Thursday, October 2, 2014

Utah Public Art Program: Utah State University Eastern

Utah Arts & Museums Public Art Program
Requests Artists Qualifications
for the USU Eastern Central Instruction Building - Price, Utah

DEADLINE FOR MATERIALS: November 14, 2014
This document with images available at www.utahpublicart.org

THE CENTRAL INSTRUCTION BUILDING
The new Central Instruction Building is uniquely located where the heart of campus and the community intersect. The facility itself is envisioned as a device to support a welcoming union between these two
essential environments. Furthermore, the project will create enhanced connections to the historic Geary Theater and Reeves classroom building.

The facility consists of interior and exterior gathering spaces which are intended to serve the community, students, and faculty alike. The floor plan provides fluid circulation paths which are intended to invite curious meandering, and foster interaction between faculty and student.

Building program and interior design:
The building program is complex with a multiplicity of departments and programs that include the Music, Theater, Visual and Fine Arts, Communications, and Criminal Justice departments as well as general and distance learning classrooms, gathering spaces, study spaces, faculty offices and support spaces.

With the varied instructional classrooms, music, theater and fine arts spaces, and state of the art materials labs, creating identity for each of these programs became an important driver for the organization and design concept for the building. Without the benefit of each of these departments having their own building the idea of branding and creating a unique identity for each of the programs within the building became vital.

Emerging out of this requirement of the building program came the idea to put each of the programs on display and to give each of them a unique identity while at the same
time unifying them with a clear and cohesive design language. In particular it became important to express the programs within the arts that have a strong public component. As a result the design of the music and fine arts programs are uniquely expressive through scale, material, and form as three distinguished volumes.

The black box theater is formed as a cube to maximize internal versatility. The volume is clad in dark raw hot-rolled steel panels. The use of this raw steel is reflective of the mining industry in the region and expressive of the refinement of this material into an elegant surface. The surfaces which face the
interior common areas will remain raw but dark and pristine and un-rusted, while those surfaces on the exterior façade will weather into rich reddish tones.

In contrast, the band and choral rooms are shaped irregularly in response to their acoustic performance and to evoke landforms of the local region. This volume is wrapped in finely crafted slatted cedar wood planks for its natural warmth and reference to the instruments held within. This is also a reference to the local mining industry and the old tradition of forming mine shafts with raw wood planks while at the same time refining the material and execution of this material to reflect the music and higher education environment within the building.

A public sculpture gallery is engaged with the choral room at level one, but narrows before penetrating the roof for natural daylight through a skylight. The walls surrounding the gallery are canted inward creating a two story canyon-like space within. The gallery is centrally located to welcome and orient the
first time visitor or frequent user alike.

Exterior organization and materials:
The exterior materials palate is intended to be minimal and clearly organized via simple interacting geometry between the concrete base, light brick veneer, and sections of glass wall. The exposed concrete base is formed by wood planks. This board forming strategy is inspired by historic construction and mining techniques used locally and echoes the warm wood cladding on the building’s interior. The concrete base blends seamlessly into the site via raised terraces, planters and walkways.
The light tone brick veneer is inspired by the local geologic strata and to form a stronger visual connection to the campus central library. Geometrically, the brick cladding visually interacts with the glazing system to place emphasis on solid and transparent surfaces, thus creating opportunities to frame
views to the building’s dramatic interior spaces and to put the programs within on display.

PRICE CITY, UTAH and CARBON COUNTY
The city is home to the USU-College of Eastern Utah, as well as the large USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum affiliated with the college. Price is located within short distances from both Nine Mile Canyon and the Manti-La Sal National Forest. The city is noted for its history as a mining town. The
population was 8,715 at the 2010 census. Price is the county seat of, and largest city in, Carbon County.

USU Eastern was established in 1937 as a community college. Part of the College’s mission is to be "committed to respond to the educational needs of the communities it serves"

COMMITTEE STATEMENT
The Central Instruction Building is informed by and reinforces a group of key symbolic
messages. The College’s campuses in Price and Blanding serve a vast rural region of Southeast Utah, of high desert plateaus, canyons carved through layers of stone, and rows of cliffs mountain ranges that recede to the horizon. The building celebrates the natural beauty of Utah, with limestone and rock colors and textures.

In addition to references to the beauty of the natural setting, the building celebrates the
region’s history and culture of mining and related industrial enterprises. The building’s designincludes multiple architectural references to this economic culture – weathered steel, boardformedconcrete, industrial textures and colors.

The building is designed to function in a very specific rural location, Price City, which has a quite distinctive culture. With approximately eleven thousand residents, the City is the seat of Carbon County, and the populace of the City, County, and surrounding region is a rich mixture of diverse ethnic and cultural influences, composed of Native Americans, Mormons, Greeks,Eastern Europeans, Japanese, Hispanics, Italians and others who settled and remain in the area.

The Central Instruction Building occupies a pivotal location in the City and on the Price Campus, toward a prominent “T-juncture” of two City traffic arteries, allowing the building to as the symbolic entry to the campus. With large glass facades oriented to the public
thoroughfares, the building is purposefully designed to put academic programs on full display, the community into the College and reinforcing the College’s mission to “prepare the who create and sustain our region.”

Additionally, a small amphitheater in the front of building will be a venue for outdoor public events, reinforcing the relationship between the and its broader community.

The design of the building makes symbolic reference to the natural setting, to the cultural and history of the region, and to the continuing commitment of the College to serve the in the region. Ideally, artwork should harmonize with and reinforce these key symbolic messages.

The Committee will be open to artist suggested sites for this public art project. Please keep in the exterior front plaza is designed as a meeting / performance space so any involvement that site would need to incorporate that multiple use intention. The Committee reserves the to commission more than one artist.

BUDGET
$148,000 is available for all related expenses of this Public Art commission(s) including (but
not limited to) artist fees, fabrication, insurance, shipping, travel, installation, documentation, etc.

ELIGIBILITY
Resident American or legal resident artists / artist teams are encouraged to apply. Art Selection members, staff of Utah Arts & Museums and Method Studio are not eligible to for this commission. All Art Selection Committee members will declare any conflict of and recuse themselves from the vote when reviewing artist applications.

SUBMISSION OPTIONS, INSTRUCTIONS AND REQUIRED MATERIALS
Interested artists may submit applications online or by compact disc/DVD. The deadline is the same for methods and is not a postmark deadline. Please do not include supplemental materials beyond the
requirements listed below. All applications must include the following:

ON-LINE METHOD:
· www.callforentry.org - follow the directions for this Public Art Request for Qualifications. If the artist’s work cannot be documented well with still image he/she may submit movie files via the Disc or DVD Method” listed below. Movie files cannot be submitted via the online method.

COMPACT DISC METHOD:
· A PC compatible CD labeled with applicant's name, and contact information containing:
· A letter of interest of not more than two typewritten pages in pdf format. This letter should the artist’s reasons for interest in this project in particular. In doing so, the artist should describe how his/her work and/or experience relates to the project.
· Up to six (6) images maximum of previous site-specific public work. All images must be in JPEG, 1920 pixels maximum on the longest side, 72 dpi, with compression settings resulting in best image quality under 2MB file size. The image files should be named so that the list sorts the order of the image listing.
· A pdf document indentifying each image to include title, year, medium, dimensions.
· A professional resume in pdf format
If the work cannot be documented well with still images a DVD (of no more than 3 minutes) may be as documentation of artist’s projects.

Please note only one media, movie file or images, can presented to the committee per artist in this preliminary phase.

If the artist wishes the material returned, an addressed and stamped envelope of ample size and for return of the CD or DVD should be included. Material that is not accompanied by a stamped cannot be returned.

Utah Arts & Museums will not be responsible for applications delayed or lost in transit. While all care will be taken in the handling of materials, neither the Utah Division of Arts & Museums the USU Eastern CIB Art Selection Committee will be liable for late, lost or damaged materials or files. Faxed or e-mailed applications cannot be accepted.

USU Eastern CIB Art Selection Committee reserves the right to withhold the award of a commission or-release the call for entries.

DEADLINE
Complete application packages must be RECEIVED on or before November 14, 2014 by 5 p.m. (THIS IS A POSTMARK DEADLINE.) All supporting materials must accompany application.

Please send, deliver or courier applications to: Jim Glenn, Utah Public Art Program
Attention: USU Eastern CIB
Utah Arts & Museums
300 S Rio Grande
Salt Lake City, UT 84101

SELECTION PROCESS AND SCHEDULE
The Selection Committee will review all material properly submitted. Finalists will be selected from the phase of applicants submitting qualifications. Selection of the commissioned artist(s) will be based
on proposals presented to the Selection Committee on January 27.

Once selected as a finalist we will work to provide as much information and access as possible to assist the artist’s research while developing their proposal.

An honorarium will be extended to the finalists to assist with the costs associated with the preparation a proposal and travel. This honorarium will be applied toward the commission amount for the artist(s)
awarded the commission.

Schedule:
September 24, 2014 - Release RFQ
November 14, 2014 - Deadline for receipt of preliminary materials
December 2, 2014 - Committee Review
January 27, 2015 - Finalists interviews

ARTIST SELECTION COMMITTEE

Brian Bales - Utah Division of Facilities Construction & Management
Sheila Burghardt - USU Eastern, Director of Facilities
Noel Carmack - Artist, USU Eastern Assistant Professor of Art
Thomas A. Graham - Architect, Utah State University, Facilities Design and Construction
Eric Mantz - USU Eastern, Associate Vice Chancellor
Pam Miller - Utah Division of Arts & Museums Board of Directors
Joe Peterson - USU Eastern, Chancellor
Joe Smith - Method Studio Architecture

If you have any questions about this or other projects information is available at: www.utahpublicart.org
Or contact: Jim Glenn at 801-245-7271 or e-mail at: jglenn@utah.gov
Felicia Baca at 801-245-7272 or fbaca@utah.gov

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