Get ready for a plaza-palooza

Plans for the Lincoln City Cultural Center Plaza, a central part of efforts to turn the old Delake School into a world-class event space and cultural hub, are moving into the public sphere. For the past three years, the cultural center team has been planning to create a useful outdoor space that ties together the building’s patios, entrances, utilities and the rest of the infrastructure.

Now, it’s time to have some fun. For the next two months, the cultural center will be collecting words and imagery to be incorporated into two connected public art projects on the plaza’s west side. Planners are looking for images and ideas about life in our community, through the seasons of the year, that will become part of a 20-foot-wide, circular, ground-level mosaic called “The Lincoln City Cosmography.”

Meanwhile, the team will be collecting poetry, original or quoted, that could be sandblasted into the plaza’s 350-foot-long meandering sidewalk, to the north and south of the mosaic. The theme of the written work will be “The Tide,” and the poetry process will be led by Oregon’s new poet laureate, Anis Mojgani.

The poetry-writing effort will begin with a two-day workshop led by Mojgani beginning with an online brainstorming session on Friday, April 30, followed on Saturday, May 1, when the collective brain will move to the beach to draw, arrange and record words in the sand during a minus tide event. The tides will wash those marks away, but the words and photos will be saved for eventual use on the meandering path.

To register, call 541-994-9994.

Members of the public are also invited to consider the theme and respond to the materials in a prompting packet, available to all, online or in person at the center beginning on Wednesday, May 5. Responses of ideas for poetry and placement are due by June 30.

“We will all be grateful for the practical improvements that the plaza will bring, like better parking and easier access for those with mobility issues,” said Cultural Center Executive Director Niki Price. “But it’s these artistic elements, the words on the meandering path and the mosaic just outside the west entrance, that will make the plaza remarkable and memorable. These elements will set the tone for everything that happens here, for many years to come. We want these words and images to be meaningful to our community. Our favorite things, our ways of living, our relationship to the environment. We’re inviting you, the public, to be a part of this creative process.”

The idea of creating a cosmography came from Robin Brailsford, the public mosaic specialist who worked with the design team last year, when she and her artistic partner, Wick Alexander, led a small group of Lincoln City residents in a virtual workshop on plaza artistic elements.

“There were hundreds of ideas generated that day,” Price said. “We talked about who lives here, what we do here and why. So, we thought it would be interesting to approach it from another w: when. If you think about the when, you start to think about annual traditions, seasonal activities, harvests, your favorite weather, the way the sun moves along the horizon through the year. Can we describe our year, in the form of a sphere, a cycle or a circle? That’s what we envision for the Lincoln City Cosmography.”

The eventual artwork will be 20 feet in diameter, laid into the concrete outside the west entrance. For the next 60 days, the public is invited to contribute to the design. To take part, drop by the center, where you’ll find an exhibit dedicated to the plaza project, including flyers, site plans, videos and examples of the LithoMosaic process.

Or, pick up one of exhibit designer Sara Haug’s Create Your Own Cosmography kits, which have diagrams, instructions and small items that you can glue, trace or reproduce on your own.

Anis Mojgani is a two-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam and winner of the International World Cup Poetry Slam. He has been awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Bloedel Nature Reserve and the Oregon Literary Arts Writers-In-The-Schools program. He has completed commissions for the Getty Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum, and his work has appeared on HBO, National Public Radio and in the pages of the New York Times.

The author of five books of poetry and a forthcoming children’s book, Mojgani is originally from New Orleans and now lives in Portland.

Robin Brailsford holds an MFA in Sculpture and a patent for LithoMosaic, a method of casting mosaics within monolithic concrete pours. Known as the “Good Ideas Woman,” and as a pioneer in the field of public art, Brailsford has extensive knowledge about the public art process and frequently mentors other artists, sharing her know-how and experience with the public art approval and funding process, working with architects and landscape architects, collaborating with designers and other partners and various other aspects of public art. She is a founder and director of Public Address, the first public art advocacy group in the nation and works with public artists across the country to establish equitable standards for artists and administrators.

For more information, go to lincolncity-culturalcenter.org or call 541-994-9994.