City Committee Recommends Budget Change for Bridge Sculpture

A city committee on Tuesday mostly agreed that the second downtown bridge sculpture deserves to have a higher budget.

The City Services Committee voted 5-2 to recommend approval of a bridge sculpture budget increase to the Batavia City Council. The prize money for the selected sculpture will go from $22,500 back to the original amount of $30,000.

Committee Members Dawn Tenuta and Victor Dietz voted against the increase, citing concerns with the poor economy.

The city staff will create a resolution for the city council to vote on at their next meeting. McGrath has asked that this include reissuing the announcement for the competition for prospective artists.

Absent Artists

City officials hope taking out additional Tax Increment Finance funds for the sculpture will attract more artists. So far, only three artists have entered the competition for the second sculpture.

Two of the artists submitted modern and abstract designs, said City Administrator Bill McGrath. The other submission is by someone who has not done a public sculpture yet.

McGrath said in a memo that there is not a diverse selection of concepts for the community to view, discuss and give input on for the Council to make a decision.

Mayor Jeff Schielke said the next piece of art that sits on the bridge should be of high quality that adds to the impressive large scale outdoor art downtown. 

Alderman Michael O’Brien agreed with Mayor Schielke.

“I say all the time when you need to build a building that’s going to be there a 100 years from now, and people a 100 years from now will say … they did it right," O'Brien said. "This is the same concept. This is the future for our children’s children, who are going to be appreciative of the decisions we make today.”

The Money Issue

Alderman Dawn Tenuta agrees with O’Brien and Schielke that the bridge sculpture should be of high quality. But she still is concerned about the timing, given that the economy is still limping along.

“I don’t know if I’m convinced we can’t get quality for $20,000,” said Tenuta, who voted against the budget to increase.  

McGrath disagreed with Tenuta. He said he contacted a successful area sculptor and a sculptor-foundry owner—both said that entries weren’t flowing in because of the high price of bronze. Bronze is likely to be the metal used in the sculpture to create a figure central to Batavia's history.

"...Most artists would be hard pressed to have a bronze of a figure made for less than $20,000, thus leaving the artist with no compensation for the sculpting itself, the creativity,” McGrath said in the memo.

Alderman Eldon Frydendall agreed with McGrath. Materials for the artwork are expensive, the price is just going to keep going up, Frydendall said.

In trying to keep the cost down, Tenuta suggested the recognition the chosen piece gets should be enough to entice artists.

Piece of History

The addition of the history sculpture will bring to the forefront that “every moment is history in the making,” McGrath said in a memo encouraging the city to move forward with the sculpture.   

The sculpture is the second in a series of four sculptures for the William J. Donovan Bridge. Each sculpture will represent one of four themes: nature, history, science and art.

The first sculpture competition was for the nature theme. In the spring of 2009, “Nature’s Harmony” by Kai Schulte of Sugar Grove was installed.