Artists to make mark on building

BANGOR – Professional artists who live in Maine have an opportunity to make their mark on the new courthouse downtown, and they’ll have a sizeable budget to work with.

The Maine Arts Commission invites artists to submit proposals to design, execute and install artwork at the Penobscot County Judicial Center, which is a Percent for Art site. The budget for the project is $90,000 and the deadline for proposals is Aug. 31, 2008.

Maine’s Percent for Art law reserves 1 percent of the construction funds for all state-funded building projects to provide artwork for the public areas of these buildings. The entire budget for the new courthouse, including nonconstruction-related funds, is $37 million.

The winning proposal will be selected by a committee composed of new University of Maine Museum of Art director George Kinghorn, former interim UMMA director Laurie Hicks, who is a University of Maine art professor, Josiah Stevenson of Leers Weinzapfel Associates, which is the Boston architectural firm designing the courthouse, Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Warren Silver, and District Court Judge Ann Murray.

Kersten Gilg, the Maine Arts Commission public art associate, said the committee will likely go in a more traditional direction and keep in mind the importance of the building.

“It’s a dramatic building where people’s lives change, and they want art that reflects that kind of austerity,” Gilg said.

The new four-story court facility on Exchange Street will be an 85,000-square-foot structure that will incorporate seven courtrooms and a parking garage. Estimated completion time is fall 2009.

The committee determined there were opportunities for artwork in several locations of the building, including the wall and ceiling of the main entry and exit area, the interior above the courtroom doors, interior lobby areas in the first, second and third floors, where there may be opportunities for an artist who specializes in tile floors done in the terrazzo style of small marble chips in cement, and the exterior on the Exchange Street side of the building.

The budget could be divided among several proposals, Gilg said.

The $90,000 budget is among the larger numbers for the Percent for Art program, he added. Sites at public schools other than colleges or universities are capped at $50,000. The budget for Cloke Plaza at the University of Maine in Orono is about $169,000, but that number includes money set aside for other Percent for Art projects at UM that were merged to create one installation.

“It’s a pretty good award, actually, for the state,” Gilg said.

All professional artists living in Maine may apply. Artists who are employees of the state of Maine Judicial Branch are ineligible for Percent for Art projects at the location where they are employed.

A list of guidelines is available at www.MaineArts.com.

For more information, contact Gilg at 287-6719, kerstin.gilg@maine.gov, 1-877-887-3878 TTY or via NexTalk.Net, user ID kerstingilg.

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

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