The artwork commissioning process takes patience, a lot of patience. Beginning with a scribble on paper to ending with a finished piece of artwork often takes months, if not years. I have to be patient. Artist concepts, for me, are just wispy clouds floating in my brain. It’s not until I see the actual artwork that it becomes real, and then – WOW – it hits me how beautiful the vision is. That is what is about to happen with two big projects that I’ve been working on.
The first is a sculpture by artist Art Garcia that will be attached to the tower on the recently constructed Las Cruces Fire Station #3. You may have seen Garcia’s work on the Campbell Street Bridge in El Paso, TX called “Ferrocarrilero”. He’s also created works of art for the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth.
Garcia’s concept for our fire station is an abstract sculpture, inspired by Native American design, that portrays the role water plays in firefighting. He is currently in the fabrication phase of the art piece, which is made of powder-coated steel, and is on track to install it soon. This is still just a concept to me as I haven’t seen photos of the physical sculpture yet. I’m sure it’s going to look great, but it still doesn’t seem/feel real.
The second project will be installed at the new Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley facility on Bataan Memorial West and Rinconada Blvd. The art sculpture by artist Vito Di Bari features a cat and dog silhouette against a backdrop of the sun, with animal related cutouts in the panels that create a lattice effect. Di Bari sent photos of the sculpture to show the status of the work, and it looks so good! I’ll admit that the concept for this sculpture looked nice on paper, but I wasn’t sure if it was enough to meet the “beacon” description that we were looking for. Our selection committee, however, could see the vision, and now I do too!
Artist concept drawing of “Sun Shelter” sculpture for the Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley.The two projects are tentatively slated to be installed in the next few months. I am excited to see the finished artwork being placed in the location for which it was designed – that is the best phase of commissioned art projects for me. This is when the concept finally comes to life, this is when it gets real.
