Sun shines through clouds in sculpture chosen for Fruitville roundabout

The way the majority of the Sarasota Public Art Committee sees it, the sun always shines on the roundabout at Fruitville Road and U.S. 41. 

Now the committee hopes the City Commission agrees. On Wednesday the PAC selected the Sun Always Shines, a sculpture to be created by New York artist Sujin Lim, to recommend for approval by the commission as the next in the city’s Art in the Roundabouts collection.

The decision comes more than a year after commissioners rejected Dwell — also by Lim — generally agreeing that the sculpture of coral bore no relevance to Sarasota, sending the committee back to the drawing board and reopening the process to receive proposals and start again.

Lim took literally the local relevance cue from commissioners, evoking imagery of the suspension cables of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as angled sunbeams pouring down between coastal clouds, atop which a small house perched, conveying the message of finding home in the place where the sun always shines.

It wasn’t Lim’s first work with sculpture of clouds; her portfolio contains several pieces with clouds as a focal point.

On a second round of voting on Wednesday — the first was a 2-2 tie with San Francisco artist Shan Shan Sheng’s Dancing Clouds — the PAC, on a 3-1 vote, favored Lim. The third finalist, New York artist Mark Reigelman’s Snowbirds, received no votes on either ballot.

Courtesy rendering

The PAC favored Sun Always Shines over Dancing Clouds in part for its simplicity, agreeing with former committee member Leslie Butterfield, that Dancing Clouds — several multicolored architectural glass panels perched atop steel rods — was more decorative than iconic, and perhaps too distracting for the most heavily traveled roundabout in the city. 

“I feel like our collection could use a piece that's more like The Bean in Chicago that's really remarkable, and I feel like Sujin Lim came through with a piece like that that’s positive and fun,” Butterfield told the committee during the public comments period.

During an April virtual meeting with the public, Lim said she was inspired by sunbeams poking through clouds to the Earth. Her concept was to combine the image of clouds as a metaphor of nature with the small house on top representing the human experience with nature by symbolically bringing the human habitat into the natural world.

The sun represents what people love about living in Florida, she said, with the small house imparting the cozy, intimate sensation of a cottage with a warm golden glow. The sculpture would be lighted from within, the muted glow of the clouds and the house in contrast to the bright yellow sunbeams anchoring to the ground.

As PAC members deliberated between Dancing Clouds and Sun Always Shines, Sarasota Senior Planner and public art lead Mary Davis Wallace reminded them that art is in the eye of the beholder, what they consider the best choice may not suit the taste of the citizens and, by extension, city commissioners.

Unlike the selection process for Dwell, the PAC held multiple meetings with the finalists to provide input on refining their finished concepts to achieve “their best work.”

Courtesy rendering

“Logistically we are facing a rejection from the commission on (Dwell), so I’m just going to remind you that the commission sent this back to us so that we could do this again and have a more thorough design development process,” Wallace said. “I think we succeeded in that we spent the time with the artists, we had discussions about details with every artist and they stayed true to their form whether you liked it or not. I respect very much the process from which these three artists came to their conclusions and I do agree that this is their best work.”

That said, she warned PAC members and supporters that if they do not advocate before the commission, they may have to start over yet again. With a static budget of $250,000 in the face of rising materials costs, it’s conceivable that a third round and another year may yield lesser work.

When pitching Dwell last year, Wallace was joined only by then-PAC Chair Wendy Lerner.

“If we do not articulate this choice to the commission, there's a chance they're going to send us back again,” Wallace said. “Each and every one of you are going to have to articulate this to the commission in a way that gets your thoughts across and is defensible, because if not the worst-case scenario is that we get sent back again and I don't think that's what anyone wants.”

Wallace’s presentation to the City Commission is not yet scheduled.

Like the rest of the city’s public art collection, the Art in the Roundabouts program is funded by a 0.5% surcharge on any commercial construction project that costs more than $1 million. Wallace said when she presents her Public Art Plan 2030 to the City Commission, likely in August, it will include a proposal to increase that contribution to 1% of the investment in the building.