Othello Square, Seattle / Seeks Art Consultant

Deadline
June 25, 2019


Organization Name: Artist Trust

Organization Location: Artist Trust

Type: N/A

Discipline:

Othello Square, located at the southwest corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way South and South Othello St., is transforming an empty 3.2-acre lot in the heart of Rainier Valley, across from the Othello light rail station, into the hub of housing, services and programs for the entire community.

The Othello Square campus will be home to a new Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, the Rainier Valley Leadership Academy High School, Tiny Tots early learning center, the Opportunity Center, more than 350 living wage jobs, and over 400 new mixed-income housing options.

The Opportunity Center will serve as the gateway to the Othello Square campus and be home to HomeSight, SPICE (STEM Path Innovative Center for Excellence), the Multicultural Community Coalition, the Rainier Valley CDF, community and classroom spaces, and affordable and market rate apartments.

We have founded an Othello Square Art Committee (OSAC) and as part of our master planning efforts, created an overarching art theme. Othello Square is seeking an art consultant to coordinate our efforts to create art in the common areas and public plaza within the campus that builds upon the developed themes and reflects the current diverse ethnic individuals that make up the community.
Our Goals:
• To incorporate art in permanent and temporary construction elements
• To provide opportunities for co-created and collaborative artwork

• To prominently showcase the stories of the campus, the community and the buildings’ uses
• To begin the foundation for sustaining future campus wide arts programming
• To provide integrated rather than additive art and ethnic expression
• To implement cohesive and site-specific art with a range of styles across the site
• To incorporate temporary and permanent art across the campus that reflect the strong history of art in the community
Final decision for art selection to be determined by OSAC. The OSAC will also act as the “keeper of the vision” for the campus.

Specific Tasks:
• Project Management of overall public plaza art plan and collaboration with subconsultants whose scope overlaps, including but not limited to: campus partners’ artists/consultants for their individual building artwork, public plaza landscape architect, and campus signage, wayfinding and lighting consultants
• Meetings with Development & Architect team and the community for coordination
• Management of common area and public plaza art schedule and budget
• Management of schedule and installation of all common area and public plaza art
• Management of Lead Artist (if applicable)
• Develop and vet all solicitations for common area and public plaza artists and art maintenance

Scope:
The scope of art consultant for the public space plaza includes incorporating the Master Plan Guidelines as well as the Othello Square Art Plan that defines artwork themes for the site, artwork types and styles recommendations, proposed artwork siting, artist selection process, and procedures that ensure a smooth fabrication/installation process, and preliminary budgets. The Art Plan establishes a unifying brand for all Othello Square Public Plaza Art.
The art consultant services include managing the production of temporary and permanent artwork. The temporary artwork will be placed throughout the site as it is being developed over the five-year construction period to engage the community and create excitement during the construction of Othello Square. The temporary art could include light installations, banners, murals on construction fencing, or a number of alternative options. These temporary artworks offer the ideal opportunity to solicit community and youth participation.
Coordination with other consultants will be required during the management of the permanent art between the developers, architects, contractors, community, and artists to ensure a smooth process. The art consultant is required to carefully manage the design of appropriate artworks, installation and maintenance plans, while ensuring costs remain within the target budget.
Deliverables will include visual concept drawings of artwork, documentation and/or graphics for inclusion in final report and prepared graphics and visual aids for participation in final report presentations.

Qualification Requirements:
This request for qualifications is open to all art consultants/lead artists working in or connected to Seattle, with weight given to an Othello or Rainier Valley artist connection. The scope as outlined for art management will cover a 4-5 year period, with a fee range to be 15-20% of total art budget. The total art budget has been tentatively planned for $500,000.

If interested, please submit the following information to HomeSight by 4:00 pm on June 25th, 2019 as a single PDF:
1. A one-page statement of interest.
2. Promotional information about the individual/firm.
3. Portfolio images or website of two comparable projects.
a. For each of the projects, provide references (names and phone numbers), a brief narrative description including total project budget, and photographs and/or conceptual drawings.
b. This can be an existing artist website, or a curated collection of up to 10 images combined into a PDF document, or no larger than 2 MB each.
c. Please do not send printed or hard copies.
4. Bios of who will complete the work.
5. An estimate of the fee for your services, also itemize by task and hourly rate for the respective staff (if applicable).
6. Estimate of the amount of time the individual/firm will commit to complete the scope of services.

Timeline:

• 5/30 – Release of RFQ
• 6/25– Art Consultant Qualifications & Letter of Interest due
• 7/2 – Finalists selected
• 7/10-7/11 – Finalist Interviews
• 7/17 – Art Consultant selection and notification
• 7/31 – Artist Contract finalized

Contact information:
Questions: Sara Everett, Othello Square Art Subcommittee Chair
sara@barrientosryan.com 206-728-1912

Proposal Submission: Faduma Ahmed, faduma@homesightwa.org

Opportunity Website