Challenge
As a founding Board member of the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals, Lee Modica has worked in public art for over 20 years. She has handled the selection and acquisition of artwork for construction projects all around the state, averaging 10-15 projects annually. In the fall of 2016, she had a major new project to administer for Florida’s Art in State Buildings Program.
A new courthouse for the Fourth District Court of Appeal was being built in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida. The Art Selection Committee wanted to find an artist or artist team who could create exterior artwork to convey “the enduring strength, dignity, and stature of the American court system.”
Lee’s experience had taught her where the inefficiencies lay in the selection process. She knew she could spend up to a full month after the application deadline organizing submission materials into folders, resizing images, and performing other work, both digital and manual, to prepare the submission materials for presentation to the selection committee. She also knew there must be a way to streamline this process.
Solution
Lee saw an opportunity to do just that with the CODAworx RFP Toolkit. The Toolkit automatically resizes applicant images and organizes submissions into clean portfolios. Applications are presented online in a consistent format, providing macro and micro views of project details for her committee to review.
“Most compelling to me was how this tool could save me a lot of time and agony in organizing applications, and the ease of showing the final applications to my committee,” Lee shares.
After using the application management tool built into the CODAworx RFP Toolkit, her usual process of preparing application materials was shortened from a month into less than a week! Lee was able to reduce the administrative work and focus her time on the important part of finding the best artist team for the Florida art commission.
Lee also used the RFP Toolkit to deliver her Request for Qualifications directly to qualified artists. She chose to send the opportunity to artists working in sculpture, public art, landscape, light, flooring, mosaics, and architectural metal from among 17,000 art and design professionals available in the CODAworx database.
The CODAworx RFP Toolkit automatically sent two email blasts to Lee’s targeted group of professional artists: once when she first scheduled the e-blast and again three days before the application deadline. New artists soon were applying to this commission that had never applied to Lee’s projects before.
Results
The state of Florida received 78 applications for the Fourth District Court of Appeal courthouse after promoting this commissioned art opportunity through the CODAworx RFP Toolkit. One-third of the applicants were Florida artists and two thirds were national or international artists.
From the 78 submissions, three finalists were chosen to create proposals: Eileen Gay, Mid-Ocean Studio, and the artist team of Roberto Delgado and Rude Calderon. After seeing impressive presentations from all the finalists, a tough decision was made and the artist team of Roberto Delgado and Rude Calderon was selected for the project in April 2017.
Roberto and Rude are independent artists who have collaborated on over a dozen public art projects together in the last decade. Their proposal for the Fourth District Court of Appeal project, titled “Light of Justice”, includes a 15-foot tall sculpture made by Rude and tilework by Roberto. The sculpture is to be made of basalt and travertine stone, crowned on the top with a golden-hued sunburst carved away from the rock to be thin enough to let light shine through. Tiles with colorful silkscreen prints of historic persons and places of West Palm Beach will be built into the walkways of the park areas on either corner of the courthouse. The artwork should be installed by the completion of the building in early 2018.
Roberto and Rude each have examples of their past work on CODAworx. Roberto’s Creative Profile showcases an array of his work, and an example of Rude’s stonework can be seen in his Leaping Fish project.
Following the success of managing this project with the CODAworx RFP Toolkit, Lee says she will definitely use the service again in the future. “The ease of use and the huge time savings makes it impossible to imagine managing future major commissions without a tool like this.”
From Lee
“It was great to use such a professional service for this high-profile project. Most impressive to me was the clean, attractive look of the artist pages on CODAworx, as well as, the ease of moving through them during the selection committee’s rounds of review. Also, the friendly, knowledgeable and helpful staff at CODAworx were very supportive in helping me create the project’s RFP Toolkit and in managing and presenting the applicants’ submissions. Thank you!” – Lee Modica, Public Art Consultant, Florida
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