Arnaldo Pomodoro, Disk in the Form of a Desert Rose, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park cast 1999-2000. Gift of Fred and Lena Meijer. Photo by William J. Hebert

Roberley Bell spent her childhood in Latin America and Southeast Asia, before returning to the United States to attend the University of Massachusetts and State University of New York at Alfred from where she holds an MFA in Sculpture. Bell is the recipient of many grants and fellowships including the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pollock Krasner Fellowship, a Fulbright to the Netherlands and several residency awards including the International Studio Program, NYC and most recently a residency at the Stadt Kunstlerhaus, Salzburg, Austria. Bell's work has been exhibited in both one person and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally. Over the past two decades she has created numerous public projects, both temporary and permanent including projects in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Chicago and New York. Her most recent permanent project for Costa Lopez Park in Cambridge, MA was installed summer 2008. Bell’s public garden projects express a continuing interest in gardens and the built American landscape, examining our relationship to “landscape’" that juxtaposes the real with the artificial. Bell makes her home in a rural community in Upstate New York. She is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she teaches courses on Public Art and Public Space. www.roberleybell.com.

Joseph Antenucci Becherer is the founding Director and Curator of the Sculpture Program at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.  In addition Joe is Professor of Art History at Aquinas College.  His undergraduate and Master’s work were completed at Ohio University with his thesis was on Georges Rouault.  He continued with the doctoral program at Indiana University, Bloomington where he worked under Dr. Bruce Cole who advised his dissertation on Pietro Perugino and American collecting.   Joe has authored several books and articles, and curated numerous exhibitions on the Modern and Contemporary, Renaissance and Baroque periods.  Most recently he has organized exhibitions of Andy Goldsworthy, Mark di Suvero, Henry Moore, George Segal, Richard Hunt, Auguste Rodin, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Anthony Caro; he has just finished work on a Dietrich Klinge exhibition which tours Germany and Russia and contributed to the Oliviero Rainaldi mid-career retrospective in Rome.  Joe is presently working on exhibitions with Jaume Plensa and Jonathan Borofsky.  He has served on numerous civic art advisory committees including those which commissioned major works by Maya Lin and Dennis Oppenheim.  Currently he is chair of the national committee to commission a sculpture of President Gerald R. Ford for the Rotunda of the US Capitol Building. 

Herve Bechy lives in Paris and has been professionally involved in the field of public art since 1976.  His name and expertise are well known in Europe. He has written numerous articles on public art for professional magazines specializing in art, architecture, and urban design. In 1983, he launched his own magazine: “Les Dossiers de l’Art Public” the first international magazine totally dedicated to the field of Public Art which was published for several years. Over the years he has been invited to discuss his expertise in many European countries and the US.  In 1997, Bechy founded the site http://www.art-public.com an invaluable resource for information on public art projects and programs internationally.

Kofi Boone, ASLA is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at NC State University, College of Design. Professor Boone’s research focuses on the overlap between the Environmental Justice Movement and the practice of Landscape Architecture. He explores this through design studios, seminars, and community engagement. Professor Boone teaches a range of techniques exposing students to methods of empowering communities through design. Professor Boone is co-director of the College of Design’s Ghana Study Abroad Program, teaching interdisciplinary design studios and seminars in collaboration with Ghanaian artists and professionals. The program connects traditional forms of art to the environmental and community development issues facing people in the developing world. Prior to teaching at NC State, Professor Boone was a Site Designer at JJR an interdisciplinary land planning and design firm. While at JJR, Kofi worked on many projects, including the City of Grand Rapids Master Plan Update.

Rosina Santana Castellón uses her experience as a Cuban exile to dialogue with communities suffering trauma.   With an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a Masters in Community Organization from the University of Illinois, Santana has worked internationally  with communities in-flux  in Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Germany, the United States, and her native Cuba.  A recent project,  titled Trails In Nena Island consists of  20 bronze bas-reliefs designed by residents in the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico that engage tourists and  residents in a dialogue on the consequences of underdevelopment due to sixty years of military rule in the Caribbean island.  Ms. Santana  has presented her work at numerous international venues including Public Art  Observatory Waterfronts IV, Barcelona, Spain; keynote speaker, Society for Caribbean Studies in Newcastle, England; Transart Institute in Linz, Austria; Oral History Conferences in Glasgow, Scotland, and Mexico; and at InterArts Collision Conference, Canada.  She has lectured at various universities on issues relevant to the community public art process.   Santana currently teaches the Transdisciplinary Seminar and experimental painting at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico in San Juan.

Michele Cohen created and directs the Public Art for Public Schools program of the New York City Department of Education.  As Program Director since 1989, she has managed an extensive art acquisition and conservation program, supervising the conservation of over 200 diverse artworks and the commissioning of some 175 new pieces.  These include Percent for Art projects and others that have been commissioned under the Sites for Students program, initiated by her to involve children in the creation of public art for their school buildings. Previously, she was director of the  Art Commission of the City of New York’s sculpture survey. Publications include “Civilization: Its Rise and Fall in New Deal Public School Murals,” in Education and the Great Depression (2006),  “Boys’ and Girls’ High School:  Public Art in the Civil Rights Era,” in Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, (2005), The Art Commission and the Municipal Art Society Guide to Manhattan's Outdoor Sculpture (1988) and a forthcoming book on the history of New York City public school art and architecture to be published by Monacelli in Spring 09. She has a  doctorate in art history from CUNY/Graduate Center  and a BA in Art History and English Literature from SUNY/Buffalo.

Cathleen Cooke has worked in the exhibitions field for over 15 years. Her experiences have included work in museum interpretation and education; freelance writing; and exhibitions development, project management and master plan consulting. Currently, Cooke manages the exhibitions program at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. In this capacity, she initiates show concepts; selects and contracts artists; handles logistics, site preparations, and installation requirements; and coordinates the overall project team. Fine art exhibitions since Cooke joined the Garden in 2004 have included extensive indoor/outdoor installations featuring the work of such diverse artists as Dale Chihuly, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Hans Godo Fräbel; as well as sixteen artists featured in Sculpture in Motion: Art Choreographed by Nature. Cooke also manages a gallery space at the Garden which showcases botanically-inspired painting, drawing and photography.

Deborah Butterfield, Cabin Creek, 1999, Bronze, photo: © Balthazar Korab Ltd.

Patrick Dougherty, internationally acclaimed artist, has created over 189 large-scale installations over the last twenty years. His work has been seen worldwide—in Japan, Europe, and throughout North America.

Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Dougherty was raised in North Carolina. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina in 1967 and an M.A. in Hospital and Health Administration from the University of Iowa in 1969. Later he returned to the University of North Carolina to study art history and sculpture. He has received numerous awards, including the North Carolina Artist Fellowship Award, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Henry Moore Foundation Fellowship, the Japan-U.S. Creative Arts Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Number 26, 1995-1996, Bronze, by Hanneke Beaumont (Dutch, b. 1947) photo © Balthazar Korab

Anita Feldman, Curator of the Henry Moore Foundation in England, has written extensively on Moore and curated exhibitions of the artist’s work worldwide. Current projects include a tour of outdoor sculpture for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (2008), The New York Botanical Garden (through March 2009) and the Atlanta Botanical Garden (2009-10). She has curated a major retrospective of Moore’s work for Barcelona as well as architectural exhibitions for Rotterdam and Helsinki, and landscape exhibitions for Berlin and Frankfurt. Over the past 12 years she collaborated with institutions throughout the world including seven countries in South America, three cities in China, five in Japan and is currently working on a Moore retrospective for Istanbul.

Feldman’s book Henry Moore Textiles was published this year to coincide with the first  exhibition of Moore’s fabric designs. Having participated in public art conferences in Guangzhou, China and in Norwich, England, she is delighted to return to Grand Rapids where she curated an exhibition in 2005.

Larry Kirkland has collaborated with design professionals and community leaders creating meaningful places throughout the US including recent works for Pennsylvania Station, New York City, The City of Denver, The California Museum of Science, Los Angeles and the Federal Courthouse, Sacramento, the American Red Cross Headquarters, and the National Academies of Science, Washington DC.  His current projects include a collaboration to create a Memorial to Disabled Veterans in Washington DC. Outside the USA he has installations including: Putra World Trade Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Hong Kong Central Station and Kansai International Airport, Osaka, Japan.

Susan Harrison has directed GSA’s Art in Architecture Program, which commissions artists to create works of art for U.S. courthouses and federal buildings nationwide.  She has overseen the commissioning and installation of 175 works of art and 85 active acquisition projects.  The program has supported those with long and established careers, such as Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, James Turrell and Maya Lin, as well as mid –career artists such as Leo Villareal, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Xiaoze Xie.  She has authored procedures governing the commissioning of art, and resolved policy and legal problems with contracting staff and attorneys.

Ms. Harrison represents GSA on the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, which is responsible for indemnifying appropriate museum exhibitions for loss and damage liability under provisions of the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act.

Before coming to GSA, Ms. Harrison worked for the National Park Service, Department of Interior, in various capacities.  She received her M.A. in architectural history from the University of Virginia, School of Architecture and her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Joel Henning writes regularly on culture for The Wall Street Journal Leisure & Arts page.  He has covered several sculpture exhibitions, including the Henry Moore exhibition at the Meier Sculpture Garden in Grand Rapids, MI.   In addition, he has covered architecture, theater, and art in his Journal columns, having written on Frank Gehry, Jasper Johns, Mies van der Rohe, Arthur Miller, and Rembrandt, among many others.  Mr. Henning has published several books and, in addition, is a lawyer.  He is currently at work on a novel and a book of non-fiction.

Janet Kagan is a founding Principal of the Percent for Art Collaborative, an interdisciplinary consulting group collaborating with governments, non-profits, and private interests on public art policies, programs, and projects. Janet serves on the boards of national and regional arts organizations; participates on artist selection juries and grants panels; and, pursues critical discourse about public art. She is currently the Vice Chair of the Public Art Network (PAN) of Americans for the Arts. For more than 30 years she has worked with design teams and communities in strategic program planning and project management, frequently serving as a liaison among artists, public agencies, and elected officials. She has held positions in city government, local and statewide non-profit organizations, and architectural and interpretive design firms. Janet holds an MBA from Simmons College School of Management and an MA in Philosophy of Art from Duke University.

Christina Lanzl is an environmental artist and project manager of the UrbanArts Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her expertise in the arts, culture and community are complemented by twenty years of experience in working with design teams and professionals in the creative sector, and people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Lanzl is expert in communications, artistic processes and sustainable approaches to public art and landscape design. She has managed over fifty public art projects, exhibited widely and received commissions throughout the United States and in Europe. Lanzl regularly publishes (BLAZE, Cambridge Scholars Press, UK, 2007; Sculpture Magazine, 12/2006; Public Art Review, Spring 2006), lectures and presents at conferences and academic institutions. She received her MA in art history from Boston University and her Diploma in art history and information science from FHB Stuttgart, Germany. For more info please visit http://www.urbanartsinstitute.org OR
http://www.christinalanzl.com.

Helen Lessick is an artist and activist working in public art, temporary projects and conceptual events. A trained sculptor, she has been involved in the founding, development and growth of artist run organizations including Socrates Sculpture Park in New York; Portland Center for the Visual Arts in Oregon and Friends of the Los Angeles River in LA.  For the past 20 years she has created site-related sculpture, installations and community spectacles in the US and Europe.  Helen, also an experienced arts administrator and public art consultant has developed arts master plans and projects for the City of Portland, State of Washington, Cities of San Diego and Norfolk, Virginia and Los Angeles Metro art program. Her public art project for the City of Los Angeles is scheduled for completion in Fall 2009. Dedicated to serving the field, Helen accepted the position of Director of Civic Art + Design for the Houston Arts Alliance in Texas in April 2008.

Tin Ly has worked as a professional artist and sculpture conservator in South Florida for 28 years. He has been the Conservation Manager for the Broward County Public Art and Design Program since 1999, administering over 70 plus conservation projects, including artworks by Jody Pinto, Martha Schwartz, Duane Hanson, Paul DeMarinis, Alice Adams, Barry Tinsley, Cork Marcheschi, James Carpenter, Arquitectonica, among others. Ly has also conserved artworks for the Charles Saatchi Collection, Martin Margulies Collection, Wesla Hanson Collection and Ludwig Museum in Koln, Germany, among others. As an artist, he had completed several public art commissions, and received fellowships twice from the South Florida Cultural Consortium and the Florida Arts Council. He was a presenter at a conference on “Conservation and Maintenance of Contemporary Public Art”, organized by the Cambridge Arts Council in 2001;“Material Meaning: Process, Product and Preservation in Public Art” at the American for the Arts, Public Art Preconference in 2006. He is a member of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works.

Jack Mackie , a public artist residing in Seattle, has participated in major urban redevelopment and new construction projects including serving as project artist for Santa Clara County California light-rail and BART projects; design team artist for the Tennessee Aquarium plaza and park, Chattanooga, TN; design team artist for the City of Albuquerque and National Parks Service on the Unser Boulevard crossing at the Petroglyphs National Monument ; the Arizona State University downtown Phoenix streetscape; and commissioned artist for the Health Sciences Learning Center, University of Wisconsin and Scottsdale Arizona Justice Center.

As an artist-planner, he co-authored the Public Art Program for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Agency; the Aesthetic Design Standards & Design Implementation Procedures for CENTRO Transport, Birmingham, UK; the Bute Avenue Corridor Plan, Cardiff, Wales; and the New San Jose International Airport. He created Public Art Plans for the Memphis/Shelby County Central Library; the Performing Arts Center, Mesa, Arizona; and the Charlotte Area Transit System.

Jennifer McGregor is the Director of Arts & Senior Curator at Wave Hill, 28-acre public garden and cultural center in the Bronx, presenting artworks in the galleries and on the grounds that engage the public in a dialogue with nature, culture and site. She revitalized the visual arts programming in 1999 and since then has curated over 50 exhibitions and special projects, and now oversees the performing arts program. She has wide-ranging experience in public art. As Director of the New York City Percent for Art Program from 1983-1990, she implemented the program guidelines and supervised sixty public art projects.  In 1990, she founded McGregor Consulting to work nationally on public art commissions, exhibitions, and planning projects including design selection process for New York City’s Flight 587 Memorial, sculpture park planning for Freedom Park in Atlanta GA and Abington Art Center in Jenkintown, PA, and facilitated the start of the Public Art Network, a program of Americans for the Arts. 

Notable projects include preservation planning and conservation of sculpture collections at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and the treatment of the memorials that mark the graves of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, New York and writer Eudora Welty in Jackson, Mississippi.

He has also worked to create new memorials. With sculptor Jim Barnhill, he designed a memorial for Booker T. Washington’s birthplace near Roanoke, Virginia. He also chaired the federal review board that selected a design for the African Burial Ground Memorial, completed last fall at the burial site of thousands of enslaved and free Africans in lower Manhattan.

He holds a BA degree from Florida State University, a Master’s degree in Art History from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D from the University of Delaware.

Tom Moran has nearly 27 years of professional experience in the planning and coordination of successful public art projects with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has overseen the implementation of New Jersey's Arts Inclusion program, bringing hundreds of major public art projects to public sites or buildings throughout New Jersey. Tom has worked closely with many of the most distinguished visual artists in the United States including: Keith Sonnier, George Segal, Fred Wilson, Maya Lin, Mary Miss, Sam Gilliam, Nam June Paik, Elyn Zimmerman, and dozens more.

Tom serves on the United States General Services Administration’s Design Excellence National Peer Review Panel. He has assisted GSA’s Art-in-Architecture Program on several major Federal projects over the past two decades.

Born in Palmer, Massachusetts, Tom studied painting and sculpture at the School of the Worcester Art Museum and received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Brunswick, NJ.

Ron Pederson has taught sculpture for thirty-one years, the past twenty-six at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Beyond teaching he has served as Resident Artist at Grand Rapids’ Urban Institute for Contemporary Art and as Art Reviewer for The Grand Rapids Press. He exhibits collaboratively with his wife, the poet Miriam Pederson, who is also an Aquinas Professor. Pederson holds an M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University of

Minnesota, and a B.A. is from Bethel College in Arden Hills, Minnesota. He cherishes the mentoring he received from his sculpture professors, particularly Stewart Luckman ( Bethel) and Guy Baldwin (U of Minn), and has sought to pass that good karma on to his own students. He is proud of son Ben (MFA, sculpture, UMass Amherst) and daughter Madeline (MA Art History, SUNY Buffalo) who have followed in his footsteps, and looks forward to an October 2008 exhibition at Aquinas which will feature several of his former students.

Sarah Schrank is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2002 and is the recipient of residential fellowships from the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University and the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation at the Huntington Library. Dr. Schrank’s work connects the cultural history of United States cities to diverse and contested expressions of modernism in public and private artwork. She has written extensively on this topic including, most recently, her book, Art and the City: Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in Los Angeles, University of Pennsylvania Press (forthcoming October 2008), and an essay entitled “Nuestro Pueblo: The Spatial and Cultural Politics of Los Angeles’ Watts Towers,” in The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life, edited by Gyan Prakash and Kevin Kruse, Princeton University Press, 2008.

Foon Sham received a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, and a MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is professor of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has had 27 solo exhibitions in the Washington Metropolitan region and in New York, Ohio, Delaware, New Mexico, Canada, Norway, Mexico, Australia and most recently in Hong Kong. His work have been included group exhibitions at Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His public collections include the Nayatad Sculpture Park in Hungary, United World College in Norway, Universidid De Palermo in Argentina, the Sallie Mae Corporation in Reston, Virginia, the Mitchell Museum in Mt Vernon, Illinois, the Museum of Contemporary Arts of Yucatan, Merida, Mexico, the large scale sculpture at the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metrorail Station and Convention Center in Washington DC and recently the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong. He has received many awards including a Residency Grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Nordic Artists’ Centre in Dale, Norway, the Franconia Sculpture Park/Jerome Fellowship, the Virginia Commission of the Arts Individual Fellowship, the Creative and Performing Arts Awards from the University of Maryland and the project grant from the Art Council in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 2007.

Barry Tinsley, a native of Virginia, graduated from the College of William and Mary with a BA degree in Fine Arts. His MA and MFA degrees were received from the University of Iowa in sculpture. After teaching sculpture at Eastern Kentucky University and Illinois State University he moved to Chicago to begin a full time career in public sculpture. Over a thirty year career he has placed thirty-five large scale commissions in private, corporate, and municipal locations throughout the United States and Europe. Thirteen of these projects were Percent for Art commissions.

Nancy Mulnix Tweddale is a passionate arts advocate. She led efforts to secure the first National Endowment for the Arts grant to commission Alexander Calder's La Grande Vitesse, which was installed in downtown Grand Rapids in 1969. She received a B.A. in philosophy from Aquinas College and a B.S. in psychiatric nursing from Grand Valley State University. She has served in many volunteer roles, including service with the Michigan Council for the Arts, Grand Valley State Colleges Foundation, Grand Rapids Arts Festivals, Grand Rapids Arts Museum, and Grand Rapids Civic Theater. Nancy’s records of her tenure as an active citizen and advocate for the visual arts are collected at the Grand Rapids Public Library as the Mulnix Papers. The archive includes rare correspondence, photographs, media clippings, and memorabilia, and is fully accessible to the public. Today, Nancy is a proud grandmother of Kevin, age 4.

John T Young is a practicing public artist and sculptor; he has created over 35 large-scale outdoor works for public sites across the nation. He is also a Professor and Chair of the Sculpture and Public Art Program at the School of Art, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The Public Art Curriculum at UW is one of the first and most comprehensive of its kind in the USA, and features an interdisciplinary eight course sequence geared towards the training of future public artists and planners. For more info please see the following websites: www.studypublicart.org; and www.faculty.washington.edu/jtyoung