The image and example of Roberto Clemente will loom large in lives of students at the future Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy when it opens late in 2009. About 16 feet large.
Two nearly triple-life-sized murals of the baseball Hall of Famer and humanitarian will dominate the lobby of the new building when it rises in the Hill next year. The work of artist JoAnn Moran was recently chosen by the Percent for Art program to be installed in the new structure’s lobby.
Todd Jokl, the coordinator of the city’s Percent for Art Program, said that the total cost of the project, including artist’s fee, materials, and installation, will be $54,000.
The Percent for Art Program, established in New Haven in 1981, requires that all municipal construction projects provide for 1 percent of budget for commission or purchase of art to be displayed in and selected in coordination with the new structure, be it a school, library, or firehouse.
Moran’s realistic portrayal of Clemente, in two 16-foot high murals, celebrates the sports and the social action aspects of the famous Puerto-Rican born baseball star. The facing and complementary murals will be united in Moran’s conception by a kind of “sunmobile” hanging between the murals and above the entry lobby of the new school.
Moran’s work beat out two more abstract takes on the Clemente heritage that artists were charged to celebrate: a series of colorisic panels by Ellen Carey and an abstract sculpture, featuring a kind of home plate and series of life’s steps that one must climb by Mollie Borenstein.
Click here for a previous story on the three models, which were on view last year for public comment.
Jokl said the jury’s vote was unanimous in that all found Moran’s work to be the most accessible to children, and the most inspiring.
The public comments, which are solicited based on a display of maquettes or models of the work, went overwhelmingly, Jokl added, in favor of the Moran submission.
Also contributing to her win, apparently, is that the ground of her murals, as well as the materials of the sunmobile will be fashioned out of unused panels of aluminum and other jettisoned materials contributed by the Giordano Construction, which is building the new school.
In a time of scarce education dollars, Jokl said the jury that chose Moran had expressed concern about who has responsibility for the maintenance of the art when it’s completed.
“This particular project,” he said he reported to the jury, “should require little maintenance.” However, he clarified that the city’s department of cultural affairs has ultimate responsibility for determining and implementing maintenance on public art throughout the city. “Five percent of the initial budget (ed: that is, of the 1%) of each project is set aside for maintenance.”
The Percent for Art jury for the Clemente project consisted of Leroy Williams, Clemente’s principal; Melssa Talarczyk, a Clemente teacher; Laurel Coniglio, a representative of the city’s department of cultural affairs; Hill Alderman Jorge Perez; Luz Vega, a community representative; and two outside arts professionals who guided the process, Chostani Elaine Deane and Guido Garaycochea