Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 01/09/2025

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The Catalyst Project Vision Futures North has been designing public art that reference the ecology, histories and geology of a site that enrich visitors' appreciation and deepen their experience of the location. The collective has a successful track record in a variety of projects, including referencing the environmental history of the Upper Mississippi River for a permanent sculpture in Lowertown, St. Paul (Meander), illustrating the migration of peoples and birds through Minnesota (Lines of Flight, Human and Lines of Flight, Avian), and more. With the goal of reclaiming an overlooked area of Northfield and its history, such an approach would be invaluable for the proposed redevelopment plans. Futures North would create an anchor piece that sets a precedent for celebrating the site's diverse histories in order to invite locals and visitors to these spaces and invite new meaning and experiences. Public art is many things-- at its best it connects people to one another, to place, to history, potential futures, and serves infrastructural needs. The existing public art of Northfield occupies a traditional subsection of the public art world-- the majority of the pieces are object-based figural sculptures, which stand in contrast to their surroundings. Because public art is a reflection of our evolving society and its expression, our definitions of public art also must evolve. Materials and methods change to reflect our contemporary culture. The process, guided by both the public and professionals, should seek out a symbiotic and generative process between artist and community. There is great opportunity along the Cannon River's edge for the art to engage the public with the history, ecology, and geology of the area. We see potential for using data from the region to contribute to a contemporary translation of the histories and collective future of the land and the community. The project will use site data as a design driver to reveal and celebrate the diverse sets of information that have shaped and continue to shape the site. The piece will take a distributed approach looking to projects like the Highline in New York City, Gaudi's panots in Barcelona, and creative placemaking efforts such as Endemic Architecture's Confettin Urbanism. The `Project' could integrate with the landscape design to shape seating, walkways, lighting, and retaining walls with the ability to aggregate and create larger spaces for gathering and assembly. This approach to public art also has great potential for wayfinding through the repetition of components along and across the rivers edge. Repeating materials, forms, patterns and textures create a sense of identity and place for this important part of the city. The catalyst project can contribute to defining the development site and its connection to the river, main street, and the rest of Northfield. The current conditions of the rivers edge are ripe with possibilities for connecting art to the -20' grade change from Main Street to the River. Currently there are a