by P.D. Lesko In July 2012 Deb Polich (pronounced Polick) was named the new executive director of the Ann Arbor Arts Alliance. In August, says Polich, “We—the Arts Alliance Board and myself—had a meeting with Mayor Hieftje and Council members Taylor (Christopher Taylor, Ward 3) and Lumm (Jane Lumm, Ward 2), and we told them that [...]
by P.D. Lesko We begin with a fairytale: Once Upon A Time there were five Ann Arbor City Council members named Sandi Smith, Carsten Hohnke, Leigh Greden, Stephen Rapundalo and Tony Derezinski. They all unquestioningly supported Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art program. They did this while funding a $1 million dollar brass sculpture, which their subjects [...]
By P.D. Lesko In 2007, Ann Arbor City Council passed the Public Art Ordinance that sets aside one percent of funds from all public construction budgets for art projects — to a maximum of $250,000 per project. On the City of Ann Arbor web site, it says that John Hieftje “championed the Percentage for Art Program to [...]
by Amy Kerr Hardin Like to win a cool quarter million dollars? You may be in luck if you are a socially conservative artist. ArtPrize, a community art contest founded by Rick DeVos, kicked-off its 2012 call for entries this past week. There are just a few caveats to keep in mind though: you must make something very, very big, [...]
by P.D. Lesko City staff, John Hieftje, his City Council pals, the Board members of the Downtown Development Authority and even the members of the Board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority want taxpayers to renew the city’s Street Repair Millage for another five years. To get you to do it, city staffers and politicos [...]
I’m a super hero, sort of… Let’s not skirt around the issue. It’s not that I haven’t taken a few modest steps towards disguising my true identity. I have, in fact, updated my homely, Midwestern name to something that has a bit more of an exotic flair. I’ve even converted my self-portrait to grey-scale–the missing hues make [...]
I like Constance Crump’s thoughtful writing. I particularly like writers who, with a simple question, can get me all tangled up in trying to figure out the answer. I first read Crump’s blog post a few days ago. Initially, I didn’t get hooked. Who cares if Austin has music, Sundance has film, Aspen has comedy [...]
Over at Concentrate Media, Jeff Meyers blogged on November 4th about the lack of affordable (i.e. free or minimally priced) space for “creative types” to use for their respective muses. He writes about the Ann Arbor Ignite event. In case you’ve not heard about the event, the Andy Warhol-inspired notion is that each speaker gets [...]
On Friday November 6th, A2Politico posted “The Politics of Art: A2 and the Giant Phallus.” It was a post, of course, about the very first project being built under the auspices of the Ann Arbor Percent for Art Program. On Monday November 9th, Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor sent out an email to constituents [...]
A giant phallus? We’re taking, of course, about the Dreiseitl art project that is planned for the new Temple on the corner of Fifth and Huron dedicated to our 15th District Court (tip o’ the keyboard to David Cahill) judges: the Honorable Christopher Easthope, the Honorable Julie Creal, and the Honorable Elizabeth P. Hines, and one appointed [...]
