Arts Commission - Regular Meeting

It's four o'clock.

Do we have? There she is. Yay. All right. The August 27th, 2026 Arts and Culture Commission meeting is called to order. And our first order of business is Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Clerk, could you do the roll call for us, please?

Commissioner Rooney? Here. Vice Chair Busse?

Here.

Chair Pugh?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Yay, finally. Okay, so first order of business is to approve the agenda. So since there's only three of us, I need a motion. I'm just assuming that everybody's going to go for this. So a motion to approve, please.

I second.

And we'll vote. Everyone in favor, I'll go first. Yay.

Yay.

Yay.

Sweet. So approved. Okay. So we have election of new chair and vice chair. Mr. Eric, how do we do this? I forget. It's been a year.

Yeah. So every year there needs to be an election of the chair and then the vice chair. So we'll do the chair first. So you open it up for nominations who would ever like to, nominate themselves or if you would like to nominate somebody else feel free to make a motion for that and then you conduct a vote and and then and then we have the new chair and then we'll do the same process for vice chair okay

um since there's only three of us um i'll go ahead and nominate myself for chair and then do we have a discussion on that oh my i think my mic just you can if you want um otherwise you can just move straight into a motion and then a second if somebody so i think we just move straight into it okay so we need a motion to approve uh current commissioner chair is the new commissioner chair

It would be a motion to move forward with the nomination.

Okay, move forward with the nomination. Thank you. A motion to move forward with the nomination. Mike, just... Okay, second. Microphone's working. No. No, it just went out. Okay. One second.

Try it again.

Hello. There we go.

All right. My apologies.

And then you can just repeat what you said, the nomination. Okay. So I'll start over. I will nominate myself for chairman and I would need a second on that.

I second.

And then do we go straight into voting or do we have a discussion?

Discussion only if the members do decide.

Okay, I don't think we need a discussion, so let's go ahead and vote. And I can't vote for myself, right?

You can. Oh, I can? Yes.

All right, so all in favor of current Commissioner Chair continuing on as Commissioner Chair Pugh, I'll start. Let's go, yay. Yay.

Yay. Yay.

All right, so moved. Commissioner Pugh is continuing on as the Arts and Council Chairperson. All right, so Vice Chair. All right, so I'll go ahead and nominate current Vice Chair Busse as to continue in our Chair position. And then we need a motion to, I forget already.

I move to move forward with the nomination.

Thank you.

Is that the right wording?

Yes, that's perfect. Yes. All right. So we will now vote for continuing vice chair Boosie as the vice chair going forward for 2027, 2028. I'll start the voting. Yay.

Yay.

All right. So moved by.

I'm sorry. Just to clarify, it would be for 2026 to 2027. Yes.

Thank you. I'm getting ahead of myself. All right. With that out of the way, we finally get to approve two minutes that we've been waiting almost a year to approve. And I'm going to assume that everyone has read these at least a thousand times. So I'm going to make a motion to approve the minutes for October 27, 2025. Second, please. All right. Let's vote. I'll start. Yay. Yay. Yay, perfect. So approve the minutes for October 27th, 2025. The November 24th minutes are short since we didn't have a quorum. So once again, I'm going to make a motion to approve those minutes. I'm going to second. Perfect. And we'll vote. And I'll start the voting. Yay. Yay.

Yay.

Perfect. So approved. So now we can get to public comments. We have a person in the audience or just here to observe. No, thanks for coming. Thank you.

We have not had anybody sign up for public comments and we have not had any emails for public.

Okay, perfect.

Okay.

All right. So now we get to new business and I think we have the floor goes to Mr. Johnson.

Yeah, so I'm not looking for any specific direction here just to update you all. So the Nature's Throne, which is the name of the wood sculpture piece that Thomas Verba made for us this past year, has been damaged. You can see from the picture one of its... what was it, arms or legs or maybe a little bit of both was cut off. So we have contacted the artist and he is going to be repairing that this next month. So just wanted to make you all aware of that as you, you know, if you get comments or questions from the public about it. It's a very public-facing art sculpture. We did a lot of outreach about it. Some folks have already contacted me from Arts Downtown about it. So just... It's more of just making you all aware of it and that we're handling it now. So the cost of the repairs is about $500. And we're going to absorb that cost internally. probably through Parks and Recreation, but we're still going to discuss that. But yeah, we're getting it repaired.

That just looks like it was an accidental break.

Yeah, it doesn't look intentional. It looks like it was just an accidental break, and it's one of those things. I've discussed this with Arts Downtown with some of their pieces. It's a lot of just wear and tear stuff that they see all the time. It's not necessarily vandalism, but just being out in the elements and things of that nature. So It just comes with the territory. So, yeah, just providing you with just more of an informational update on that. Thank you. So and if you get in again, if you get any questions from the public, you can just refer them to me and just let them know that we're getting it repaired. So otherwise, it's been a great piece. Lots of good feedback from the public that we've received about this past year.

Perfect. It doesn't no one's tried to vandalize it, have they? What was that? No one's tried to vandalize it at all that you know of?

I think we had somebody that carved into the... Into the actual throne itself, but I think it was like somebody's initials, but I think that was kind of intentional based on what Tomas told us that the benches, you can actually like remove the bench. I think at one point he discussed, you know, it would be cool if people could put their initials on it and then like, you know, fill it up and then we can place that bench that somewhere and then replace it with a new one. So, but yeah, other than that, it's actually gone pretty well. I'm surprised with how much foot traffic that gets, especially with the farmer's market, how little just, you know, vandalism in general.

People respect it.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. All right. So the next one is our signal cabinet wrap update. And, um, how do you want to proceed with this? Sir, Eric Johnson.

Yeah. So what I have before you is the draft call to artists. Um, if you all have had a chance to review that, um, in the interim time, since we had a little, uh, uh, we'll just say, uh, uh, kind of a, a, so yarn, a little break there. I've been talking with, um, public works about potential new locations for this next year and the recommended locations they have here in front of you. The first location is 39th Avenue and 5th Street Southeast, and then 39th Avenue and 25th, and then going down the hill, Pioneer and 12th, and then River Road and 4th are the four locations that they recommended. And they based that off of... usage, you know, how much visibility that gets also to deter graffiti. Some of those cabinets have been tagged in the past. And so putting the artwork on it is able to deter some of that. And also one of the things that we have been trying to do is we're trying to spread out the locations a little bit more based on council districts. So trying to do at least one per council district. So there's three in the city. And then the fourth one could be citywide. anywhere. So those are the four locations that they recommended. And then I have the draft call to artists here for your review. If you all have any feedback or comments for us, we'd be happy to entertain those now and we can get that trued up and get that sent out. One additional thing that I wanted to propose to you all. So since we're in the middle of the summer, summer season, obviously getting submissions from students is going to be difficult. So one of the things that I was going to pitch to you all is that we wait until school starts back up in September and then issue the call to artists if that was okay. Okay. I'm seeing some nodding heads here. So yeah, just wanted to pitch that to you all as an idea since we're in the middle of the summer right now.

Yeah, we would just, rather than doing a summer selection and trying to get this like we've done in the past, we just move it. So you do a... put it out on beginning of the year. It'd be great way to start the year actually for these, for everyone. And then look at having it. So it'd be ready for the spring for installation.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Or we could, or we could put it out this fall and make the selections over the winter. That's what I mean. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And then we'd be ready, you know, by March or so to first nice day or series a nice day. Since they do this locally, we'd be able to get the wraps in a lot faster and we'd be able to get it we'd be ahead of the game.

Yeah. And it's also good too, for our public works crews. I know, you know, I've, I've heard feedback from streets crews in the past. That's difficult getting them installed when it's, you know, very rainy.

So it needs to be warmer.

Yeah.

Yeah. Cause it heats the vinyl up and it stretches right. And all that kind of stuff.

Exactly. Exactly. So, so yeah. So just looking for general feedback from you all on the call to artists, any edits, comments, or suggestions that you have happy to, entertain those from you all.

Yes, I have a question. Paige, go ahead.

Oh, thank you. I just had a quick comment. I know I've brought this up in the past with the fair. In the spring, we have our student art competitions. So that might be something for the future. I don't think the timing will quite work out for this call to artists. But we do have our fine art show. in the fall at our state fair and their intake will be happening in mid-August and judging and everything. So that might be a good time to maybe get the word out. It's not student art, it's adults, but a lot of them do live in the area and might be interested in submitting something. So I'm wondering if that might be a good time to at least have maybe a flyer available or something that says more information coming soon or something like that so that they can pick it up when they come drop off their art for the fair.

Commissioner Rooney, could you repeat the dates for that when that's happening at the fair?

Yeah, give me one second. I think the intake will take place. They will be dropping off artwork August 6th, 7th, and 8th. um so not this weekend but next week thursday friday saturday um so that might be a good time if there is at least like preliminary information of even if we don't have the call to artists out yet maybe something that just says like be on the lookout here's the something like that coming soon um so then or we could have something available um by our fine art preview night which is august 27th so a little bit later so it's right before the fair starts um that a lot of the artists and purchasers come to that event um so then they could at least get that information there so if the sixth or seventh is um too soon but just wanted to throw that out there

Okay. Yeah, we can certainly put a flyer together with a QR code. I think we have a website page where we can just, it's more of a teaser, like just say, hey, this is coming soon, be on the lookout, and then for more information, go to the website. Okay, great.

Commissioner Rui, that's perfect. That would be great. Plus, you still have student art, do you not?

We do, but not as much at the state fair. It's more at our spring fair, which is in April. So maybe if there's a next round next year that coincides with the spring summertime, that might be a good time to do that for the students.

That sounds great. Okay. That wouldn't be too difficult, would it, Mr. Johnson, to put something like that together?

Oh, yeah. No, that's easy.

That'd be perfect. Yeah.

Yeah. One additional comment that I had as I'm thinking through this, one thing that we found successful in previous iterations of this is including the actual dimensions of the cabinets into the call-out. That was something that I can't remember if it was last year or the year before, we got a lot of artists that asked for the dimensions, specific dimensions, so they could design it to that because... The cabinets are oftentimes, they're not a single cabinet. They're a series of cabinets, like two and three. And so the artist made the point of like, well, it'd be nice to know if it's a series of three, then I could design it to, you know, be copacetic with those three different pieces. So that's one thing that I flagged here in my notes is I'll include the actual dimensions of each of the cabinets in here. So that way it's more helpful for the artists.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah, because the dimensions could coincide with the location. And if they wanted to, they could go do a sneak peek.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be perfect.

Yeah, and I know that our streets crews have those dimensions easily available, so I can work with them and get that included. Yeah, that would be brilliant. Any other feedback?

Yeah, I have a question about the – the preferred themes uh under the Puyallup tribe I want to know if there has been any direct outreach to the tribe so they know that we're doing a call to artists that specifically represents their community yes so last year I sent it to the tribe uh my contacts over there and they um

And they sent that out through their network of folks. And I think we did get, remind me again, I think we got some submissions that were tribal related, I believe.

We did, but I think that one of the issues was that we weren't able to discern, because it was anonymous for us when we were selecting, we weren't able to discern whose art was authentic from the tribe and who might have been just a community member. So I'm wondering if, is there a way to separate the submissions from the tribe specifically for that category for us to take into consideration. I'm just very concerned about, although some of the artwork we've seen has been breathtaking, I'm a little concerned about speaking for the tribe and not giving them a space for their own voice.

Yeah, we'll have to discuss that with the clerk's office and with legal to see if that's something that we're allowed to do in the call out or in the application form itself. I can follow up with you on that.

Yeah, I think it's just, I mean, it's wonderful that we're giving them a space in the themes, but I think it's a very fine line. And even Tacoma Art Museum, I want to say several years ago, did a whole exhibit on art that was native in theme, but not done by native artists and how difficult that was for the tribe itself. So I think it's just something to take into consideration.

Okay. Yeah. No duly noted. Yeah. I'll check with legal and see if that's something that we can do in the call out in, in the actual application itself. Cause when they, when they do the call out, we have an online form that they need to fill out and all of that. So, but I do know, um, uh, this past year I sent that out to, um, my contacts over at the tribe and they, uh, they actually really appreciated being, uh, thought of, um, So, yeah, so and that's something that we're trying to do more of with other projects, trying to involve them more in certain aspects of things like the Meeker Festival Street, for example, involving them in that. So, yeah, no, perfect.

OK, the only the reason why I ask if there's a way to separate the submissions from the tribe is because it also wouldn't look too great if we asked for them to submit and then ended up going. with a tribal representation that wasn't from a member from the tribe. That also could be considered offensive, and that's the last thing we want to do.

Yeah, absolutely. We don't want it to, yeah, we don't want a situation like that to happen. Yes, oftentimes those situations, they're good intentions, but sometimes things can backfire. We don't want that to happen. Exactly. Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else? Do we need to approve this, or you just go forward with it? I think I've got direction here.

So yeah, I don't think I need a motion.

No, excellent. OK, perfect. Thank you. The next item is the update on the cabinet at the library.

Yeah, so what I have before you are design drawings of the current iteration of the cabinet. I have sent this to Arts Downtown. Their board has had a chance to look at it. Nicole has had a chance to look at it. They provided me with some feedback. The main feedback point is, and I think Commissioner Chair Pugh, I think you had brought this up as well, was the bottom drawers. Initially, they were three smaller drawers, but after speaking with Arts Downtown, they would prefer to actually have two larger drawers so that they could fit larger pieces in there. And I'm talking about the drawers that are down below for storage. So that was kind of the main design change that we had between the last iteration and this iteration. So what you have here is the final design and our... Fabricator is working on it now. We have a scheduled install date of August 19th. They are ahead of schedule. I am working with the library and our facilities folks now to make sure that they have access to the building. It'll be about a six hour install. So they'll start in the morning, and you'd probably be done by early afternoon. So, yeah, so that's a great update, a big key item in the work plan that you all worked on finally getting done. Once we have this installed, we'll want to schedule a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Arts Downtown.

Cool.

Yes, and do an e-newsletter article, all that stuff. You got the PAO right here, so I'll do kind of a big – a big communications outreach for this. So yeah, anyways, just wanted to provide you with an update. Looking forward to getting this project done.

Yeah, that's perfect. Good work.

And then one additional thing, too, that Arts Downtown specifically asked for was that the shelving could be removable. So they could remove the shelving and they could place it in different places just because they have lots of different pieces of various sizes. So that was another specific request that they had asked for.

I didn't even think about that. I just figured that was part of the program. Yeah. Figuring it was going to be...

set up put away yeah yeah but yeah i had a good discussion with um nicole the other day and they're very very excited about yeah this is nice yes and so um the future moving forward once we get this installed um we'll want to work with arts downtown on moving the gallery that's up here on fifth floor and over to the library and this would be that future home okay right there so we'll draft up a contract with arts downtown basically it's a an MOU, which is basically just a contract that states, okay, like here's kind of the rules of the road for using the art display. They would have access to it and all this and that. And I'll bring that before you all to review when we get closer to that.

Because ultimately they kind of end up being the curators, don't they? Correct.

Correct. We would own the display case, the city, but we would be essentially leasing it to Arts Downtown to use.

The only drawback, I guess, is you can't have someone that has 18 pieces show there.

Exactly, yeah.

That is the drawback.

And we discussed that at the outset. I said, and I think, I can't remember if it was Becky or somebody at Arts Downtown had brought it up, but... I think that the point that we agreed upon was, yes, you will display less pieces, but you're going to have way more eyeballs on it than up here.

Oh, yeah.

We very rarely actually just today we had one person come up. and look at the artwork. And in the six years I've been here, that's the only time I've ever seen somebody come up and actually like get admitted through, you know, the locked door and actually look at the pieces on their own time. I've never, ever seen that before. So point being, we get very few folks that come through and actually look at the art on display in the fifth floor. So they're going to get a lot more exposure.

And then they could rotate quicker too. Yes. Because it had more people that would be interested because this is super intimidating. Walk all the way up and then have to buzz in. I mean, it's even intimidating to come meet people that work there.

Yeah, and there's security concerns with it being in an office area. We've got computer equipment and things. You know, IT has concerns about that from a security standpoint. So for a lot of different reasons, it's good to have it over there at the library. And in fact, what's interesting is a few years ago, the library did a space plan. And one of the three items was... new teen zone. And actually the second item was an art gallery in the library. So this kind of sort of fits into it. Yeah.

Better than nothing.

Yeah.

It's awesome. Thank you.

Can you remind me where exactly in the library is it going? Is it going in the hallway where there's the other display cases or is it going to be more inside the library? Oh, okay. So it will be in that hallway.

Yeah, exactly. So the south entrance there from the parking lot, when you walk in and you just turn immediately to your left, there's kind of this empty space right there where it kind of looks like there should be a display case, but there isn't. That's where that would go. And so when I talked with the fabricator, I wanted to make sure that it looks as similar as possible to the existing display cases so that there's some consistency there. So they picked out a Gosh, I can't remember the type of wood that they're using. I can't remember off the top of my head, but suffice it to say, they're going to be designing it to look very similar to the other display cases. So yeah, so south-facing entrance, walk in, turn to the left, and that's where it will go.

You can barely tell the difference. If it looks the way it's going to be in the drawing when it's actually annual.

Yeah, it looks very similar to what this is right now.

You guys did a good job.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, and the fabricator has been great to work with. Yeah, very communicative, very responsive. And yeah, and ahead of schedule. We always like that.

On budget, ahead of schedule.

Super cool. Love that.

All right. Then I think the last item is recruitment, but I don't know how we do. We can, we, I mean, I can tell people, Hey, come join arts commission, but they still have to apply. Yes. Correct. Yeah.

So there's a case then there.

Yeah. I'm not going to even say it. Yeah.

There's a, there's a formal process for them to apply. They have to fill out an application. And then I think we have kind of an application period, right. That opens up or are we, do we recruit just throughout the year?

So we will actively promote, Hey, this is currently an application process. We are accepting applications at this time so that After this is done, they will be actively reviewed, and then we will set up interviews. But we do accept applications all throughout the year.

Yeah, so that I knew. And I knew there was a period where you actually do review and then do selection.

Yeah. And, um, one of the things, so I had recently discussed this with, uh, the mayor, um, you know, based on the conversations at council about recruitment and getting more folks on the commission. So, um, uh, so as you know, you know, as we take in applications, those get reviewed by the ad hoc committee and then they, uh, conduct interviews and then appoint, um, based on that. And of course, council has to, you know, affirm that in, at one of their meetings, but, um, suffice it to say, I just put this on here just to kind of brainstorm. If you all had thoughts and ideas on folks to actively recruit or you think would be a good fit, please let us know because we'd like to, you know, have regular meetings. You know, it'd be nice. Get active people on here.

Yeah, it would be very nice because this has been ridiculous. I mean, we're almost a year and I don't even know where we're at now. Because we were moving forward before and now, you know, eight, 10 month layoff is ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Do you know when the next application review period is?

I don't.

I can get that pulled up. I do know. I think it should be ending relatively soon. But again, we do always accept applications. Let me take a look here.

Yeah. So if there's a review period coming up, then... If there's somebody that you have in mind, then the sooner the better. Okay. Get an application in.

Did I understand correctly that we're currently in a review process and it's about to expire?

Not a review process. We posted on April 14th on our website, just on the homepage. That we are accepting throughout the year. So at least right now, I'm not seeing an end date for this. The city clerk's office has not received a date as to when the ad hoc committee is going to meet and start rounds of interviews. That is something that we can share later. Just right now, there does not at least seem to be a posted date for an end time on this. Yeah.

And I've been talking with the mayor about the ad hoc committee. So I'll let this group know when that next round of interviews is going to be scheduled. So that way, if you know somebody that is interested, they can get an application in soon so they can review that.

Okay.

So yeah, I just put that out there because that was one of the things that council, so I guess backing up. So when we had the council meeting to approve the ordinance, which takes the commission from seven to five, one of the things that council had asked for was sort of an active recruitment campaign for lack of a better term. to find some more folks to get those numbers back up in the next year. So really just wanted to put that out there to all of you. Let's all put our thinking caps together and start thinking of some folks that might be interested. I also had a, I attended the last Arts Downtown meeting and discuss the same thing with them. And they said that they might have some folks that would be interested in joining the Arts and Culture Commission, which would be great. It would be great to have somebody who is both on Arts Downtown and on this commission to kind of be a link between the two.

Agreed. Yeah, we need to have that connection. It would help us. Yeah, because this is... It would be good.

Yeah. But in the meantime, it's great that we have a forum and we can continue to conduct business. It's great. And it's just great to see you all again, too. Yeah.

And for any community members in the room who might like to join the commission. You can come join us. We'd love to have you up here with us.

Thanks so much. Tell your friends, please. Absolutely.

And so that concludes that item.

Okay. Are we still on track for every other month? Are we going to do this?

The next scheduled meeting is next month on the 24th. It was supposed to be every other month. This month being moved up does not change how the rest of this.

Perfect. Then we get two in a row. Okay. Hold on. Okay. Oh, okay.

So just, I will not be here on the 24th, unfortunately. So is there any way that we could reschedule that meeting so it's not a while?

That is something that could potentially be rescheduled. We could reach out in a blind carbon copy to all of the board and commission members, fielding a couple of different date options. And as we blindly get all the responses back, then we can determine what option is best available. Sounds good. My apologies.

No, it's OK. No, thank you guys for being flexible because we kind of did that for this meeting, if I'm not mistaken.

It was also my fault. My bad. Sorry.

That's okay. We'll keep this rolling.

chair pew and the commission one one additional item that i would like to bring back to you at the next meeting once we get that rescheduled is kind of a check-in on the work plan perfect i think that's one thing that you know since we had kind of a little break there for a while um we kind of lost track a little bit on that so i think maybe that would make sense to you know i can just put together a quick powerpoint or it could just be an update to you all on hey, here's what we've accomplished so far with the work plan, and then here's some of the other items in the work plan. Let's talk about prioritization.

I think I was going to mention maybe it's almost like a semi-work session to some degree so we can figure out where we're at, and that would be perfect. Okay. Yeah.

Would it be possible to get a copy of the PowerPoint maybe the week prior to the meeting?

Yes. Very typical of our process. I always like to provide PowerPoints whenever I present them at least a week before so you have a chance to review them. So yes, I'll absolutely do that.

I was hoping to get someone from PMSA here today to talk about their mural program. I'll get them there next month so that we can basically tag along Yeah, because they do a lot of that. They do a huge program and they've done inventories and we just need to tag along to that and help them out. Would it make sense for me to invite Julie Dorr to the next meeting? Julie could come.

If she would like to come or if there's somebody else.

There's somebody else. Yeah, she was going to come today and just... be one of our public commenters but something came up okay so but um they already have an inventory and the stuff is mapped almost to the point where it could become a tour like the sculpture stuff oh okay yeah and i think it's time that maybe that we tag along on that because that is one of our work items yeah yeah one of the things that i have not to

go too off track. One of the things that I'm going to be working with Rotator, our tourism branding consultant, next year is a mural on the visitor center. So the south-facing wall, everyone knows where the visitor center right is on North Meridian. So that south wall It's kind of a blank space right there. That's something that we're looking at potentially having an artist come and do like a rendering of the always in season tourism branding. So that could be a potential thing that we could bring to you all to take a look at. So just to kind of beautify that more and to call out that this is the official visitor center of the city.

Where is that?

Yeah, on the Chamber of Commerce.

Oh, their website? The auto parts store.

Yeah, just north of the auto parts store. Not in the auto parts store.

No, but close to that. All right. Yeah, I didn't even know.

So there you go. Perfect. So people are more aware. Yep.

All right. Anything else, you guys? Paige, anything? Thank you for coming. Appreciate it. With that, I think we can adjourn at 4.35. All right. Yay. Bye. Bye.