it's, Very, my perspective, it's a very romantic, lovely nature trail going back into the trees. So we see that as like a really great opportunity. There's also some lawn just outside of the frame of that photo that is along the street and could be utilized as well. So let's look at some art. Okay. So the artist selection process. So the applications closed May 7th was open to King Pierce, Snohomish County, Skagit Island and San Juan County artists. Um, we got 83 applicants, which was more than our initial, um, PB, Harmon Zuckerman, pilot project. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, We had a seven member panel, which is much larger than what we would normally do for the budget for size of these projects, but we felt like we really thought we really wanted to have a couple members from the lake hills community and a couple members from the lake my community. Tom Preston- i'm sorry Commissioner for spelling your name incorrectly up there that'll be fixed. Tom Preston- And then we also had Anna Anna lasowski the original artists who we felt that was really great experience to have on the selection panel and then a curator who. and public art manager who does basically all the artwork at sea tech airport um the panel looked at all the the applications scored everything uh came up with six finalists at a panel uh review or artist selection meeting um and staff then interviewed each of the six finalists. And so the recommendation that we have is a staff recommendation. Uh, we felt like that was important for, uh, these projects because it, there's such a close dependent relationship between staff and the artist. And we wanted to hear, um, specifically from them, how they might address community engagement, things that a panel maybe is less concerned with than we as staff who are mission-driven around those concepts are. So the recommendation we have today are for two artists. The first one is Aaron Franklin. These are not in order of we think this is a better artist or anything. I just ordered them simply because in earlier slides, Lake Hills Community Park was first. So Aaron Franklin, we're recommending them for Lake Hills Community Park. They're Seattle based. They've worked primarily or historically not primarily as a 2D public artist so they've done a number of murals. Both by themselves and with their sibling. They've also done a form liner project, which this so they, you know, as we were talking about the grand connection that's another potential opportunity is design of a for artists design form liner so that's actually like a concrete stamp. They've done some of that work. They're a graphic designer, painter, writer, illustrator, and then ceramicist. And ceramics and the 3D work is really where they're wanting to push their art career. They have a long history of residencies, grants, and solo and group shows. So I'll just kind of read their statement and scroll through three slides here showing different work. So this is from one of two bodies of work that they submitted it's called lineage each piece begins with the remnant of the last scraps fragments and excess clay are integrated into the next form oops wrong computer. Rather than approaching the material with a fixed plan, I allow these leftovers to become catalysts, working the direction of each or guiding the direction of each new work. Come in. Oh. There we go. The practice became a way of preparing for uncertainty, resisting expectation while embracing play, flexibility, and change. And I, I particularly find their statement as really important, uh, because I think the, this concept of being flexible and listening, and in this case, she's listening to material or they're listening to material. That's a really important characteristic in a public artist. You want to go into a community without a preset idea of what you're going to create. And, um, we were incredibly impressed, not only just for the playfulness, for the color, for the forms that this artist had in their work, but just how much they wanted to learn, how much they wanted to listen to the community. I will, can you go, I don't know if I can go back. I can't go back. One more. So in this body of work, One of the things that I loved was a sense of discovery. Actually, go back to the artist selection page. So this view on the right, you're probably wondering what it is. This is actually looking into the eyeballs of those little creatures. So I loved that all these works had a sense of discovery. And here they also make more hanging pieces as well. So that view of all those little felt balls is looking into the eyes of that. There's another one. The view on the left is actually cut paper within the artwork. So while they're creating these vessels, there's also all these kind of hidden elements that are really playful and lovely. The next artist, Ariana Heinzman, we are recommending them for Lewis Creek Park. I will say that Ariana, I believe, was near, if not unanimous, across the panel as a selection. We really wanted to honor that unless some major red flags came up at the interview. No major red flags came up at the interview. She was excellent. She's a Vashon-based artist. She has her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in 2013. Since then, she's been working as a professional artist. Her work is rooted in joy. And when she comes and presents to you, if you do recommend her for this work, she feels like the embodiment of joy, honestly. Her work has the themes of nature, real and imaginary worlds. She's represented by Jane Reinhart Gallery in Seattle, which is an excellent gallery. And she's had multiple solo and group shows, and she has a very active commercial art business. Just there. So she writes, I use the plasticity of clay and the limitless nature of drawing to expand my ability to express the intangible aspects of what it means to be human. Inspired by nonsense literature, my work playfully balances absurdity, and convention to subvert logic and meaning, not to wallow in the existential meaninglessness of life, but to romp in the jubilance of existence. This body of work is a colorful menagerie of ceramic sculptures ranging from human to animal, imaginary to real, one's inner demons to one's inner Cheshire cats. The forms evoke a sense that they will bend or morph into something else, like a cartoon, the roundness hinting at the breath they hold, an ability to expand and stretch, playfully winking at the living slash non-linning binary. So that's those two artists. Next steps, if you do recommend, we will get into artist contracting. We'll go into a site orientation with each artist and tour of the sites and the neighborhoods. We'll get into mentor selection, which will really be one-on-one meet Me talking with the artist about what their specific needs are, where they really, really need to learn or they need support. If they're interested in specific kinds of materials that can work in a public setting and be safe and enduring. Artists that have those kinds of experiences are good candidates for mentors. And then it's me going out and talking to mentors and making sure that they're not going to try to take over the artist's vision, the artist's projects, subvert it, turn it into their kind of their own project with like these artists as assistants. I experienced that when I was interviewing mentors for the first project and And then we'll start to get into getting the artists developing their community engagement plan and working towards building the preliminary concepts, which we'll come back to you guys with. Do we want to pause here for questions, comments before we request a motion?

I think that's a good idea. Thanks, Scott, for this presentation. question that actually even came to me when I was reading about this. And you mentioned it again today that the idea first came when you heard about artists of color that had doors open but didn't have the mentorship. So I wanted to understand that when you had your 83 applicants, how did that theme play into the selection of the finalists before you'll interview them. Secondly, I want to understand if the mentors that you will eventually provide the artists, what is the consideration for mentors as artists of color for this?

I think we always want to bring diverse artists in when we can, either as a mentor or as the artists themselves. We are not able to select based off of diversity. That cannot be a criteria. But I think the lessons learned from those conversations with diverse artists are absolutely ingrained into the program. now the when it comes to specific artists that are selected we we have to create the opportunity and and how we think best to support that opportunity but ultimately it comes down to um an artist's work and their experience and um and what the panel responds to so like we we can't we have We have little control over, over that aspect of it. Um, in terms of, uh, mentorship, absolutely. Um, uh, I think in the case of, um, Anna Malazowski, it was important for Anna. And, uh, I think she was right to have, uh, an, a mentor that was female. Um, because was that her request?

Did she request that? Okay.

Yeah. And part, part of that is because, uh, fabrication talking to fabricators, talking to engineers, um, she wanted that perspective from somebody who had done it as a woman. Um, and so that kind of played into it, uh, that, uh, mentor selection.

No, I appreciate that. No. And I understand that the, um, criteria may not be but I just wanted to understand how the call was made for artists you know reaching out maybe there are groups of artists of color I don't know just wondering if you know because you mentioned it and it's in your in your written document as well so I just wanted to understand if a specific you know we made that effort to reach out to those groups to let them know hey

The main way artists apply regionally to opportunities or find out about opportunities are essentially two sites, Artist Trust and For Culture. And so those are our main pathways. I can come back or I can provide a project update with those. I don't know if I actually can do that. You can't really like... look at an artist's name. We can't really tell you who was diverse or who wasn't diverse. But I think we did have a diverse applicant pool. I think that's safe to say.

I mean, Charles, you... Yeah, I'd love to hear what Charles' opinion was as well through the process of selection.

Yeah, for sure. No. So, um, uh, first I'd like to commend Scott on his facilitation skills in the selection process. And, um, uh, I'm especially, uh, was excited to participate, uh, as a commissioner. I think, uh, the arts commission should be, you know, participants in, in, in these processes and, uh, especially that there are residents of Lake Hills and Lakemont included in the in the committee, that they were fully involved and the artist wasn't imposed on the neighborhood. They were welcomed into the neighborhood. And in terms of the selection and reviewing 83 applications, really it was about looking at the artist's creativity.

The merit.

Right? Their imagination, if you will, and being able to... um, take their artwork and place it, you know, in the city imaginatively, um, their artist statements, um, and telling them what their vision, telling us what their vision was as an artist. And I think you saw with some of the nice quotations, you just see that sense of whimsy and imagination and commitment to their craft. And then, um, looking at their resume, and seeing what stage they were in their career as an emerging artist. So not necessarily young, because they're just out of school, so they're emerging, but rather where they are.

Rather searching for public art.

Yeah, yeah, from one type of artist, and some of them have been artists for... And I think the other component, they need to be three. Yeah, some have been artists for decades, right? But emerging into public art, yeah. So I commend the, you know, Scott's... thought process in terms of a selection. And then of the seven committee members, how we whittled it down from 83 to six, I thought, you know, it was very thoughtful. And so I fully recommend this process and how we came down to the final six and then their selection of the two. Yeah, I'm good.

I was just curious. I didn't want to put anyone on the spot, but I was just curious. How did it play out?

I agreed that the staff should select the final two based on a personal interview with them to see their compatibility, their ability to work well together with the city, because they're going to have to do all the heavy lifting. Sure.

One thing that I'll point out that we were looking for was just that willingness to be, to listen and to learn. So that was, that played a big part in the selection.

Good job. It looks like a great artwork. So I'm, anybody has any other questions? If not, we can move on to the motion. Okay.

So then I make a motion to approve the

I think I'll make that motion.

Oh, okay. So I make a motion to approve the slate of artists and to have the city move forward with it.

I second it.

Wait, so wait, you... Okay. Can I get a motion to approve the artist selection for the Emerging Artists Project?

That's what we just did. Now you ask... All in favor, say aye.

OK. So all in favor approving of the artist selection for the Emerging Artists Project, say aye. Aye. Aye. And then that's it. Motion approved. We're done.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Put your paper in the chair. Yeah, let me know next time, because I was like, Yeah, that's great. So what we are next reports, do we have any reports, committee assignments, we have one more committee assignments. Let's move on to committee assignments.

All right. So you got a little peek of this in your agenda memo before tonight's meeting. I just want to go over that most of you have already served on a committee before. So thank you, especially if you have reviewed grants. um uh so here is just an overview um of who uh what current members have served on what committees um i will say we do have a new committee at the bottom here um you'll notice because we will be entering cultural planning um which is a huge undertaking that staff will be doing in the next uh probably two-ish years um This will be creating a guiding document with plans on kind of what the future of Art in Bellevue is. So these are our four proposed committees. I will be looking for you all to volunteer yourself. um there is a number of members we're looking for for each we cannot have more than three but we can have an alternate um that sometimes is used if you know more than one or two are not available um So Grants and Allocations Committee, we usually ask newer members to serve, or if you have not served in a while, the upcoming scope of work for this committee will be reviewing both the Eastside Arts Partnership Grants and the Project Grants, which are going to be opening in August, September 20th. um and then review will be mid to late october um and then we'll likely take those recommendations to the art commission in either november or december um so you'll be doing a lot of work in the fall so keep that in mind if you want to sign up for that committee um Um, the public art committee, uh, these, uh, just like Scott was talking about. Um, so Charles served on the last artist call. Um, these are, we usually tap, um. 1 or 2, it depends on how many people we need from the commission on a committee. And then we always confirm with the chair beforehand who should be on that committee. This is also a significant body of work, although we don't have anything particularly planned. So I can't tell you exactly how much workload this will be in the next year. There could be one, there could be three public art calls.

um if there was something that was more pressing for the grand connection that that might come up through this committee if there were things that had to move sooner than later

Community partnerships. This is kind of a revolving as we need committee for various partnerships, whether it be with the Belgrade Arts District or other potential partners. And then, like I said, cultural planning, this is a new one. And this will be getting into nitty gritty. What are these policies? You'll be helping staff kind of help shape our plan. So if you like planning, sign up for that committee. Any questions before I ask for your all thoughts on what committees you want to serve in? All right. We'll start with the chair.

I can recommend myself.

I would like to do the community partnership. And I believe you said public art committee needs the chair to be on it. Is that what I heard correctly?

No, we just we tap you to confirm it, you know, hey, who do you think on the commission would be good? Or maybe staff recommend this commission? Or how do you feel? We usually do go through the chair for that committee, because it's not the whole committee that serves on selection panels, whereas all the other committees, it's all of you always meeting together. The public art committee we use in a slightly different way.

A little bit like a roster. And then the chair helps make the decision who from that committee will serve on a specific panel.

Yeah. You can sign up for one or two. It kind of depends on how things shake out in the end. But yeah, if you want to go through all your first choices and then maybe we can go through a second choice. Does that sound good?

I give community partnership my first choice and cultural planning the second.

Okay.

And we can go around the room. Sandra?

So my first option will be Grants and Allocations Committee, and my second option will be Cultural Planning.

Charles? My first choice would be Public Art Committee, and second would be Grants and Allocations. But I'm open to how it all shakes out.

Thank you. Joy Deeb?

I can take the last two, community and cultural planning.

Do you have a preference for a number one, number two?

Planning would be good. OK. I don't want to have no choice. I'm just in the community. People tell me random stuff.

All right. Brendan?

based on your guys's recommendations first will be grants and then i'm open to whatever for the second um how about public art sure

All right. This looks pretty good. I think we still have one more commissioner who's not here, and then we also have a vacancy. And so given right now we have three people on the grants, that's Sandra, Charles, and Brendan. Public art, we have Charles and Brendan. Community partnerships, we have Bhavna and Joy Deep. cultural planning, we have Bhavna, Sandra, and Joy Deep. Um, I think I will talk to Erica for potentially public art to fill that third seat. Um, and then, uh, whoever our new member is, maybe I make them an alternate on the grants, um, and an alternate on public art, uh, ease them in, um, And then I might also put them on the community partnerships, not as an alternate as a third member. But I will be talking to you, Bhavna. Once we have the... Once we have... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you'll all get the list sent out once we have a final... Yeah, but Sandra, Charles, and Brendan, I'll be tapping you pretty soon for those grant. Fall will come sooner than we all really need. Yes, yeah.

So just for clarity, you all are giving your preference today, but our chair will assign. That's the official, like how you get on which committee. So it's not a vote today. It's we're hearing what your preferences are, and then a conversation with the chair who will assign you. Yep.

So now, any reports? Or are we?

We're into project updates, might be our next item. Yes, I'm missing something on the agenda.

We got too close.

Yes, project updates. We received four applications for the cultural facilities grant program. They are being reviewed. We're figuring out times for interviews, which is a new thing we added this year. We wanted to give a chance for both the reviewers and the applicants to ask questions, answer questions. And then those will come in the fall to the Arts Commission for recommendation to Council for final approval. We are getting our guidelines for the Eastside Arts Partnership and project grants finalized and translated into Bellevue's top 10 languages. We added a few this year. And then here is a whole smattering of events. There's a lot going on this summer. This is not everything, but this is everything that I could find from our grantees or that they told me about. So all of those links should link you to more information if you need to sign up or how to show up. Do you want to talk about planning?

Sure. So this will be our final update from the economic development plan. After this, this item will roll off of the updates. The plan was formally approved by Council earlier in this year. We're excited. There are some elements in there that touch on to our work around creative economy, around the Bell Red Arts District. Very excited for that. Um, you heard a connection to our update today about the grand connection. I'm going to hand back to Minette to talk about, um, this wonderful mural in a second, but first just an update that our, we are into the summer and artwork maintenance has kicked off. Um, Piloti got its hands scrubbing a couple of weeks ago. That's always a bit of a lift to take the full day. We clean that when we clean that artwork, we're going to be looking at maintaining 25 to 30 artworks over the course of the summer. Some of them go into the fall, um, But that is part of our ongoing regular maintenance contract with Art Tech as a multi-year project, our contract as we work to do regular maintenance, making sure that the investments we make here in this room are maintained.

Oh, thank you. I missed one.

I also wanted to give an update to this committee that we received eight applications in response to our request for proposals for a consultant to do a validation study around performing arts. If you remember, we have talked about some of this work in regards to... how do we as a city analyze the demand for a performing arts center, maybe move a little bit out of a responsive space where our community and nonprofit organizations have led for many decades and start really doing some internal validation of that work and looking for some studies that we're conducting ourselves. Um, the scope of work includes, um, careful third party analysis of previously completed studies by external partners, as well as some of our own studies, particularly around market analysis. How much demand is there? What kind of, we're really getting down to how many seats do we need? We know we need a wide variety of typology of performance spaces, but this one's really concerned with the big house. If we were to build a regional performing arts center, how many seats are we talking about? Um, Once the consultant is onboarded, staff will coordinate a more formal update to the Art Commission in your role around cultural planning. So that will be probably a heavier item later in the year once that consultant is with. I will share that almost all of the applicants were large national arts consulting firms. We're really excited with the applicant pool. And we will share more once that person's on board.

So then... The mural in Bell Rad, Renfrew, is officially complete. Here are some images. It is a lovely experience, both as a pedestrian and on the light rail. And then I've been working with the art club at Bellevue High School, and they have completed a box wrap design. This is to be put on Bellevue Way and Wolverine Way. This is just south of Main Street, right by, it's the closest box. It was delightful. We had a little nudge. But yes, delightful project. They're all super excited. They want to do more. So we'll see if there are any other opportunities in the future. But yeah, here's a picture they painted on canvas and then we got them scanned and we're hoping it'll be installed in July. So that's exciting. By the time they're back in school, they'll have something to see and look at every day. We got an update on the Grand Connection. um we officially had a ribbon cutting and thank you all to attended um for uh river and crossroads park um it was delightful while hot um uh we thankfully had a little bit of shade um as uh and and also got to experience uh the sun coming through the art and making some fun shadows um but yes uh we'll remove this item from future updates um And then our call for Factorio closed in early June. 153 artists applied. This was a worldwide call. And there will be a panel meeting similar to the emerging artists process. We'll go through that. and select some finalists. And I think that is it.

That'll be quite a task, narrowing it down to 153.

I also want to confirm the next meeting date. We have no meeting in August. This is quite standard. Everyone pretty much takes off in terms of councils, boards, all of that. Does September 2nd, that is the first Wednesday of September, does that work for most of you?

Yes, works for me.

Yeah, should be OK.

I know that's a little bit in the future. No written communication.

So any other comments before we close out the meeting?

I have a question about the Builders Arts District. I mean, are they still existing, or are they done? OK. Because Sandy just resigned and I just felt kind of awkward that it was a very random, abrupt decision or it was just kind of two-year term. I'm not sure.

I would encourage for like internal politics of any nonprofit to reach out to that organization. I will tell you that the organization is still active. They were under contract with the city to deliver a world cup programming on Friday for the last game, which would have been the 26th. Um, and that event did go, did happen. Um, so they are, they, for that, they had actually hired Sandy back as a contractor to, so there's some ongoing relationship changing there too. Um, I would say, encourage you to reach out to the org, reach out to their Instagram. They're a very responsive organization. It is common that new startups go through some shakeup, but I am incredibly impressed with their outgoing executive director in San Diego. I'm incredibly blessed with how she has navigated this change. I think I'm safe to share that she has accepted the job as director of communications at the Bellevue Downtown Association. So she came from the downtown association, spent some time about red is going back to the downtown association. That's a very positive thing for our community. I think I might leave it there, but reach out. There are partners in art.

Any other comments? So it is now 616 and I adjourn this meeting.

Thank you.