Going Public

A deeper dive into the stories behind Palo Alto public art installations

alo Alto is home to over three hundred displays of public art. They are located in a variety of locations—parks, tunnels and buildings—each with its own story to tell.

Elise DeMarzo, the Palo Alto Public Art Program Director, has grown to love public art after a decade of working for the city. Her job is to commission artists for spaces that could benefit from an installation.

“We don’t shop for artists, we really just try to find the right artist for the job,” DeMarzo said.

After they propose a project, DeMarzo and the Public Art Commission interview applicants and choose the best fit. The hired artist is then given guidelines for their site. Take for example an art installation at a new public safety building associated with reporting crimes, it should convey a sense of calm. Or in a place with a lot of kids, DeMarzo might propose a flashier, more interactive piece.

To fit these guidelines, sculptor Roger Stoller tries to understand his audience first and does so by engaging directly with the community.

“[Locals] know the city in a way I’ll never know,” Stoller said. “I realized it was to all of our advantage to create a public piece together rather than by myself.”

This collaborative process is what sets public art apart. Unlike painters in an art gallery, public artists must consider both the community and their own voice in order to create something meaningful. And that meaning must be transparent to the public, Stoller said.

“Why make it so hard for people? It’s public art, they’re not going to a museum,” Stoller said. “Let’s figure out what they can relate to.”

Konstantin Dimopoulos, creator of “The Blue Trees,” often invites passersby to paint with him.

“We had people come in who had never been to an art gallery before,” Dimopoulos said. “But I remember one lady said to me [while] we were coloring the trees, ‘This is the first time I’ve felt like an artist.’”

Putting art out in the open for everyone to see is what “going public” means for our community. But the impact of these public works go beyond Palo Alto. They show us we can work together toward something beautiful—a universal truth we all can stand for.

Text by SAMANTHA FELDMEIER, AUDREY GUO and CASEY WALTERS Art and design by SAMANTHA FELDMEIER and AUDREY GUO • Photos by SAM MUTZ

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When artist Morgan Bricca painted her first mural, she did it with house paints from her condo garage and lots of free time. She had just quit her job working in IT after it left her feeling unsatisfied with her life. Bricca said she didn’t want to work for anyone else anymore.

“I was reading a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi about finding flow and realized painting the mural was the first time I’d forgotten to eat lunch in my whole life,” Bricca said.

Twenty years later, Bricca has painted over 75 public murals in the Bay Area and written a book on how to do it. She has also restored old works like that of Greg Brown (“Lady Watering” on Waverley Street) and other artists. Among these was the California Avenue pedestrian underpass.

Restoring the 180-foot underpass was no easy feat. Artist Oscar Carillo’s original work on the tunnel had been stained by years of water damage, vandalism and dust. Yet even without the help of other artists, Bricca managed to complete the entire project in a week.

“It’s funny because I’ve been painting by myself all these years and people are always talking to me in plural,” Bricca said. “People always say, ‘Oh, are you guys all fixing this up?’ [They] just can’t imagine that it’s just me there.”

She started by restoring bits and pieces, which soon escalated into a complete transformation. While going through the tunnel, passersby took notice.

“People were so sweet,” Bricca said. “They talked about their [favorite elements] in the mural and what they liked best.”

At one point, a woman approached Bricca with a request. Over dinner, her son had suggested that she paint the tunnel floor.

“It just felt like the perfect pitch,” Bricca said.

She ended up painting nearly 50 floor elements: sand dollars, shells and hidden messages about bike safety. As you go through, look closely for words written in the kelp.

“I can’t believe I’m painting. I love it every day,” Bricca said. “I love the physicality. I love the scale. Right now it feels like I was born to do it.”

The Blue Trees City Hall

Rows of trees guard the front of Palo Alto City Hall. Though they’ve since faded from the rain, just a few months ago their trunks were bright blue.

An artist named Konstantin Dimopoulos is responsible for this installation. As a former sociologist, most of his artwork deals with social issues such as homelessness or domestic violence.

This project on deforestation, fittingly titled “The Blue Trees,” has reached 84 sites in 33 countries across the world.

“Somebody described it in Denver as ‘electric blue,’” Dimopoulos said. “It almost looks like it’s got some element to it that glows.”

The pigment itself is non-toxic and washable; in fact, Dimopoulos encourages people to wash it off when they need to. But the message of these trees is more permanent.

“Everywhere we do it, we get a reaction,” Dimopoulos said. “Often it’s a positive, but often people are worried: ‘Why are you coloring the trees?’”

Dimopoulos noticed that people living in cities tend to ignore deforestation. But by painting urban forests blue, a color rare in nature, he could get people to pay attention. Dimopoulos said that when people start asking questions, it puts pressure on the government and public to find solutions.

“Deforestation isn’t happening in Palo Alto,” Dimopoulos said. “It’s happening thousands of miles from Palo Alto, but it will affect people who live here.”

Dimopoulos hopes governments will recognize deforestation as universal—a problem that goes beyond the Amazon rainforest.

“I remember when I started painting and somebody said to me, ‘You can’t start where Van Gogh finished. You have to start where Van Gogh started,’” Dimopoulos said. “So we all have to start at the beginning, not at the end of it.”

He encourages people to act and put their ideas out there.

“Don’t worry if they don’t succeed, because often the first one doesn’t,” Dimopoulos said. “And then just keep going, keep trying.”

Bliss in the Moment

James Moore was a high school sophomore living in Caruthers, Calif. when he had his first “visceral connection with creativity,” as he put it.

“I just happened to look down and I saw this piece of sawed-off branch,” Moore said. “It had some old bark, it had been out there for quite a while and I could see that there was a face in there.”

The face, clear as day, was more than his imagination. He was “seeing it so vividly that it felt real,” Moore said.

So Moore grabbed a carpenter’s chisel and hammer, carving away until a face emerged.

“It was like a stream of consciousness. [That experience] forever changed how I see the world,” Moore said. “And so that was the beginning.”

Over 30 years since then, Moore has moved from carving wood to Muscat grapevines to sculpting abstract, almost maquette-like figures out of metal. His goal is for people to feel like the work says something about them. But as a self-described optimist, Moore said that just making his audience feel good is enough.

“Bliss in the Moment” celebrates the life of cycling advocate William “Bill” Bliss. Commis-

Bay Trail

sioned in 2011, this life-sized cyclist is situated on the 500-mile Bay Trail that Bliss had first pushed for.

“It’s essentially capturing that feeling that one has at the end of a long, really challenging journey,” Moore said. “It’s stopping for a moment and taking it all in.”

With Elise DeMarzo’s guidance, Moore and Bliss’ family worked together to create something that felt less like a memorial and more representative of who Bliss was.

An odometer on the handlebars, for example, reads “20,136”—the number of miles Bliss rode during his year-long, worldwide Odyssey Tour in 2000.

Moore has experienced firsthand the impact of grand displays of art and strives to replicate that for others.

“When I [first] had the opportunity to walk into museums I felt like I was in church,” Moore said. “And then when I came across public art I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, wouldn’t that be cool to be able to do that? To add something beautiful, something interesting, to an otherwise kind of banal city area?’”

Today, Moore continues to do just that.

Cloud Forest

Mitchell Park Library

At first glance, this steel sculpture appears to stop at the window, its metal lace casting a detailed reflection. However, look closer and it’s actually a 30-foot long sculpture visible both inside and outside the Mitchell Park Library.

“My spirit is more artistic,” said artist Roger Stoller. After 15 years as an industrial designer, Stoller realized he was just not satisfied with his job and its constraints, and decided to make a change. Stoller enrolled in classes at San Jose State University where he pursued his artistic talents and found his love for metalwork.

One of Stoller’s early public pieces is located at Mitchell Park in Palo Alto. After being hired by the city, Stolled designed and sculpted “Cloud Forest” where it still stands today.

“That was earlier in my career when I was still bending over backwards to make it,” Stoller said. “I was more concerned about doing great art than how much I made on that particular job.”

When designing this sculpture, Stoller wanted to do something to communicate the special relationship that occurs in Northern California between the redwoods and the sea. These special trees, only grown naturally along the Northern California and Southern Oregon coast, are nurtured by the mist from the sea. This creates a unique environment where redwoods thrive.

Stoller knew these spectacular trees had to be incorporated into the message of his sculpture. “I had this image of entering the library through a redwood forest of stainless steel,” Stoller said. “A seed of a person comes into the library, wanting to learn, and it grows and becomes the trunk and the branches and the needles.”

Stoller hopes that this library will be a place where community members come together. “It’s the job of the library to reach out to the community,” Stoller said.