El Paso Eastside Regional Park Plaza Public Art Commission

The City of El Paso's Museums and Cultural Affairs Department (MCAD) Public Art Program and Parks and Recreation Department seeks to commission a professional artist to design and develop a public art piece for the Plaza as the first phase of the Eastside Regional Park.

The City of El Paso is developing 92 acres of land that will become The Eastside Regional Park, the largest fully-developed park in the City of El Paso. A Plaza between the Community Center/Natatorium and Amphitheater will offer the opportunity to collaborate with designers during development to influence plaza design, landscaping, and creatively integrate artistic concepts. The plaza should be energetic, fun, and engaging while functioning as a gathering place. By collaborating, the artist may influence aspects such as the ground plane hardscape, seating arrangements, landscaping, and lighting.

The total award for an artist contract is $205,000, inclusive of stakeholder collaboration, design, fabrication and installation of artwork (including shipping expenses and insurance), travel, and all other project related costs. This project is open to all artists working or living in the United States. Artists must have previous public art experience and have successfully completed works of similar scope, scale, budget and complexity, or articulate how they would bring necessary artistic technical skills to this project. Applications must be submitted by 5:00pm (MST), February 26, 2016. Submission requirements include a letter of interest, current resume, and six images of completed past artworks with title, dimensions, medium, year of completion, a three-sentence description, and value or budget amount for insurance purposes. Images must be sized to 1920 pixels horizontal or vertical (1320 x 1920 pixels), in Baseline JPEG format, and no more than 1.8 MB in file size. Applications will be reviewed by an Artist Selection Panel and artists will be selected based on their qualifications as demonstrated by application materials. Artist selection is scheduled for April 12, 2016, with commission awarded April 18, 2016.