Windsor Town Council selects towering artwork for middle of new roundabouts

Two starkly different pieces of public art have been chosen to anchor Windsor’s new traffic roundabouts, part of a vision to make the town an eventual “art destination” for cultural explorers.

How much motorists circling the roundabouts will be able to appreciate the art is open to question, but the works will be hard to miss and are intended to make a statement.

A 14-foot-high redwood and copper piece by artist Bruce Johnson of Cazadero is described as “muscular and iconic,” with the scale and energy needed to hold the center space of something as large as a traffic circle.

A “Hyper-Conical Pic-Nic Pyramid” that will be placed in the middle of the other roundabout is no slouch either. The 10-foot high, 14-foot-long piece resembles a stack of round picnic tables and benches in a yet-to-be-chosen color pattern, but no doubt it will be eye-catching.

The artist, French Canadian architect Claude Boullevraye De Passille, said his perspective “brings concepts of destabilization, speed, spatial tension.”

Mayor Bruce Okrepkie was a little more down to earth describing the installation, noting Windsor’s designation as a “playful city.”

“What’s more playful than a round, colorful picnic bench in the middle of your street?” he said prior to the City Council’s 4-1 vote last week to approve the conical pyramid’s placement in the nearly completed roundabout at Windsor Road and Old Redwood Highway.

Councilman Dominic Foppoli cast the only dissenting vote, saying he would have preferred a local artist, adding, “I don’t see how it fits Windsor.”

But other council members liked that the fiber-?cement panels and cedar for the pyramid will be fabricated locally and that area art students, or carpenters, will be hired to put the piece together.

Donna Legge, the town’s parks and recreation director, said that when art provokes different reactions or opinions, it can be a good thing.

“Art and beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it’s very subjective,” she said. “If once it’s installed or painted, if it inspires, or causes any controversy, it still gets some dialogue, which is a positive thing.”

Johnson’s contemporary abstract sculpture generated unanimous praise from the Town Council.

Dubbed “The Offering,” it features a tripod of salvaged old-growth redwood with a great copper boulder resting on top, like a gesture of nature offering a gift, according to the artist.

“The geometry and stability of the grand redwood tripod standing boldly at the center of the circle will make the place and connect earth and sky,” Johnson said.

“It will be the motion of the cars moving around the circle that will animate the sculpture and reveal the negative space between the powerful legs,” he said.

Johnson is no stranger to controversies over public art. The Santa Rosa City Council in the early 1980s rejected a giant piece of his art for Old Courthouse Square.

That move came after Johnson was selected by an arts committee to place his work in the square, and to receive a $19,000 award. But the City Council, which didn’t like the Stonehenge-like appearance of his sculpture, claimed the right to refuse it. Johnson ended up suing the city and collecting his prize money.

In Windsor, council members fully supported Johnson’s work, which won out over more than 150 other entries screened by the town’s newly formed public art advisory committee.

Council members were tickled by the coincidence of redwood being employed on Old Redwood Highway, where Johnson’s work will go. It will be placed within the new roundabout at Market Street, near the entrance to a new Oliver’s Market, which is anticipated to open in the spring.

“It’s our first roundabout. It’s the first thing you will see in a major new part of town that’s going to be celebrated in March or April,” Councilwoman Deb Fudge said.

The two art pieces are scheduled to be in place in January, and will be on display for a year and half with the option of staying longer.

Each piece is valued at $75,000, but they are on loan and not being purchased by the town.

Each artist will be paid a $2,500 stipend.

In all, the Town Council budgeted $9,400 for the art at both locations, including for crane rental, staff time for installation, administrative costs and contingencies.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter?@clarkmas.