Today's meeting of Public Art and Design Board is called to order on February 12th, 2026.

Everybody, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Um we have to approve the minutes.

Do we put the minutes first or do we need to do roll call or approval minutes?

Let's just start a roll call in a doce of each other.

You have some new members on the board.

So let's just start.

It's great to be here.

Thanks.

An old Clearwater resident way back in the 60s.

But I'm back.

I'm Mark Lutz.

Live here in town and glad to be part of it.

Fantastic.

Jerry Minal, owner of my favorite art place, and we're a fine art printer and custom frame shop here in Claywater.

I'm Jonathan Barnes.

I'm a faculty member at St.

Petersburg College of Visual Arts.

I teach printmaking and 3D design and art industry.

And I also have a studio practice at home.

My name is Brian Wallaton.

I am a resident of Clearwater.

Didn't wasn't born here, grew up here, but I am currently a full-time student at USF, so I have a lot of other things going on as well.

And we have great digits wall dance, so great.

We're doing roll call right now.

Right.

I'm Greg Byrd.

I'm a professor at St.

Petersburg College.

I teach creative writing and literature and have talked humanities before.

And I've been a resident of Clearwater for 35 years.

Fantastic.

So I'll make a motion to approve the minutes.

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the October 9th, 2025 Public Art and Design Board meeting.

Second.

Any discussion about the minutes.

See you none.

All in favor.

Aye.

Motion pass.

My brain just went back.

We're moving on to it number three, citizens to be heard.

Are they any citizens that have things to say that want to step up?

Okay.

So we have one person in the audience today.

Hi.

Hi.

Item number four, new business items.

4.1.

World's largest duck installation recap.

Please.

That was so wonderful.

That was great.

Good afternoon.

Amber Briggs, Arts and Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Clearwater.

So the world's largest rubber duck was in Clearwater from January 9th to the 26th.

This was about a two and a half week long exhibit with a month-long meetup with the 10-foot tall baby duck named Timmy.

We had some major events scheduled around this installation.

We had some amazing stats and numbers come out of this installation.

So one big number is that our parking revenue increased it more than doubled from the same time last year.

So we had about two 10,000 dollars in revenue for the entire month of January in 2025.

We had over 23,000 in revenue in January, this time span 2026.

So and that's to put our finer point on it.

So overall we had about 21,000 unique visitors, Coachman Park in this time period.

And then we had a 5K.

With all of the press we got, which I don't think there was a local media outlet that I did not talk to.

We had radio, Tampa Bay Times, Fox 13, Bay News, everybody was there.

We even made it into the Wall Street Journal, which was crazy.

So overnight we doubled our attendance for that.

So we had a little under 500 runners.

So between that and we sold the Jeep time slots, we made a revenue of over 17,000.

So this was amazing.

It did exactly what it was supposed to do.

I personally spoke to people that came from a couple from Tennessee that made it a birthday weekend because she loved rubber ducks.

I talked to a guy that came all the way from Denver specifically for the duck.

He was all ducked out in his duck year at the birthday bash.

I mean, and I and numerous people from the East Coast.

So it brought tons of people into our area.

The downtown businesses.

I had pictures I was supposed to be showing you at the same time.

The downtown businesses expressed how wonderful it was.

Some of them said they increased revenue 30 to 40% the same time last year.

So it was amazing.

And I did do a presentation at the downtown development board meeting on the on February 2nd.

So it goes into more stat detail if you wanted to watch that.

I have a question.

Yeah.

Whose idea was this?

Where did the idea come from?

What was the expectation?

So it was my idea.

I was just looking for rotating art exhibits right when I first got into this position in 2023.

This was one of the first things that popped up on Google, and I was like, that is cool and weird.

I kind of want to bring it to Coachman Park.

But we had just we were opening Coachman Park that year.

We kind of wanted the park to be its be its main attraction, right?

And so this just kind of seemed like the perfect time with the construction and everything going on.

January is kind of a slower month for us.

So it kind of dovetailed off of you know being an art installation to being an economic driver as well.

And so that's how it came to be.

Did you ever expect it to be what it turned out to be?

I knew it was going to be big.

I did not imagine it was going to be this big.

I didn't imagine how many people loved rubber ducks.

I had no idea, but people do.

And people were telling me, oh, we collect them, like cruise ships, I guess you can collect them, like all of these things that I didn't know.

Well, it's not it's not age-specific either.

Correct.

Right.

We worked with all age groups.

Right.

And I think it brought the whole family out.

You're right.

Which is key.

Yeah, and just being down at the park on a Thursday and seeing just families like having a picnic or running around and playing, like that is what Coachman Park is supposed to be, and it just really brought people down there.

So I really liked that.

That's awesome.

Moving on to 4.2 City Hall Sculpture Selection.

Not that one.

Sorry, trying to get to the right uh picture.

It's because it's here.

At the previous board meeting, um, the board had narrowed down to two artist finalists for the city hall suspended sculpture.

So each artist had submitted two design proposals.

We wanted to allow the city staff who were going to be working in City Hall who have to look at this every day to be the kind of final vote.

So we put out a poll, we had 34 responses.

It was on a scoring uh system where you you ranked your your favorite to your least favorite.

So the everybody in a one place or first place got four points, all the way down to fourth place got one point.

So with 126 points, Ripple, which is the design concept A, the C weed design from James Peterson was picked.

The second place did get 119 points, so it was close.

But this is the design.

Um, he has been issued a contract.

He's currently uh working with city engineers, and we're anticipating installation to be October 26th when City Hall is open.

Wow.

Does anyone have any anything else I have to do?

That looks great.

Uh out of the 4.3 Miramont Park restroom building mural.

So this mural was completed in late December 2025, last December.

Um it's received a lot of positive feedback from the residents, um, including the the 3D effect.

So, Mr.

Bird, you got your Trump, a little bit of your Trump loyale here.

Um the artist is Laura Thomas.

The smaller side of the building um is has been left blank, so this is just a rendering.

This has been left blank.

We're having a community painting event this Saturday, uh the 14th from 10 to 12.

Board is welcome to come out, but it's uh intended to be a smaller event for the neighborhood to come out and help paint this mural and kind of finish it off.

So it looks great.

I just went and saw it today.

It's beautiful.

I love this mural.

That looks awesome.

Item number four point four, North Greenwood Mural Festival.

So due to fewer business applications than anticipated, um the project schedule had to be adjusted.

So we've pushed this back to s hopefully be late March where we'll be having this festival.

Um at this time there are four interested businesses and two or three potential like city owned mural locations.

Um the board did receive an invitation to score artists' applications from our open call to mural artists.

Um and so the top scoring applicants will be established into an artist pool.

This will be used for this festival, but also for multiple projects throughout the city uh for the rest of the year.

Do we know what businesses will get near?

So there's Big Gyms Barbecue, um Head Start, the Isaiah Gully Center.

Um there's two privately owned um I don't know the name of them off the top of my head.

I'd have to get you the actual list.

And then the the city buildings is one of them is the Park Speedfication Building, and then there's the um the old is it Curtis Fundamental, not Curtis Fundamental, uh Robinson.

Robinson Challenge School.

So that is now the African American Historical Museum.

So they've expressed interest.

That's a school board owned piece of property and they're okay with it, so we have to make sure the business is okay with it.

So it's the old Courtesy Elementary, the old Curtis, yeah.

Okay.

Rob is Robinson Challenge.

A few years ago.

Yeah, me too.

Um item number four point five.

Selectional chair.

Oh, we're not doing that today.

We can talk about it though.

Oh, we don't talk about it.

Okay, so let's talk about it.

Okay.

So I put this on the agenda because it's supposed to be the first on the first meeting of the year, but um I want to go through your terms with you all.

Um so Mr.

Volaton, your term expires February twenty eighth, because you had a partial term.

So if you would like to stay on the board, you would just need to do an application.

Uh Mr.

Barnes already filled out an application because he's no longer going to be the Arts Lance rep.

Mr.

Byrd, your seat expires March thirty first, so you would have to fill out an application.

This is your first term, so if you you could do a second term if you wanted to, and then Jerry, there's Jerry's third term.

So she's she says she's done with us, and um so her term expires April seventh.

So our next board meeting is not until April 9th, so all of the terms expire before then.

So I don't think it it makes sense to pick a chair or vice chair until we have enough people on the board that are solidified in their seats, if that makes sense.

Yep.

Okay.

Is there anybody that wants to stay on the board or does not want to stay on the board?

Everybody?

Okay.

So application on the city website.

Yeah.

And that's it for me.

Man, that was easy.

It was easy.

Uh great job on the rubber dock.

I mean, I was a little unsure about that at the start, but I really enjoyed how enthusiastic you were about it.

So I think it was a huge success.

What a great economic driver for downtown.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Was there a point you had to be deflated for?

Oh god, don't go on the internet because people are grumpy because it was deflated because it was blowing fifty miles an hour.

Yeah.

I only saw like the whole thing go.

And I was like, I couldn't read it and then I read it later.

I was like, oh, okay.

It had to be taken down for wind a couple of days, and then it was hard to put up when it was windy.

There was a lot, it was a weird January.

I mean we had snow.

Like we've had weird things.

Um we had a lot of rip current, so I would tell people.

So luckily our public communications department, thank God we had a we have a live camera live stream out into the park.

So we started to call it duck cam.

So it's like check out the duck cam before you leave your house to make sure she's inflated.

So she was up for made every major event, which was great, and then she was up the last week.

She was up 24 hours a day for I think five days in a row.

So I think we got our money's worth out of her.

But I understand the disappointment for the wind, but she should come back and visit sometime.

The downtown development board wants her to come back every year.

I'm more of a maybe a biannual.

Are there other world's largest inflatable things?

I have never looked this up on the I don't know about other things.

But there's other things we want to do, like there's other exhibits and stuff we'd like to do to activate the park.

So we don't want to we don't want it to lose its specialness because we do it too much.

So but there are cities that have it every year and they have people that come every year, so maybe I think it was I think it was great, and I think you did a really good job of putting that together.

I mean, I would not have thought of that, so well.

I agree.

It's so but people really enjoyed it.

Well, it's it's that it's that really great um connection uh you know between art, high art community, you know, everybody has a you know there's a connection to it that doesn't have to be.

I don't understand what that's supposed to be.

Right, you know, it's a duck, you know, it's a really big duck.

Yeah, and the amount of I don't get it comments that was like you don't have to.

Yeah, there's okay.

Kind of along the lines of um some of the art we have where there's you know the wings and you can stay back and take a picture, you know, that brings people in that maybe may not really have a particular connection to art.

Right.

Who uh director's reports to get anything else?

Other board members to be heard.

Anybody else have anything else to say?

I'm gonna say that I'm sad that I'm leaving.

This has been such a great experience, and it's given me so much pride.

I've lived in Claywater since 2003.

And to have been able to be a part of the start of the murals and be able to drive around and say it like the umbrella right outside the library was one of the first things that we did.

And um, it's just you guys are gonna have so much fun.

This is such a great, great thing that we do for our city, and it's just gonna keep getting better, particularly with the sound now, and um it's just been great.

Um secretly sad and excited about moving forward.

I should have added to my director's report to thank Jerry for her time on the board, and it's been on it's been a long time.

We've been here many, many years, so we really appreciate your civic service and we appreciate you.

Absolutely.

I'll come in heckle.

Oh my gosh, that would be fun.

Beth's not here today on a little bones.

She's always here, she's always here.

I was uh, you know, when reviewing some of the murals, um I there was some interesting ideas that popped up in there.

Uh one of the things I liked, and I know this isn't a discussion of uh of those choices, but uh one of the things that I liked was the fact that they did some, I don't know what you would call them, carpets or you know, paintings on pavement on the pavement.

I know we can't do that on streets anymore, but it would seem like there would be opportunities for that in city-owned parking lots or clever rock.

So there's a great there's a great example of that on the side of the factory down in St.

Pete.

Uh there's a big Ricky Watts mural.

Um that's by the exit, and they did he did the wall, which is huge, maybe 40-50 feet wide, but he also did the parking lot in front of it, it's privately owned.

So but it's like the same you know, pattern, it's pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean it opens up another aspect of murals, not just data on buildings.

You're uh the I never say it right, the Trump Dilla idea of it.

Top oil, yeah.

Uh I've seen a few where you have waterfall on the side of a building, and then the water continues into the parking lot.

So the same, just to touch on that.

Um, literally a couple days ago I got uh an email um from somebody in perks that they've done kind of like bump outs of on the beachwalk of um bike rocks and uh where water fountains are gonna be, and hoping to add some color or something there.

So I suggested maybe like 3D art, like um our artist that did the Marymount uh park specializes in that kind of art.

So you know, either looking like you're gonna fall into the ocean or something like that to just add something different so it's not just fish or dolphins, you know, something you know, 2D.

Um so we'll we'll see where that goes.

But there's three locations now, eventually there'll be nine total, but I think that could be an identifier for Clearwater Beach, like that could be another photo opportunity for people, just something interesting and fun.

So and an opportunity for like interactive stuff, you know, because I can imagine kids if there's I don't know, like a some sort of hopscotch thing, or you know, I can imagine kids walking, you know, around little trails or or things like that.

Yeah.

I was really interested to see what the selection had.

There's a lot.

There's a lot more diversity in in the artists that really don't get to see a lot of the times because you see a lot a lot of the attention a lot of the time.

Yeah, most of the time.

And then to see how many more artists there were.

And then to see how many more artists there were and representing their their cultures to inherit a lot of a lot of their work as well was really nice to see.

So I'm excited to see where we go in what this new what this new lineage of of murals look like in our work looks like.

And the the ones there seem to be certain murals or certain approaches that are I wouldn't say stereotypical but typical where if they they have faces but the faces aren't unique.

And then there were others where the faces really had a little bit of psychological connection and they seemed like individuals.

Yeah.

And then there were also some that it seemed like they took up and it seems like a particular way of approaching a mural where they took up every bit of space.

Yeah.

There was no negative space at all.

And my wife called it uh somebody throw up a Hawaiian shirt on it.

That's right.

There's a lot going on.

And that you know there were others where they you know they did kind of do different things other than just the standard mural kind of thing.

But but in that pool you could tell who are the emerging ones right?

They had some bright spots and they had some you know in the beginning right but you could tell that I mean there's a handful of people in that group that they're they're coming there you know they're hungry.

Yeah looking to which is extremely hard for mural artists because it's it's it's a scary thing to make a decision to say hey this big wall you haven't really had that much experience doing it before so the emergence of of new artists in in the the the trust is being built around it is I know you edited the thing to include more hypo hyper local people.

We have a lot of local mural artists in tons in this area.

So it's a great ones really good ones absolutely do we have a slot for up and coming and or local artists that have like at least one that's going to be that's not usually the way that we do it um I think I've said to you all before that I want to have some sort of emerging artist show in Coachman Park similar to like the Reggie Rise up walls that they have these kind of like makeshift walls that aren't meant to be permanent but they're a bigger space that are public for you know some of the people that scored maybe in middle of the field to be able to display their work we still want the best art possible in our city.

So I and for business owners especially like we don't have a say in in who they pick and who they want on their walls they they get to choose.

We kind of give them here's the top 10 or the top 20 and and they pick um so for city we have a little more leeway but again we want top tier we want something that's going to be making the news and and things like that's that's just our kind of our policy but I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that but usually we just let the the art speak for itself and we don't take into account anything else usually just I like the idea of having the you know a something in coachman that way and and maybe a follow-up with that for one of those artists to you know for a temporary installation someplace or yeah maybe having like a competition and then they have a wall whoever the winner is gets a wall in coachman park or something like that you know to kind of reward you know local local artists and then maybe newer artists somebody's doing a little bit something different that isn't mainstream enough to be appreciated all the time or something.

And how are you defining local is it Pinellas?

Is it clear water?

I'll let Jonathan say that oh I don't know yeah I don't know is it Florida well this is why at the professional arts conference that I went to the public art professional arts conference um uh they talked about using the word regional as opposed to art local because you know are we talking Tampa Bay area are we talking Pinellas County are we talking clear water because your pool gets smaller and smaller obviously um but then when you say local a lot of the times in people's heads psychologically they they think the art is not as good.

So you may have an international artist who is local but when we call them a local artist they almost get diminished a bit so calling them a regional artist that's kind of where I've been trying to go with it like we're picking regional artists and then it's Tampa Bay area so that could be Pasco County that could be Hillsboro County that could be Pinellas County.

If we want it to be hyper local somebody from Clearwater or in the you know the city above and below us like that would kind of be a an art board uh direction you guys wanted it would also be neat you know if we had artists who say oh yes now I'm I'm doing all this grab doing stuff in New York I'm doing stuff in Seattle I s it all started in clear water.

It would also be neat, you know, if we had artists who say, oh yes, now I'm I'm doing all this graduate stuff in New York, I'm doing stuff in Seattle.

I s it all started in Clearwater.

I think you'll find a lot of them are practicing all over the states.

They are traveling.

Yeah.

Which is which is actually good.

They bring in the outside influence here.

It's another technique, another way of illustration, you know.

So it's you know, it's nationalized in a way.

Yeah.

I think that's a positive thing.

I do get a little tired of the, I mean, as much as I love dolphins and stuff.

I get I get tired of you know, dolphins and flamingos, and I'm like, oh, come on again.

You know, we got more down here than than just that.

Yeah, that's why that's why I thought it was a it was interested to see that it was a lot of cultural understanding in the in the art.

Yeah, and then even some artists knew the cultures that the art were going into, so being able to represent that way as well.

So being able to have an artist that understands it's not just my vision, but it's the vision of the communities that the art is going to go into.

And I think I saw a lot of that this time.

Do we assume that the artists are going to do that research themselves?

Because I imagine if they're pitching a lot, that could be.

Or do we give them some information about the area?

In the call, there is information about the area.

So like specifically the North Greenwood, you know, area, the mural festival, giving them background.

So that can affect which photos they upload from their portfolio.

Things like that.

That was the only one we really went into specifics with.

We obviously have a city hall, um, we're doing murals on the stairwell, you know, so maybe they put a stairwell mural in there, things like that.

So we we are specific, but then there's projects that literally pop up that were not on my radar, so we can't be too niche, I guess.

But I was just wondering if that's you know, somebody from Ohio, like, oh, it's Florida, you know.

We put some dolphins and some flamingos and pelicans in there.

So all of these artists, save for maybe five are Florida based.

Cool.

So the AI, I told them it was supposed to be Florida artists, but for whatever reason the call let everybody apply.

Most of them were Florida artists.

Um the AI took out the majority, but then left in a couple of you know, really high level art artists that are California, Ohio, wherever.

So we won't know that till later.

Who gets picked?

Cool.

Anything else?

I guess we can call it as a meeting adjourned.

Yeah, that was short and sweet.