86 South Bay Accent
CHRIS AYERS (3); PREVIOUS PAGE: CHRIS AYERS
“In the last 20 years, I’d say, one of our ultimate outcomes is
to strengthen San Jose and downtown San Jose as a creative and
cultural center for Silicon Valley,” says Michael Ogilvie, the director
of Public Art, whose program runs out of the city’s Office of
Cultural Affairs.
While Silicon Valley’s tech ethos has long been the dominant
perception of San Jose and the surrounding South Bay, the city has
historically spearheaded the cultivation of a robust artistic landscape.
Following Philadelphia’s pioneering of a “percent for public art”
program—in which 1 percent of the city’s public works budget
was allocated for public art installations—San Jose became, in
1984, one of the first West Coast cities to adopt a similar initiative.
“They actually were pretty aggressive about it,” Ogilvie says.
“They did 2 percent, which was more than any other cities were
doing at the time.”
Since then, an impressive roster of works has developed, mostly
through commissions with local artists creating pieces that respond
to the community and San Jose’s storied history. “It’s kind of creating
a ‘there there’ with public art,” Ogilvie says. “There’s something
about honoring the community that you’re in, and the community
also responding to it and being proud of where they’re from.”
Yet that initiative has struggled to remain as strong as it once
was. Two years after the 2008 recession hit, the 2 percent budget
investment was eventually lowered to 1 percent in 2010. That
figure has held firm since. Ogilvie laments what he sees as a kind
of widespread conservatism toward the arts.
“This is not just something that just San Jose is guilty of. Many
cities tend to negate or not realize the importance and the impact—
culturally, fiscally—that art brings to the city,” he says. “There’s
this tendency of let’s cut the arts first, and that’s sad.”
Amid this kind of devaluation of the arts, Ogilvie sees a greater
need than ever for the creativity and imagination that public art can
inspire. “People spending endless hours writing code—they’re people,
they’re not computers,” he says. “They need some cultural life.”
Notably, local artists and arts organizations continue to invigorate
the scene, Two vibrant examples: the Pow! Wow! Festival and
Exhibition District, both of which have visually remade downtown
by contributing countless sprawling and stunning murals
across the city in recent years. Many of the works that the Public
Art Program ushered in following its inception remain, and new
works continue to be added over time, along with a consistent
influx of temporary installations—all of which still generate a
range of responses.
The Plumed Serpent, for instance, has always produced its fair
share of contentious opinions; it was once sued by a religious organization
and its final form (which some say bears a likeness to a
pile of—well, not a serpent) has been rumored to have been created
out of spite by its renowned artist, Robert Graham. Meanwhile,
last year’s wildly successful “Sonic Runway”—which the Public
Art Program is working to bring back and install as a permanent
piece—brought nightly crowds, while a lineup of performances
and even a fashion show were incorporated into the installation.
Regardless of the type of response, Ogilvie says, people’s engagement
with the works proved to be meaningful. “At least they had
a moment when they were taken out of themselves and realized:
‘Oh, there’s something else here, I’ll try and analyze this,’” he says.
“It softens humanity. That’s really a big part of what public art can
do. It can bring people together.”
With that in mind, we set off to locate the most prominent
pubic art pieces, and to learn more about their attributes.
Parade of Floats
by Andrew Leicester
If public art should reflect its community and its history, perhaps
no work in the city does the job better than these sculptured
“floats.” Stretching along 5TH STREET, BETWEEN ST. JOHN AND
SAN FERNANDO, the 16 structures, made from ceramic tile and
concrete, are each titled after and depict a facet of San Jose.
A figure atop a tall stalk of corn represents “Agriculture,” while
others represent “Gold Rush” or “Innovation.” Elsewhere, pieces
represent the community’s values, such as “Diversity” or “Environment.”
Each sculpture sits on a concrete base shaped like a
vehicle, as if forming a procession through the city’s historic arc.