a newly adopted ordinance will bring artwork to public venues in Portsmouth

Visitors to Post Office Square Park in Boston inevitably find their attention drawn to an 11-foot glass and bronze sculpture spewing jets of water from its peak. Created by renowned sculptor and artist Howard Ben Tré, the unusual fountain beautifies the public square and exposes visitors to fine artwork.

Ben Tré, who appeared at the Portsmouth Public Library on Friday, May 11, as keynote speaker for an annual Art-Speak forum, received a commission from the city of Boston to design public art in the square. In addition to erecting the large fountain, he added seating and granite work to the plaza floor, making it more attractive to visitors.

Projects like this have transformed deserted plazas and streets into thriving community centers where tourists and locals congregate. The social activity surrounding public art stimulates the economy by drawing people to area businesses.
“This is how public art can change a city,” Ben Tré said.

Art-Speak board members and city officials hope a newly adopted ordinance in Portsmouth will have a similar impact. The city’s public art ordinance demands that one percent of the construction budget for any new municipal building or major renovation be spent on works of art. Although the ordinance has not yet been applied to a new building, a number of significant projects are brewing. City officials are considering replacing Portsmouth Middle School with a new facility, and the MacIntyre Building on Daniel Street will be redeveloped within the next decade. 

During the public forum on Friday morning, artists joined city officials to discuss potential impacts of the new ordinance and to brainstorm ideas for its implementation. After an introduction from Art-Speak Board President Russ Grazier, Portsmouth Poet Laureate Elizabeth Knies read a poem called “Darkness, Light.” Grazier then introduced Ben Tré, who guided the audience through a slideshow of his public artwork.

Wearing a posh black suit, his gray hair slicked back in a ponytail, the internationally known sculptor showcased some of his large-scale projects in cities like Boston, Providence, Las Vegas and Tacoma. His artwork, located in city plazas and other public venues across the globe, includes artistic seating, paving, landscaping, fountains, sconces and sculptures. “There is a whole public art industry out there,” Ben Tré said.

Although the sculptor said he supports ordinances such as the one recently adopted in Portsmouth, he expressed a few reservations about the details. The ordinance only applies to construction work costing between $2 million and $15 million, but Ben Tré feels putting a cap on the price of applicable projects could limit the scope of the artwork. A $15 million dollar bid would generate $150,000 toward public art, but that may not be enough to fund an artistic project of proportional size, he said.

City Attorney Robert Sullivan said the cap was necessary to persuade city councilors to vote in favor of the ordinance. Sullivan, who helped craft the ordinance, said certain compromises had to be made in order to win over the council. One such compromise was giving the council the authority to decide what type of art will appear at a particular site and who will design it.

Ben Tré suggested the city would be better off letting a committee of professional artists make those decisions. Asking city councilors to make decisions about artwork is ill advised, he said, because art is outside the realm of their expertise. “If you have a toothache, you don’t go to the city council, you go to a dentist,” he said.

Following Ben Tré’s slideshow, independent TV producer and former WMUR anchor Jen Crompton Marchewka moderated a panel discussion on the ordinance. The panel included Ben Tré, Sullivan, City Councilor Christine Dwyer, Economic Development Manager Nancy Carmer, local muralist Gordon Carlisle and Julie Mento, of the N.H. State Council on the Arts. The panel later addressed questions from the audience, which consisted of a few dozen artists and residents.

Sullivan kicked off the discussion by detailing the language of the ordinance and how it applies to the city’s master plan. A statement of purpose regarding the ordinance conveys the city’s obligation to “assist and encourage the participation of its citizens and visitors in the enjoyment of the many benefits which flow from the arts.”

Of the one percent of the construction budget that must go toward public art, 90 percent must be used at the site, while the remaining 10 percent is entered into a trust to be spent at the discretion of the City Council.

Some panelists and members of the public disagreed on whether public art commissions should be limited to local artists. While Ben Tré feels the highest quality art can only be achieved by involving artists from across the nation, Carlisle noted that artists who have never been to Portsmouth lack the frame of reference to make their work meaningful at the local level. Dwyer suggested that the council could accept submissions from all artists while placing preference on local artists.

Audience members asked questions about the judging process for art submissions, which Sullivan said is an ongoing debate. Grazier noted that the ordinance is still a work in progress, and the forum was designed in part to get feedback from the public.

But everyone present seemed to agree that increased public art would have a positive impact on the city. Carmer noted that artwork tends to attract new businesses with a younger workforce. “That’s a workforce that we know is fleeing this part of the country,” she said, adding that a thriving art scene brings more regional and national recognition to the community.

Perhaps even more importantly, public sculptures and monuments give casual observers unique access to the artistic world, offering benefits to tourists, residents and employees in Portsmouth. “People get to enjoy art without having to go to a museum,” Ben Tré said, noting that public exhibits attract the curiosity of people who are not normally interested in the arts. “That’s what art does. You look at it and you wonder about it,” he said.

Even Sullivan, who earlier confessed that he knows nothing about the arts, said he was convinced that public artwork would have both economic and cultural benefits. “I’ve become kind of a believer through the process,” he said, igniting a burst of laughter and applause.