Finalist! Richmond Public Art Project

At Viscera Studio we work at the intersections of art, design, and places. It’s exciting to blend those different skillsets and experiences to bring cross-sector knowledge and create better work. We wanted to share a recent project that sits squarely at that intersection.

The City of Richmond released an RFP for large-scale public art as a part of their 1.5% for the arts program, calling for proposals to create new art for one of three public spaces, Hilltop Lake Park, Kennedy Park, or Hilltop Green. I partnered with Richmond artist, Tiffany Conway, to create a concept called “Living Room” and we were selected as semi-finalists!

Our concept is to build space for people to come together in these public spaces and socialize. To create this space, we would fabricate four custom benches made of steel tubing decorated with botanical forms at the top of the benches. Both yarrow and fennel are native to Richmond and grow wildly across the waterfront, so these plants would be laser cut to attach to the top of the bench. Tiffany, a figurative painter, created a depiction of Betty Reid Soskin, an east bay-based park ranger, civil rights activist, musician, and businessperson. Tiffany found a wonderful photo of Betty playing guitar as a reference image and that sparked the inspiration to create other figures in the installation who appear to gather to hear Betty play.

Luckily on the Viscera Studio team, we have folks like Saniya with 3D modeling skills who created a mock up of our unique benches! We’re not 100% certain on the acoustics, but another element of the hallow bench is that if they’re cut to a variety of lengths, they may produce a tone when tapped, sort of like a giant chime.

We’ve submitted our proposal for review and will hear back whether we were selected as finalists in the next month or so. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

We love working on innovative and creating new projects where we get to use a range of creative skills.