At a prime location in the first floor atrium of City Hall, Austin artist Sunyong Chung meticulously reconstructs her first sculpture at the People’s Gallery, an annual art exhibition at Austin City Hall that provides Austinites a free and accessible way to view a wide variety of high quality artwork submitted by Austin-area artists and arts organizations.

Chung’s sculpture “The Dance” is an intricate vellum paper and metal sculpture that “dances” in the air, reflecting Chung’s observation that we are constantly moving and changing.

Austin artist Sunyong Chung carefully assembles her sculpture, “The Dance,” for the 2012 People’s Gallery. “The Dance” is one of over 150 works from area artists that will be shown at City Hall throughout 2012.

“The original thought behind ‘The Dance’ is the idea of motion. What follows motion is change,” Chung said. “There is not one thing in the universe that doesn’t change. If we recognize that, then maybe we won’t be so frightened with the change.”

Chung extrapolated her sculpture’s overall form from dancers mimicking the spiral motion of the human DNA double helix. Her husband, sculptor Philippe Klinefelter, forged the sculpture’s stainless steel spine by hand. Chung texturized, punctured, cut and folded the vellum then attached it to the spine with thread.

Klinefelter himself is no stranger to the People’s Gallery; he first exhibited here several years ago. Last year, his sculpture “Adrift” was featured in the courtyard outside of City Hall and remains there again this year. Klinefelter said “Adrift,” a Texas grey granite sculpture on a cypresswood base, is about water, shelter and potential energy; without these things, society will go “adrift.” He says it serves as a reminder to those who work at City Hall about what is important to Austinites.

The 2012 People’s Gallery officially opens with a reception from 6 - 9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24 and will remain on display at City Hall for the remainder of the year. Artwork is displayed throughout the common areas and is accessible during business hours. The City provides materials for self-guided tours or will conduct guided tours for groups upon request.

Constant goals in an evolving Austin art scene

As art evolves and grows in Austin, the People’s Gallery goals have remained constant since it first opened. Jean Graham, the People’s Gallery coordinator, said the goal is to showcase regional artistic endeavors and encourage public dialogue, understanding and enjoyment of visual art.

“It reflects the artistic excellence and cultural diversity of Austin while promoting the City’s cultural and economic initiatives,” Graham said. “I hope that the People’s Gallery illustrates the value that the City of Austin places on creativity, innovation and the arts. Many cities make a kind of perfunctory nod towards the arts in their City Halls, but I would say that Austin has an exceptional offering to the public. The visual arts help create the energy and vitality that make Austin a desirable and economically-sound community.”

Klinefelter sees improvement in an Austin arts scene that has been overshadowed by a longtime emphasis on being a musical city.  While he feels art is still lacking in Austin compared to other cities he has visited, he sees the City’s commitment to art programs, including allocating 2 percent of capital improvement project budgets to commission or purchase art, as a fantastic way to fill the neighborhoods with art (Austin was the first Texas city to make this kind of budgetary commitment to artwork).

“The best thing in Austin is the People’s Gallery,” Klinefelter said. “We are able to pull out the riches of Austin and show them in the People’s Gallery. We are able to show the spectrum of art in Austin in a central, localized area. You really can’t find a better venue than this.”

City Hall as canvas

The first People’s Gallery added an artistic flavor to a new era when it was featured in the newly-opened Austin City Hall in 2005. Anne Elizabeth Wynn, an avid arts advocate and wife of then-Mayor Will Wynn, spearheaded the exhibition.  The People’s Gallery not only exhibits Austin area art, it morphs City Hall into an architectural canvas that the City’s artwork is painted on.

“It’s the most modern building in Austin,” Klinefelter said. “It is the closest sculpture of a building that we have. For the showing of art, you really could not find a better venue.”

For Chung, the open space is ideal for her sculpture.

“This open space is an ideal place to view this piece made with translucent paper because of the natural light” Chung said. “I love the idea that art is exhibited at a city hall. I can brag about how progressive our city is.”

Graham, who is coordinating her seventh People’s Gallery, said City Hall offers a venue for artists to exhibit their work in a context that is not art-centric and makes their work available to people who may not visit a museum or gallery.

“We have visitors to City Hall who are so impressed that we have such a high quality display at the seat of our City government,” Graham said. “We have a fine building that provides unique opportunities to exhibit artwork. It has been a privilege to work within such a fine architectural context to design exhibitions for city employees working at City Hall and for the public at large.”

Placing artwork in a functional office building like City Hall can create new challenges – and opportunities – to show art in different mediums while considering the building’s civic functions, protecting the artwork, and minding the flow of human activity. Graham said it is a wonderful creative challenge. She says it’s like bringing a three- or four-dimensional puzzle to life. 

“I am always alert to the aesthetics and conceptual underpinnings of the work and the particular constraints, opportunities and dynamics of the architectural spaces,” Graham said.  “I look at the artworks that are ranked highest by the review panelists and strive to create an exhibition that is diverse, cohesive and fits within the unique spaces available in Austin City Hall.” 

Sometimes, Graham places artworks that are responsive to particular locations, and sometimes themes develop in an area.  Themes may also reflect what is going on in the world. For example, this year’s gallery will feature a number of works that are made from recycled materials and a grouping of works about water and drought, reflecting the record drought we have experienced in Texas the past year. 

Featured this year on the second floor is “The Mona Lisa Project” by Rino Pizzi, who collaborated with 16 Austin-area artists who posed in portraits similar to the Mona Lisa and created their own artistic interpretations of their portraits. The project was funded in part through the City’s Cultural Funding Program and shown first at Austin Museum of Art.

Graham said that having an art exhibition in such a public venue gives the public an idea of what goes on behind the scenes in a way galleries and museums don’t typically show. She points out that getting the People’s Gallery ready for view is an enormous effort that gets support from the Cultural Arts Division and Building Services Department as well as professional installers who help ensure artwork is installed with the safety of the piece and the public in mind.

“I also see the People’s Gallery as a grand example of art education,” Graham said. “The City employees in the building and the visiting public, experience first-hand the entire process of disassembling and recreating an exhibition. This is something that is hidden from the public in gallery and museum settings.”

Chung said displaying art in any building increases mental stimulation. She says we take visual arts for granted, but we will notice the void when we don’t have art. A world without art, she says, is pretty desolate, and buildings without art, stimulation and color can cause disquiet.

“You realize how deprived you are. You don’t feel good about things, and it feels like you are lacking something,” Chung said. “I feel this in many institutional buildings. You walk in and, sure, everything works, it’s completely functional. But after being in that space awhile, you feel like your brain doesn’t function as creatively as it really should.”

A variety of art

The People’s Gallery is inclusive of the entire Austin art community. Graham said there is no typical submission. Applications range from seasoned professional artists to artists who are just beginning to exhibit their work.

“We intentionally solicit works that represent the wide diversity of art available in the Austin community, both in terms of cultural context and aesthetic style and sensibility,” Graham said. “We also seek out the participation of Austin art organizations and give them the opportunity to represent their collections in the exhibition.”

The application system is online, and the City offers an artist information session to coach people through this process.  Typically, about 1,500 artworks are submitted each year. The Call for Artists is released each year in October with applications due in December.  Arts professionals are invited to review art submissions and recommend artworks to be included in the exhibition; artists are notified about selections in January. 

“This review panel changes each year to allow for differing aesthetics and points of view,” Graham said. “The criteria for selection is primarily the quality or merit of artwork, but may also include local or national reputation of the artist, ownership by a museum located in Austin as part of its permanent collection, or, cultural diversity of the artwork to be included in the exhibition.“

Philippe Klinefelter, an Austin sculptor, says his sculpture, "Adrift" is about water, shelter and potential energy. Featured in last year's People's Gallery, "Adrift" will remain in front of City Hall for this year's exhibition.

Klinefelter thinks the People’s Gallery is the best democratic art gallery in Austin, and that he’s surprised that other cities are not copying it. He said it not only helps the living artist, but it enables institutions like AMOA Arthouse to show things that are in their catalogs or in their storage that we would never normally see. While most People’s Gallery art is on display for about a year, City Council approved a program for building a permanent collection of artwork for City Hall through a "People’s Choice" selection process.

Two artists, a common passion

For Chung and Klinefelter, who jointly own Ginko Studios in East Austin, art is an integral part of life, but like other People’s Gallery artists, each arrived at a career in art via different paths.

Chung, who for most of her career has been a functional potter, earned her art degree, with an emphasis in ceramics, from the University of Texas. She focused on pottery for years before moving to sculptures in recent years as a way of evolving and “working on a bigger canvas.”

“When I was in grad school, I made sculptures, and then upon graduation, you have to figure out a way to make an earning, so I jumped into production, and I did that for a long time,” Chung said. “But it had always been at the back of my mind that I would go back and explore larger work. I wanted to go back and talk about or make an art about something that has more not just decorative way that I was doing in functional work, but maybe a little different in content.”

When the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art invited her to do a show there, she took that opportunity to branch into something different. This was the first venue that hosted “The Dance.” Based on what they saw in San Angelo, the Austin Museum of Art invited her to show her work as part of their “New Works” series.  

While both Chung and Klinefelter attended the University of Texas, Klinefelter’s educational background is in geology and architecture; he has never attended art school. Nonetheless, that background has been crucial to his career as a sculptor and as a person who has an intense appreciation for three-dimensional art.

“Geology is a process that requires a three-dimensional mind. Architecture is a discipline that requires a three-dimensional mind,” Klinefelter said. “So is art. One leads to the other. So both those disciplines require a certain mindful vision that I think greatly relates to art.”

Klinefelter feels that, as two-dimensional media, including television and video games, have influenced modern life, people have lost a sense of what three-dimensional art is.

“People have lost a sense of how to make things. We live in a two-dimensional world, and I find that is a certain negative. It is a certain education that is lacking in the general public," Klinefelter said. “I think, today, we no longer have a sense of what material is. Who can tell the difference between bronze or iron, or marble and granite, or black paint and ebony? We have lost the detailed distinction of what is quality.”

Klinefelter is fascinated with the earthen materials he works with. Whether it’s stone, wood, or metal, turning these earthen materials into works of art calms and centers him and infuses him with energy.

“I love the actual carving in fabrication and receive more energy that it takes,” Klinefelter said. “I have been making three-dimensional things since I was five or six.  I love to work with my hands. I love to make things. And I’m lucky I can make a living making things.”

While he has always been a sculptor, Klinefelter’s focus has shifted from the private commission works he did earlier in his career to focusing on large-scale, functional art. He said that, while the private commission work was more financially lucrative, public art is viewed and appreciated by more people.

Chung and Klinefelter will be busy for the next year with a large sculpture for Austin’s new Asian-American Resource Center, which will begin construction near US 183 and Cameron Road this year. They were commissioned through a competitive selection process through the City of Austin Art in Places Program within the Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services Office.

Klinefelter said they were given a “site to die for,” right at the building’s entrance where visitors can easily see and appreciate their art. He will carve 35 tons of granite into nine columns shaped like lotus petals. They will form a Stonehenge-like circle around a fountain and Chung’s tile work, which will be featured in the center. They expect to spend the next year working on this piece. 

“The Dance” is on the first floor of City Hall, one of the first pieces seen through the front doors. “Adrift” faces Lavaca Street between the front doors and the parking garage entrance. These and other People’s Gallery artwork will be on display until January 13, 2013.