City of Pasadena: ORBIT

Pasadena is an ethnically diverse community located fifteen minutes from Downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The city is renowned for its tree-lined streets, historic buildings, and is home to more than 60 arts and cultural institutions. ORBIT is the City's rotating public art exhibition program that loans contemporary sculptures from professional artists for short-term exhibition at established outdoor sites in each of Pasadena's seven Council Districts. The program has temporarily installed twenty-six original artworks in neighborhoods throughout Pasadena since its inception in 2011. Artwork sites are highly visible to pedestrian and vehicular traffic and include traffic triangles, medians, street corners, and other interstitial spaces in the public right-of-way.

The City invites professional artists and teams with demonstrated experience creating outdoor sculpture to submit work for consideration of short-term loan. A professional artist is broadly defined as one who demonstrates a commitment to their professional art practice, has received compensation for their professional art practice, or is recognized by their peers as a professional artist. Artworks submitted should be sufficiently durable for placement outdoors for at least three years and equipped with stable attachment points that allow for anchoring into an existing concrete foundation. Contracted artists will each be paid a $6,000 honorarium for the loan of their artwork. The City will provide professional engineering, installation, and deinstallation services; concrete foundation, installation hardware, and identification signage; fine art property insurance during the loan period; and up to 100 full-color printed brochures. Artists are responsible for providing accurate artwork specifications, delivery of artwork to the assigned site at confirmed installation time, presence on site during installation, and removal of deinstalled artwork.

Selection will be based on: originality, craftsmanship, highly visible scale, and accessibility for community context (50%); demonstrated quality of materials and durable construction methods (20%); relevant professional experience creating outdoor sculpture (20%); local Pasadena business address at time of submission (5%); and California state certification as a small or micro-business at time of submission (5%). Installations are projected for February/March 2020 with deinstallations projected for July/August 2022. Submit 2-16 images of work samples.