ADVANCING THE ARTS
	November 2003

by Bill Weber
Photos by Brad Shifflett

I had a conversation with Ron Beatty, Arts Commission President, and with Mary Hannigan, Co-Curator of our museum, about the progress of the arts in Brentwood. This article summarizes that discussion.

A potentially wonderful thing has happened for the arts program in Brentwood with the recent unanimous passage by the City Council of the Percent for Arts ordinance. The program will generate money for Brentwood beautification from three sources:

• One percent of every public development project carried out by the city (roads, public buildings, etc.).
• One percent of the restoration of every public building valued at more than $200,000.
• 4/10 of 1 percent of construction costs by residential property developers.
Commercial developers are excluded from the assessment.

Pending approval by the City Council of the fee structure, the Percent for Arts program should begin generating revenue by January 1, 2004. We estimate during the first two years to be receiving about $1,000,000 in revenue for Public Art.

Collecting and Sorting Ideas
A million dollars is a lot of money and represents a great responsibility for the Arts Commission. We are determined to spend it wisely so that years from now Brentwood citizens and members of the Council can look around and say, “We did something good and spent the money wisely. We made our town a better place to live.”

We’re in contact with the Arts Commission in Stockton, who is ahead of us by several years, for advice and warnings about implementing the project. The Stockton Arts Commission created a sub-committee that is responsible for making recommendations about art for the Commission.

We seem to be tapping a bottomless reservoir of ideas for how we can improve art around the city. We intend to involve the community very heavily in this. If you have suggestions, feel free to come to the Arts Commission Meetings, held on the last Wednesday of every month, 7 p.m., at the Technology Incubator (101 Sand Creek Rd., Brentwood). Or just email me your suggestions (wweber@ci.brentwood.ca.com).

Statues: Echoes of the Past
One idea for highly visible art is to erect a sculpture at every entrance to Brentwood. Ideally, this would include the town limits on Walnut, Hwy. 4 (both ways), Balfour (in the Shadow Lake area), and Lone Tree Way. We are researching each of these
locations.

We already have a statue underway depicting a farmer, which, of course, is a very important reminder of the origins of East Contra Costa County. The statue will endure far beyond our individual lifetimes and will, perhaps, eventually remind our distant descendants of what a real farmer looked like back when there were still some farmers around. Even beyond this important historical reminder, however, the statue shows the farmer sowing seeds, which symbolizes the growth of the community.

The statues will be symbols of our shared community life and will represent components of East County culture that we want to honor. They will serve as symbols reminding us of who we are and of where we came from.

Penetration of the Arts into East County
The Arts Commission has accomplished an amazing amount during the few years that we have been working together. The amount of progress we have made is beginning to create problems of management. We are in the process of creating an Arts Manager position to help administer the growing programs and projects we are developing.

In September we had a fund-raiser at Roddy Ranch. Funds from this were directed towards supporting arts education in local schools. Part of these funds are directed towards a docent program in the local schools, with the great name “Awesome Art.” The program is run by parent and teacher volunteers. Mary Hannigan is the representative from the Arts Commission to the schools helping to implement the program. Rigina McCarthy, for example, is a parent doing a great job helping to implement the program at R. Paul Krey Elementary School. Our goal is eventually to get the program into all of the elementary schools.

The Day in the Park Art and Wine Festival is another successful source of revenue for development of the Arts in Brentwood. This was our second year to do this. The first year we earned about $9,000 and this year it increased to $25,000. All of this money becomes available for every kind of art. For example, we could use these funds to create something like a Shakespeare in the Park project.

In January we are planning to bring school children to the Arts Commission Gallery for what will hopefully be a memorable experience of fine art.

One drawing card for this is our plan to give students the opportunity to meet a contemporary artist named Stanley Mouse. Stanley designed album covers for the Grateful Dead, Steve Miller, and Journey.

The Commission bought 250 copies of William Saroyan’s “Human Comedy,” for our CityRead program. The volumes were placed at various coffeehouses around town and are available for residents to pick up, read, or give to their neighbors.

Winning Recognition for a Job Well Done
We used the Diego Rivera show at the art gallery last year as an effective tool for exposing children from our local schools to an art experience they might not be able to forget. The Hispanic community cooperated in an amazing way in providing original art to augment the experience.

We put together a committee of local citizens, composed of Arts Commission personnel, parents, teachers, and administrators.

The Committee created an amazing program for exposing school children to the arts.

The program was so effective that San Francisco City College, who owns the exhibit, has been recommending it as a model for other communities.

They said we were able to bring in the most children to the exhibit while it was in our gallery, and used it most effectively as a learning tool. The City College people said that our program was better than the De Young museum.

All the things we’ve been talking about are the ways members of the Brentwood Arts Commission have been working to bring the community together through literature and arts education.