Fort Collins Residents Express Themselves Through Art In Public Places

Upon first glance, when one enters the Fort Collins city building the intimidating atmosphere seems to sit on the shoulders of every person. The clean spotless furniture, the many computers, the floor that easily bounces the image of every item in the room back at you on the almost mirror-like floor. The professionally dressed workers seem to fit perfectly into the machine that runs the entire city of Fort Collins like fine tuned human gears. But as you venture up the beautiful staircase into one of the second floor training rooms you might see, not suits, but t-shirts, jeans, and even little children scurrying about with hands full of a sticky snack. This was the scene for the Art in Public Places meeting on March 23 in the Fort Collins City Building.

“Such a big crowd today,” said the head of the Art in Public Places board, Ellen Martin.

The meeting began with a quick roll call of the board and introductions of anyone else in the room. Community members in the room are then given the opportunity to approach the board with a proposal, potential complaint, or problem that they might have regarding art in the city. Fort Collins resident Sandy Limberg addressed the board first about a painting that he wanted to be relocated because the building that it was on was scheduled to be torn down. The large painting displays two large silhouetted swing dancers against a vivid background.

“I would really like to see this moved. If I feel that people are just trying to stone wall me and they just want to deal with it I will go to city hall,” said Limberg.

The animated Limberg continued his proposal for why the painting should remain in the city, and he suggested alternate locations for the extremely large painting. He began his mission in December and has been fighting non-stop since then. The painting was used as the backdrop for a popular swing dancing party that occurred in Fort Collins a few months ago and Limberg became attached to the painting because it visually depicted his love for swing dancing.

“That night was just magic, the people were dancing and you could see the picture in the background, it was so wonderful,” Limberg said.

The board was skeptical however about whether or not the painting was even worth saving because of its tattered condition and complicated structure. The painting was put on a series of large wooden squares and mounted on the building in pieces. They also questioned whether or not the painting was even intended by the artist to be a permanent structure. Originally commissioned about 5-8 years ago at the Fort Collins Farmers Market, the painting was intended to be a part of a series of paintings that would appear on the wooden squares.

“I don’t think the idea was for it to be permanent. It was supposed to be changed every year but that didn’t work out,” said Martin.

After a bit of debating on what to do with the art piece the board moved on to a proposal for a sculpture that was going to be placed outside of EPIC Arena. The large sculpture being proposed by the members of the Sandra Kobelt Hau Memorial Foundation was a life-size child in a hockey outfit.

“I’ve had a lot of help from everybody choosing everything,” said the creator of the piece Steve Kramer.

The board was very pleased with the sculpture and unanimously agreed that it should be placed in front of the arena. Kramer said he took a lot of time deciding the uniform size of the child, the face, and the over position that the child would be standing in.

“It captures that whimsy, that feeling of determination that every kid want to score! Score and then go have oranges,” said Kramer.

This description led Kramer to name the sculpture “Next Goal”. Even thought the sculpture looked like it took a lot of time and energy Kramer says, “Anytime you work collaboratively with the people on order to get something done for the people and the community it’s a lot easier.”

The meeting ended with a quick review of what was discussed and what was on the agenda for the next meeting.

(Picture 1-Swing Dancing Painting)

(Picture 2-"Next Goal")