Gordon Huether says public art can enhance a community’s quality of life
Published in the April 27 – May 10, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Morgan Hill Life file photo
Two construction workers celebrate the installation of the spider art by Gordon Huether.
Love it or hate it, the 12-foot sculpture “The Tarantula” on the Fourth Street side of the downtown parking structure is generating lots of conversation in Morgan Hill lately about the merits of public art. And on the Third Street side of the new garage is “Poppy Jasper,” a three-story glass artwork representing the city’s official fire-hewed gemstone that seems to be generating less controversy. Both works came from the mind of world-renown artist Gordon Huether and were created by him and his team in their Napa studio.
Public art can enhance a community’s quality of life, he said, explaining the value of the two works he made specially for Morgan Hill and paid for by funds from the former Redevelopment Agency. The art is valued at $425,000 for both pieces.
“Imagine that parking garage with no art on it, with no creativity on it. The world would be a sadder place somehow if it wasn’t enhanced by the heart and soul of artists,” Huether said. “I think that what I have noticed in the past 30 years is that more municipalities and members of the public are embracing public art to be built into their environments…. It’s very clear that art is an important dimension of humanity. It would be hard to live without art in the public realm.”
Huether’s art installations can be found in cities through the United States as well as in Canada and Germany. And Morgan Hill is not the first parking garage he’s worked on. An installation he made for the Stockton Arena parking garage featured 22,000 Mattel Hot Wheels cars glued to and urethane-sealed onto four-foot by eight-foot steel sections. The colorful pattern of the mounted toy cars covers about two thirds of a metal screen fastened to the side of the structure. Various other public art works appear at airports, universities, and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin.
One of the fundamental characteristics of Huether’s installations is that they always need to tell a story, a narrative of place that reflects some dimension of the community in which they are built, he said. “The art is never really about me,” he said. “The art is about the people who will be experiencing it on a daily basis.”
Looking out of the Third Street Parking Garage through the Poppy Jasper piece by Gordon Huether. The parking garage, scheduled to open in May, includes two pieces created by the world-renown artist.
Photo by Marty Cheek
The concept for The Tarantula popped into his head when he played with the idea of placing a Volkswagen Beetle with jutting bug legs on the side of the parking garage.
“Then I said, ‘No, that’s going to freak everybody out.’ Then kind of on a parallel track as I was doing research on Morgan Hill, I learned that (Henry W. Coe State Park) has an annual tarantula festival. I thought that there’s an aspect that’s unique about Morgan Hill so I kind of used that as my departure point. Then I thought how it can be connected to a parking garage and I decided we’d make the body of the spider out of headlights, which is my salute to cars.”
The piece is whimsical and resembles a massive jeweled broach with its gleaming colors. But the giant spider is not without controversy. Some residents questioned spending $165,000 for the piece, saying the money would be better placed in improving streets or feeding the homeless in the county.
“That’s an old and tired and uniformed opinion. It doesn’t work that way,” Huether said. “You can’t take the public art money and put it in potholes. That money was part of the redevelopment deal in that case and it came from that. I don’t make the rules but I play by them. And if someone wants more funding for potholes, they should talk to the mayor and the city council. That money was allocated for art and that is what it was spent on — it’s as simple as that.”
The parking garage art as well as other downtown public works such as the “Dear Family” and “Waiting for the Train” can help build the brand of Morgan Hill as a city that seeks to inspire people with visual art, he said. Many studies have shown the benefit of public art, including economic and social benefits as people feel greater pride in their city.
Commissioning the two works required a process of public discussion, Huether said. The first step was to meet with the Library, Cultural and Arts Commission to show concept ideas. Then the discussion moved to the Planning Commission. The Morgan Hill City Council finally voted to approve Huether’s works for the garage. Huether serves on the Planning Commission in Napa, and says it’s common for public art to cause people to complain if it does not suit a person’s particular taste.
“Those were all public meetings and people were given the opportunity and some took it to speak in favor or against,” he said. “It went through a process so if people whine about it now, it’s too late.”
Comparing the art he created for other cities or public entities, Huether said the parking garage spider and poppy jasper glass wall works are ones he is particularly proud of.
“It’s in my top-top favorites right now,” he said. “I and my whole team take great pride in what we do from design content in the art and how it’s made and how we interact with clients. I’m feeling it’s going to be one of my better installations.”
There has been “a healthy debate” of diverse opinions in Morgan Hill about Huether’s works and the role of the city in commissioning public art, said Edith Ramirez, principal planner of economic development for the city.
“Honestly, it would be boring and perhaps a little scary if we all liked the same art. The goal, I think is to make downtown special, unique and interesting and welcoming to all sectors of the community,” she said. “We are particularly excited about the Gordon Huether pieces because of the active engagement we have seen from the community. And the caliber of the artist is elevating our visibility and the two art pieces provide a balance between elegance and whimsical.”
Huether said he had a positive experience working with Morgan Hill city staff as well as the planning commission and the mayor in developing the parking garage art projects.
“The city of Morgan Hill showed some courage to do something that was a little quote, unquote ‘out there,’” he said. “It’s going to be an important part of Morgan Hill’s transformation and its relevance in context to the other communities around it. I think Morgan Hill is going places and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”
