The Public Art and Design Board met on July 9, 2026, to approve previous meeting minutes, hear public comments, and discuss several new business items including the final artwork for the City Hall staircase, a live painting event recap, and a proposed branded art sign in Coachman Park.
That has come to order. Uh today we are at the public art and design board. Today is Thursday, July 9th, 2026. I thank everyone for attending. Our first order of business is to approve the minutes. So has everyone had a chance to read the minutes. All right. I will make a motion to approve the minutes for the May 14th board meeting. I would second it. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed. Minutes approved. Our second order of business is citizens to be heard. Good afternoon. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Beth Daniels, and I'm currently the president of the board of the Clearwater Arts Alliance. So we usually try to come to your meetings and give you a heads up on what we're doing. Betsy also our projects manager directors is here with us. And that is up until July twenty-fourth. So you still have a couple weeks if you haven't seen it yet. But there was uh one of the reporters came and did a nice story about it. She talked to some of the artists and showed the gallery. It was very lovely. Uh just before the fourth, we also unveiled a new signal box, which is done by a Clearwater artist, Heather Rippert. So it was an original piece. The DR DAR Daughters of the American Revolution wanted to do something honoring America's two fifty birthday. And so she did, and coincidentally, she happens to have been born and raised in Philadelphia. So she did a piece that uh that um emphasized uh Constitution Hall where the where the declaration was signed and stuff, and also five significant women who were uh meaningful uh participants in the revolutionary effort. And there's a Q code to the story about who they are and why they're important, everything. So it's really kind of interesting. And that's gonna also be available to acquire prints of it. So we had a real nice crowd uh with help of Parks and Rec and Amber and everything, getting a good crowd out there for the unveiling, which was about two weeks ago. It's lovely. Um we also are in the middle of a call to artists in June for new signal boxes. Our board has decided that I mean we have to find locations for them, but we we've got um we want to get some new artists. Um we pay them for the right to use their image. And uh so we want to get some more in our inventory, so to speak, so that when we find a good spot, we can just go ahead and do the installation. So we have fifty now within the city limits of Clearwater and working on more. So that's coming along nicely, and we get a lot of public comment about that. And we are also soon to put out another call for sculpture artists because the three that are in Cleveland in the in the block by the Capitol Theater and the next two blocks going east, um, those have been in just over a year, and we got a grant from Panell's uh community foundation to do uh another round of those. So we want to get the call out, make some decisions, and then do a swap out and hopefully an event that would feature you know, some kind of a nice unveiling and party that would feature those uh 3D items. So anything else, Betsy? You sure? Okay. Any questions? We're um it there's a lot going on. Actually, there's also a beautiful art exhibit on right now that's tied to the um hundredth anniversary of the death of the famous architect Gaudí, who they just completed the building of the Segrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain, and and pictures, paintings I should really say, paintings by uh Galban, who's a local St. Petersburg painter, are on display at Peace Memorial through this Sunday.