The process begins with a call for art that’s advertised nationally.  It’s typically a city, sometimes an organization, sometimes a developer.  Most often a city. Or it could be a school, university. So they will issue a request for qualifications, which simply means images of past work, resume, a letter of interest, references.  Submit that. And from that pool of applicants that they get, they will select finalists. Who knows how many. Five?

The finalists get a fee to actually put a proposal together.  And so they present that concept proposal, and the committee will select the winner.  And then the artist will be commissioned, contracted. And then you begin the project.  That’s the typical way. It does work other ways, where they don’t want an idea, they will pick an artist without an idea.  And once you’re contracted, then you work with an idea.

If there’s already an idea that you presented, then you have to develop the idea to a point where it’s buildable: construction documents, approvals, engineering… and usually there’s a lot of back-and-forth because often there’s a building being built, so you’re working with the architect on siting the thing and running power and so on.  So there’s siting and refining the budget and contracting with fabricators and all the logistics, and then it’ll be fabricated and you oversee that, and ultimately it’s installed. And that’s usually a long process for a piece of art. Definitely a solid year. I don’t think I’ve had a project other than maybe some temporary installation that has not been a year-plus and up to–I’ve had projects go as long as two to three years.