Sacramento And San Francisco Artists Approved For Arena Art Projects

The Sacramento City Council has approved more than $614,000 for two art projects at the new downtown arena, the Golden 1 Center.

Gale Hart is a Sacramento artist. Her sculptures of a "deconstructed" dart game will be installed along two blocks of L Street after engineers create a construction plan.

"(They'll ) look at my plans and say, 'Yeah, that's possible. No, you're crazy. What were you thinking? This is awesome!'" she says. "Whatever they come up with, it has to go through an engineer first."

Hart's sculptures will include an embedded dart board and two darts stuck in the sidewalk, and hands holding dart tails and a bulls eye.

Sculptures of dart board numbers will also be part of the display at the Golden 1 Center.

Four fabricators will be required to create the sculptures. They will  be made of fiberglass, concrete, terrazzo, steel and bronze.

Hart says the pieces will be installed by the time the Golden 1 Center opens in late summer or early fall.

Also a "sound sculpture" from San Francisco artist William Fontana will feature 34 audio speakers with sounds of the Sacramento Valley and sounds from a basketball game.

These two sculptures account for about half of the money allocated for arts projects at the arena. Most of the money is from a private donation from local artist Marcy Friedman.

A panel of artists recommends projects to the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, which then decides whether to recommend them to the city council.

The commission will review the project submitted by Sacramento artist Brian Valenzuela this friday.

Another project involving LED screens is in the works. It's a cooperative effort between the commission and Sacramento State students.