 Good evening, everyone. My name is Angela Mills and you are tuning into a meeting of the Amherst Public Arts Commission. At this time, I would like to recognize the chair, Terry Holt, and Terry, this is being recorded to the cloud and will be uploaded to the Town of Amherst YouTube channel and then linked automatically to the Public Art Commission webpage on the Town of Amherst website. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to September. We have a visitor. Hello there. I'm Terry Holt. Oh, that's Dominique. Hi, Dominique. Hello. I'm going to introduce you in just a minute. First, I need to read a thing. I don't know if Lori's going to make it. So let's give her a minute or two. There she is. Yes. Hi, Lori. Hello. Good to see you. Wow. We are all here in the same place. Just want to take a moment to recognize that and feel my gratitude for you all being here and taking the time to be here for this meeting. So this is the September, what is the date? Good Lord. September 11th, Amherst Public Art Commission meeting. I'm going to read my spiel here. I am Terry Holt. I'm the chair. In light of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, the governor, then governor Baker issued an emergency order on March 12th, 2020, allowing public bodies greater flexibility in utilizing technology and the conduct of meetings under the open meeting law. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Act of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner by clicking on the zoom link. And as Angela said, this recording is uploaded to the town's YouTube channel and will be linked from our presence on the website. I think that's it. So everybody's here. Can you all introduce yourselves? And I'm going to introduce Dominique in just a minute. Let's start with Jim. What am I supposed to say? Who are you and what do you do here? Well, my name is Jim Barnhill. I'm a lawyer 50 years experience and I have a member of the Public Art Commission. I also am an art photographer, exhibit A, being my background. Great. Next. Tom, how about you go? Sure. I'm Tom Warger. I'm the newest member of the committee. I joined back in August. I'm part of this group. I retired in June of 2022 after a career in information technology consulting for higher education. So I'm glad to put all that behind me and work on real things like art. We're glad to have you. Okay, Dara, you want to go next? Yeah, I'm Dara Barlow Jackson. And I think this is starting the third year on the commission. And I'm a poet and a writer, and that's how I make my living. Okay, Laura, you want to go next? I'm Lori Friedman, and I think I joined about the same time as you, Terry and Robert and Mikey. And I'm currently do marketing and development for a Jewish family service of Western Mass, but they have a long career in the art field and running galleries curating mostly in the art business side of things and consulting with artists and currently doing some legacy and estate planning for artists. Awesome. Okay, Mikey. I'm an artist. I'm an art historian. I'm a historian at two historical societies, Amherst and Pelham. I represent artists and I catalog artist artwork. Well done, and Robert. And I run the town hall gallery. Yes, you do. All right, Robert, you're up. Hi, I'm Robert Brandon. I think it's been about a year now that we joined the cohort of us. I've spent my career basically in the nonprofit sector and finance and administration and performing arts organizations education and currently in a community development corporation. Okay, and once you all to meet Dominique, she is here. She is our boatwood artist, so we're very happy to have her here. Do you want to say a few things about yourself? Hi, I'm Dominique Peachy. I'm very excited to be here with all of you and very excited about what you're doing together for the arts. I am. And I'm so excited that you saw such potential in my work. And I really thank you for, for honoring me with this opportunity. You honor us. Thank you so much. We really enjoyed your presentation and we're excited about the whole thing. Yeah. So, on my agenda, I'm going to jump right to Dominique's part so that we can honor her time. And so if you'll look at your agendas, I have, I'm going to switch things around a little bit. Usually in my chair report, we talk about the boatwood gallery, but we're going to jump to that now so that we can make the best use of our time. I sent all of you a copy of the contract that we are going to be finalizing tonight. I hope you got a chance to take a look at it. Did any of you get to look at it? I did. Great. Oh, the lawyer saw it. Oh, good. Well, maybe. Okay, so I have two parts of this pulled up on my computer and we can go through it or we can address questions. If you want to do that Dominique has also had a copy and she and I have worked on her part of it the artist statement. So, does anybody have anything they want to bring up first, or we can just go through it piece by piece. I would just like to say my comments are on some occasional imprecise wording. And I was, I was thinking, if we can do it is a lot better for me just to go over that sort of stuff with just one other person and I mean I can give you an example. Okay, artist is responsible for all accidents that may seem perfectly clear to non lawyer I don't know exactly what that means that that mean he has to indemnify and hold harmless the town from everything does it mean he's responsible for dealing with it is responsible for paying with it is he have to pay the town's attorney's fees. Now, when you've been a lawyer for a while is some of these things can be problematic in the worst case. Okay, most of the time, it doesn't matter. But when they do matter, they cost a whole lot of money to deal with it. Okay. So, this is the contract we have used in the past so I have just kind of taken that contract and I've already brought it to Paul Bachleman our town manager, and I believe has gone over it with the town lawyer. Well I drafted it. Yeah, well, great thank you. And so I don't know Paul hasn't gotten back to me about what the lawyer said about it so I'm working on the assumption that if there are changes that need to be done then Paul will will effectuate though that's a good word. Paul will make those changes along with the lawyer and we can go from there because he's the guy who's going to be signing this. Paul is the only one in town who is allowed legally to sign contracts so this lawyer has to vote for it. Yeah. So Jim if you would note your, give me a list if you don't mind, give me a list of all the things you're you're kind of looking at and you're concerned about, and I'm going to pass those along to Paul. Okay. All right, so anything in particular about the, the contract, our part the town's part, and we'll go over. Dominique's together. So anybody have any things they want to talk about on the contract everything look okay besides what Jim brought up. Yeah, well the thing I like about the contract just so well drafted. I think so too, like a real genius put that together Dominique Jeffer question. I haven't seen the inverse side of the contract yet so I can send that over to you. Do you want to wait until Paul takes a look at it makes his changes. I can I can also send it to you it's not a, it's not a, I guess it's not, you know, legal until it's signed so I can send you a copy if that's, if that's helpful to you. Sure. Yeah, and I understand there's going to be some adjustments so yeah that sounds good. Okay. So, um, I will do that. And in the meantime, let's go over the, the artist part of her the best is called exhibit be in the contract so I thought we would go over that together. I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to see if this works because you know this is fun. That's the way I don't recommend that you put it in an exhibit be to say see exhibit be I think it'd be better if you can put it in. I will, I will be doing that yeah in the final copy I will be doing that exactly fine. Okay, can you all see my screen. Oh, no. Oh, wait a minute I can't read it. Hold on, hold on, I can make this better. Look at this, here we go. All right. What Dominique and I worked on. She has here the design elements, five 10 by 10 mirrors with colored colorful mirrored images. Five LED light pads, a four size, five extension cords, one timer to turn the lights on and off automatically it's gonna look awesome in the nighttime and one power ship to connect all the light pads. So, sorry. How does Dominique. Dominique is here you could ask her. Yeah, I'm asking. How old are you. How much. I'm 36 times around the sun. Was that relevant for some reason Jim. I'm just here. All tell our ages. It's not okay. Okay. Moving on description of the proposed artwork. I'm going to read it here. The viewer's rule see the reflection and color design elements merge onto one surface. This immediately makes the viewer a part of the artwork becoming part of the art installation is a key element that can be captured by photo creating a playful conversation between this piece and the community that moves through the image in the image in the city of Montpete Plaza. In the evenings this piece will be backlit by LED's on a timer. This allows etched lines of color to be amplified and illuminated during darker periods. New England's fading daylight as the season moves forward. The designs etched into mirror surfaces are influenced by geometry, composition, vibrant colors, and a sense of play in Western Massachusetts. This work is an experimental convergence of printmaking, lighting, technology, and the viewer. Images are non-representational. However, viewers may imbue meaning when they come in contact with the work and their reflection. Seeing beyond the self with a sense of creativity, curiosity, and interaction is the guiding light of this current body of work. I love that. That's beautiful, Dominique. And did you have a title for this piece that you decided on so I can kind of have that for my notes? Was it? It was suggested seeing beyond the self, and I thought that that seemed like a good choice. OK, I love that. Minor, but installation is not spelled correctly. But the main thing I want to ask, what kind of images are these going to be? I mean, it just says images. It doesn't say what kind or what the subject matter is or anything else. Correct. So let me see. I think I have an example with me right now. So Terri was kind enough to let me take one of these home with me to get it started. This is a really weird way of showing it. There's trails and ponds. And I'm sorry that the computer said that's tricky. Are they abstracts? Are they going to be abstracts? They are abstracts. They're like kind of little journeys, nothing to alarm. Like nothing alarming. Like there's rainbows and trails and trees and leaves. So my point being, I think the contract should be a little more specific about what they're going to be. Well, I think we have the words abstract in here. Well, what I'm reading about colorful mirrored images, which is very vague. What would you think we should be saying here instead? And Dominic, you can totally pipe in here if there's something else you want to say. It sounds like they're non. It sounds like they're, I mean, I couldn't really see what you were sharing, don't you? But it says that they're non-representational but it also, but it sounds like, but include references to nature. Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. The semi-abstract non-representational nature scenes? Would it be helpful for me to send you images of what I have to be included in the document so you know exactly what you're getting? Oh, you could add exhibit B123 or whatever. How many are they going to be? You could add that. There's going to be lawyer things. The abstract landscape. Suggestion, Jim. We might just add them as thumbnail size illustrations and spare Dominic the artist's pain of having to interpret her own work. Well, that's what I thought I was. That's what I meant when I said exhibit B123, 4. OK, that works for me. I'm happy to provide thumbnail images of all five pieces. Thank you. That was great. We will add that in with this contract. That'd be great. Is there a day that I should have those into you at the latest? So. Before the contract sign. Yeah, do you have, so I know we have a date of the, what the 15th or the 14th for completion of the project. If are you close to that date? Or are you on that date? Or how close will you be there? I'm two thirds. I'm just coloring in. So I have the actual images themselves. So I can send all that I'm doing is adding color at this point. If you could send me those, I will add them to the contract, which I'll be bringing over all sending over to Angela tomorrow so that we can get it signed. Is that is that OK? If you do that, they're not colored. You need to know that they will be colored by contract. Yeah, if you just make a note, that'd be great. OK. OK, moving on Dominique. I'm not saying your name correctly, Peche Peche. It's Peche Dominique. OK, Dominique Peche retains all rights to original artwork and will be cited by name on any and all Amherst Public Art Commission marketing and media engagements using images or referencing this work. I have the dates of importance here and these are the dates that we worked out together. Deadline of completion is September 15th. Installation, it would be a dream if we could get this up before September 21st, which is the block party. I would love to do that so that we can use the block party as a launch. We'll have a built-in built-in crowd to attract and send over. I think that'd be delightful. So I have the unveiling here as hopefully on September 21st. And then the end of the exhibit is a year from now, but minus a month. So July 31st will be the end of the exhibit. And then removal should be done within 30 days. Well, this word hopefully sends my skin crawling. That's the... Well, I mean, what happens if it's not is why I said that. All right. So I suppose I put that language in there because we hadn't determined yet. So that was kind of something that happy to change. Yeah, we were hoping to hit that. We can get rid of the word hopefully. Okay. My pen just died. Well, I have 20 pens here and none of them work. It's amazing. Okay. Payment of 1500 will be paid by check to the artist singular before installation of work. Okay. I've talked to Dominique about needing a W-9, I believe, for the town. And so Dominique's going to provide that, I think. So Robert, do you have a question? Yes. I think Dominique may have to provide some sort of invoice as well for the town, for them to pay off of. I can help you with that. So even if it's just, you know, artist materials and stuff, I don't think they're expecting a line-by-line itemized invoice, but they need some kind of documentation in order to pay. I think probably that and the contract would be sufficient plus your W-9, but they will need some kind of, I think, document from you. I was curious because it was unclear to me because it was a prize or if it were like a payment, how I should pay. Actually, that's an interesting point. You know, let me... I can send an email to the town controller just to clarify what they'll need in this case. Oh, great. Robert, if you'll double back in, get back with Dominique and let her know what she needs. That would be great. Yep. Can I skip ahead now or...? Can you skip? No, don't skip. Hold on. Okay, I think we're on access part, right? Access to what would Plaza space... No, okay, you just went past payment. We really want to pay for it and follow before the work's done. We just talked about that. Sorry, I was doing minutes. I'm having a trouble keeping up with the conversation, participating in it and doing the minutes. That's okay. I have run into problems before, well, problem with trying to pay an artist before the installation. Dominique, are you okay to have your payment after installation? Will that be okay? It would be kind of normal. But first off, I wasn't clear if this is a prize or not. Or payment. Yeah, we gotta figure out that language. I'm sorry, what's the issue? Well, we need to find out if this is a prize or if this is a payment. And I think that's, there's a difference there in what kind of documentation the comptroller needs. Oh, well, Robert probably does. So Robert's gonna ask that question. Yeah, it could be that the contract is sufficient. I just don't know. Oh yeah, I heard you just talk about that. Every other try to find out early so that it doesn't slow up the process. Well, my problem with it is that it's really not customary nor is it wise to pay for something before you get it. I do believe in my line of work, a deposit is generally considered good business between the artist and the person commissioning the work. Well, it sounded to me like, what's the total being paid here? It's 1500 altogether. So that makes it not a deposit. I agree with you, August payments, partial payments, I agree, it's the way we usually compromise things out, but this is paying the entire contract price before the work is delivered, which makes me. Well, as the person who went out and bought the materials and supplies for it, without any sort of deposit, I can tell you, you will be getting this work. How about 750 before installation and 750 on installation? So would you be open to say 500 per four and then 11 after? That's better than what I, that's worse for you than what I just said to you. Well, one, the first payment, I wouldn't be taxed on. And the second one I would. Oh, okay, well, fine. What do you wanna, what was it before? So as opposed to a tire 15 lump, it would be $400 deposit. So you wouldn't have to have a form for that, essentially for like tax purpose. And then 11 on like a W9 or a W9 miss, because it's a prize, I'm not entirely sure. This is all kind of new territory for me. So like I'm open to that input. Yeah, I think unfortunately the other town is gonna aggregate that. In other words, no matter how you slice it up, it's still gonna be 1500 in total. And that would be for 1099 purposes, which I think is what you're referring to as being under the $600 threshold. They're gonna lump everything together. So whether you get paid 500 upfront and then 1,000 or 400, 1100, it's not gonna matter to the town from that perspective. So I just don't want you to have different expectations from their reality. So if I am turning in this work for at the very latest September 20th, I'm just curious when the first payment would be and when the second payment would be, if it were to be split in the 752 payment style. If he wants to do the deposit. Oh, that's a really good thing to bring up because our system usually takes two weeks for checks. So it's almost a moot point. Looking at the time, it being September 11th. That's a really good question. I guess the other question is, is the timeline realistic for installation given where we are now and how soon? Oh, I'm, yeah. I'm very close to installation. It's not, I have the product. It's essentially gonna be me placing good faith in you guys that your checks gonna clear which I believe it is. Better. Yeah, I think the terms. Robert's request for clarification from the town should help us and maybe they can give us some advice on I'm sure this isn't the first instance this kind of question has come up. Yeah, I would definitely stress that we would like to process the payment as promptly as possible. So, you know, you're not kept waiting longer than is necessary, but I haven't worked in a lot of business offices. I can tell you there's sometimes not as much flexibility as one would hope, but let me follow up and see what I can find out I mean, given the timeframe right now. Yeah. It sounds to me like, you know, next step Robert you will find out, you know, clarify whether it's a grant, a gift, a prize, you know, what it is, an honorarium for doing whatever they name it as and that it should be put in as soon as possible if it takes two weeks to get payment. And so that is probably gonna come after the installation. So I think it is, as you said, I think a moot point and however you wanna, I'm okay with however you wanna word that. Well, it's not, but you know, it's not okay if you say you're gonna pay before installation, you don't. Well, you can say that will be paid by check to the artist, I could say upon installation of the work. Yeah, that sounds like we're not gonna meet the date anyway. Right. Well, maybe can we, I know the goal is to finalize this tonight, but perhaps that has to be left open until we get a response from the town in terms of when they will pay because if they're fairly clear that they're not going to pay for say another two weeks or if they have a particular proof of completion that they're looking for, we'd have to incorporate that into the language of the contract. Okay. Well, maybe it needs to say upon a check will be paid to the artist upon installation of the work or at the first date, you know, some language about the town we can put in. Why don't we say the check will be paid upon completion of the work and within blank days thereafter and then have them fill in the time after we talk to them and then we won't have to meet to discuss this again. Perfect. How's that? Sounds great, Jim. All right, so you've got the exact language, you wanna send that to me or do you want me to just? Give me a chance to type it. All right, let's give them a second to type that. Yes, sorry. Thank you for your patience with this Dominique. Many of us are also very new to this process and four of us are brand new to the commission, so this is our first artist we're paying, so we're excited about it. We wanna get it right. Either or not, I find this incredibly interesting because it's all new territory for me, so I appreciate the dialogue. Well, the other important point that you're raising and I'm happy to include this question in my email is if we're going to be engaging artists like this going forward for hopefully lots of different projects, it is best practice to pay a deposit before the work is completed because as Dominique points out, she's already spent concertable funds on this, so I think... Yeah, that principle. Hopefully the time won't be so rigid that they insist on absolute completion before they're willing to make payment, so that's definitely a conversation we have to have. Robert, I think what you're doing is perfectly reasonable and I've seen a lot of contracts that say just that. I mean, it's just the problem is I had was only paying for everything before completion and I think it's more fair to do what you just said and I've seen many, many very large contracts that I used to negotiate, just like them. Right, but we just have to make sure that the town is willing to do that, so that's variable. Tom, did you have something you wanted to say? No, I just wanted to say that that principle is worth asking the town to address for us because it's time to repeat. And I have to think with all the different activities that the town's engaged in, this can't be the first time that there's been a substantial outlay before completion of work has come up, but... We're all learning here. Keep a step on Robert's statement that we have to be cautious about how much flexibility we can suggest here from the comfort of our little Zoom session. Not to prolong it any, but if you start thinking about how this is gonna work, somebody in the town is responsible for processing the check. That person is gonna have a flood of other checks that they're also processing. For somebody to walk in and say you have to do this one first is probably not gonna go over well. No, we're aware, there's a two week process for any check that you asked for. You gotta be, I'm just saying we have to be fair to everybody, the people that write the checks and then everybody's happy and they'll get it done. This is kind of a, I have to say, this case is definitely unique in that we are all new to this and we're far behind on this deadline and on this entire project. So we're kind of catching up and learning along the way. So I'm just gonna chalk this up to a learning experience and the next time we do this, we will be professionals at it. So thank you again, Dominique, for lumbering along with us on this. So we're gonna make some changes here. Robert's gonna reach out to the town and we're gonna whip this into shape and use some different language. And I have another problem, which is more important. Okay. Down to the bottom of, well, first of all, you've got a, artists will have access to the adjustments during this period. This period could be clarified is not that big a deal, but it's a little big. But the one that really makes my skin crawl is it says commission agrees to ensure that the work is maintained and protected to the extent practical, which are contradicting each other. So exactly, it's not clear from that, I don't think what the agreement is and what is the commission practically going to actually do. Because that one could, that could unleash your work hard. Keeping that door locked, which it sounds like you guys already do because you have equipment in there just so nobody can like mess with it. The town has a snowblowers in there and et cetera. Will they keep it locked up? Whatever is in there, we gotta make darn sure that we actually do it. And so, if you're gonna say, I'll keep it locked at all times and it's not locked at all times. And there's a problem and it's stolen, that's on us. And the next problem is that since it's a contract claim, it's maybe not covered by our insurance. And so then you get a lot of political flak. So this is a very important word in sure. Okay. It's important to know exactly what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. And it's important that what we say we're gonna do we actually can do and that we do do. So what is, is there a different verbiage you would use there instead of insure? Well, at this point, I don't think it's really clear exactly what the deal is on this particular point. I mean, can we, can we... You might be able to rephrase it for me and it may be in a different way just should the artwork be damaged from the outside or the inside like heaven forbid, somebody throws like a rock through the window or something, I'll be able to have the opportunity to repair it, but not at a cost to me. What I like it to say is that commissioning we used to use reasonable efforts to protect the artwork to the extent possible. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Dominique, a little technical question. I think you're part of that from this quarter, but if there's a power outage, will your stuff recover? In other words, when the power comes back on? Well, it'll be on a power switch or like a little power strip. Yeah. So somebody might have to go in there and just hit the switch. Like reset it, yeah. So I'm not sure if you guys collectively keep an eye out on the portal gallery area, but it should be able to be fixed easily. Okay. Okay, and that can't really say the commission, that needs to say the town. Okay. So the changes that you're suggesting, Jim, if you'll just make sure that those were in writing because my little brain, I wanna get it right. Don't worry, it's tricky and then you get the wrong wording and then it doesn't work so well. I'll send it to you. I've got it already. Awesome. Okay. That sounds good. Let's see. Thank you for bringing those up, Jim. You're welcome. I'll just rewrite maintenance and repairs and I'll send it to you tomorrow morning. How's that? That sounds good. Is that fast enough? Tomorrow morning is fine, yes. I'm not gonna work beyond tonight so that works out fine. Then we'll have all the questions that we have will be answered, Robert will get his answers, Jim will add his things. We'll send everything in a document to Angela and Angela will go over it with Paul, of course the town manager and probably the attorney. And then Dominique, I'll let you know when it's ready and then we can meet up and have a coffee on me and you can take a look and we can see if that works. Okay, does that work out for you? That sounds good. And then if we could keep in touch about possibly getting the other frames so I can outfit them. Yes, yes, I have the key so I can do that. You and I can talk offline about timing and scheduling that works for me. I said, well, I'm gonna go take pictures of these images. Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you for your time. We really appreciate your being here. Thanks, I'm excited to see your final product. I think this will be great. You are very excited. I have one question. Oh, one more question. I just wanted to ask one more question. In terms of the signage, is that in there that I, did I miss that? I'm working on the signage. That's something I'll work on with the town. Okay, great, thank you. Sure. Thank you Dominique. Thank you so much Dominique. Have a good night. Thank you all, see you as well later. Okay, so back to our agenda. Thank you everybody for going through that. Thank you, Jim, for your expertise. Welcome. I am not the one who knows all that. Okay, I'm gonna stop sharing my screen, but you can see my lovely face, there you go. Okay, back to my agenda. Okay, moving on, approval of July and August minutes. Did everybody get a chance to take a look at those? I did. Oh, I was gonna ask, Jim, is there a way to put the chair report into the minutes instead of it being a separate document? I think for easier for you. You send it to me in a Word file or a PDF. I send it to you an email and you copy and paste it. That makes it very difficult because the formatting gets all screwed up. If you could attach a PDF to it or send that Word file and attach it to an email, well, I could probably do it a lot easier. Okay, I will send it in a PDF then next time. I did not last time. Jim, you might wanna run the spell checker to catch acclimation. Where? On my... It's at the bottom. A lot of the minutes. Yeah. I did run one, but it doesn't spell any better than I do sometimes. Okay. Okay, which minutes is this? Oh, I'm looking through them here. That July or August? That's what I'm trying to... Oh. All right. Let's start with July since we did not have quorum at the last meeting. We're gonna approve July and then we'll approve August. Then we'll move on. Okay. I'll move that we approve July with any, if necessary, correcting the spelling of the word acclimation. All right. Let's move on. Everybody wanna vote for this here? Anybody wanna second that? Second. Okay. All in favor of approving the July minutes. Say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Motion passes. And now taking a look at the August. I have a brief correction to the August minutes. Actually, it's part of the share report. I think the date for the block party is actually September 21st rather than... You're correct. I caught that too, yeah. September 21st in the share report? Yes, I made it. I think I put the 23rd by mistake. Yep. It's on a Thursday? It's always on a Thursday apparently. Yeah, it's always on a Thursday. Yep. Okay, so I move that we approve the August minutes with the correction of the word acclimation spelling necessary and correct the block party date to September 21st. Okay, there's a motion on the floor and I get a second. Second. Yep, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Lots of ayes. Everybody's eyes great. All right, motion passes. Minutes are passed, yay. Thank you very much, everyone. Okay. Let's talk about the new exhibit at Town Hall, Mikey. I know we need to get some volunteers in here to help with that. Actually, I got my husband and Carla Becker because they both know Bella very well. Oh, sorry, Jim, you need a minute? Yeah, well, yeah, because I don't see that in the agenda. So can you just tell me? After approval of July and August minutes, there's new exhibit at Town Hall. It's right after it. Okay, I missed it, the new exhibit at Town Hall. And I had, after a call for volunteers thinking that Mikey might need some help with that. Okay, I got family. Wow, I was totally gonna get my kids to come help. You got it then? I think so. If anybody wants to come on Thursday afternoon, Carla and Robert, my husband, Robert Cutting, will be there and they're gonna drive her over. Bella Halstead is 86. She did a show there in 2017, and she also did one, I think, in 2009. Wow. She did a horse show exhibit there, and she did another one at the Jewish community. She used to have a gallery on Main Street on the third floor, and there's an art maker article about her from when she was younger. She was 76 at the time, and she had another show, and she also had one in the Burnett Gallery and at Hope and Feathers. Oh, exciting. Yes, and she is the granddaughter of Charles Hopkinson, who was the famous presidential portrait painter. Oh, okay. Yes, so she's the granddaughter. That's amazing. Yeah, her last exhibit was 2017. Okay. In the town hall. If you can send me information on her so I can write up a bio so I can have a full website. She's gonna give me a new one tomorrow. Perfect. Great. Yeah, so I'll have that. If it is, I can put up there, too? Right, right. Great. And these are very large paintings, and they're either oil or watercolor. They'll be much smaller on the website. All right, I'll be sending Bryn Breanna, who was our communications director with the town. I'll be sending her some corrections to the website, and also adding our new featured artists there with pictures, so that'll be great. Okay, so that's great. After Gyms, which is November and December, I would love some help doing the town hall exhibits because it's hard to get people to put their artwork in. It's because they all want the arts night. Everybody actually wants the arts night, and we don't have that in play anymore. Is it 21st? Are they gonna have the building open? I do not know if they'll have the building open. Right, so yeah, there's something we should really think about. Mikey, I don't wanna take that on, but... I volunteer, Mikey. Just let me know when, and that's an open-ended offer. Great, thank you. Okay, so we don't know when you need volunteers. Is that... I don't need volunteers for this one unless anybody wants to come and help. My husband and Carla Becker are gonna bring her over. I work until four every day, and the building closes at 4.30, so... So what is the exhibit gonna be put up? It's gonna be put up on Thursday? Okay. Mikey, any time you need extra time, we can always negotiate that with Town Hall. Okay, that's a good idea. Let me know if you need any help hanging it, and then I'll come. I mean, like when? Yeah, I've also got some free time on Thursday, so... Right. But I think when... If you wanna pop over any time after one, and take pictures, or on how they're doing it, Carla Becker is the daughter of Fred Becker, who was a printmaker at UMass, and her mother was Jean Morrison Becker, one of the people that started the Burnett Gallery. Okay. Yeah. I think key to what Mikey's asking here for is some help for future artists. So I think it would behoove us all to kind of write down some artists that we know of who we think might wanna have an exhibit in Town Hall, just kind of help, and we can start reaching out to people. Students, we can get... Oh, God, 2024 lined up. Whew. Right. So the other thing is, I think we should also try to figure out and talk to the artists to find out if they sold anything, or if they had a lot of feedback, or what kind of feedback they have. So we have that information too, going forward for other artists. Okay. Night, the existing artists, when they finish, ask them if they sold anything so that we can tell the new ones. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And to find out how they're perceived by different people that went into the Town Hall. That's good. I just think it's good feedback. Right. Okay. What has perceived the artists? The artists and their work. How will the artists know how it's perceived by people who... If people contacted them, if they got increased and that sort of thing. If they got feedback, okay. That would help tremendously, I would think, recruiting future artists. Yes. That, well, you know, that there were some sales from it. Right. I think we need to up our game a little bit with the social media marketing and promoting of the artists on Facebook and the town website too. So that's something that's kind of on me. I need to work on that. Okay. Thank you so much, Mikey. Sure. Very exciting. Moving on to chair report. You ready, Jim? Yeah. Thanks. All right. You guys talk fast. Sorry. Okay. My chair report, I'm gonna go over the three projects in play right now. Poetic dialogue. I have again tried to contact Camel. I'm not getting replies. The check is ready to be cut, but Camel said he would do the install and then submit an invoice and he hasn't done that or replied to my texts or emails. So I'm kind of at a, I'm stuck. So I'm not really sure what to do. I can try to reach out to him again. I've sent him a text and an email. Usually he gets back to me, but he has not yet. So you're saying the work is not completed? Work is not completed. No, he started the work. He re-drilled the bolt holes a few weeks, few weeks ago. And I thought that that meant it was gonna be finished, but I know we've had a lot of rain and that might be a problem. He probably also has other projects he's working on. So I am waiting for him to get back to me. And so I don't have anything else besides that. My hope was to get that done by the 21st because for block party, I would love to have that be something that we can point to and say, this is up again. So I have let him know that I would like it done by the 21st, but again, we're at his mercy. So I hope he can get it done. If not, I'm really not sure where to go from there. If I may interject, that's a real education for what you put in contracts with the artist for the future. Yeah. Did he have a deadline? Camel is not the artist who made this. He's somebody who is able to do the metal work to get it back up. Then he was willing to. Sorry, go ahead, Dara. Did he have a deadline? I did not do any kind of contract. It was verbal. He said he could do it. We told him we could pay him $500. I thought it was going to be pretty easy. So there's never anything. So I'm a little stuck. I'm not sure what to do from here. I'm going to give it another week or two. And then I think I'm just going to drop it. I'm not sure what else to do. If you drop it, talk to me, please. Because if you drop it, he says we had an agreement. You didn't, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. You get a big mess, but it would be very big mess for 500 bucks, I think. Okay. So that's the update on that. I don't have anything else to say about making a public right now or about poetic dialogue. Making a public, I do have something to say. The town manager and I met with the program director at the New England Foundation for the Arts, Kim Setso, on Friday, we had a meeting. And at that meeting, Kim let us know that Neffa will be canceling the final payment of the agreement. They've already paid the first payment, the $5,000. They're canceling the second payment on the agreement. The training and the public art project were two separate components of making a public. And no one in our commission or in the town had the benefit of that training who's actually employed right now. So getting the public art project back on a timeline doesn't honor the original purpose of the making a public project. So we have missed the deadlines, therefore our contract and agreement are null. She was very nice about it. And Paul and I conceded and apologized that, you know, we've had some losses to the town. We don't have a planner to take this up again. Our volunteer helper for this, Gabrielle had to bow out. So we're, we've been, you know, we haven't had the direction and liaison with the town. So it's made it really difficult to do this project. And she was very understanding. Paul was contrite, you know, he said all the right things. And she invited us to come back and I know in a few years and try again, once we get our program back up and running and get our town and employees back in place, it was a good agreement. She said she is not going to ask for the first payment of $5,000 back. And she would love for us to choose to, instead maybe reimburse the artists for their proposals, kind of honoring their time and work. And I want to talk about that. I would like to do that very much. Robert, go ahead. So where did that $5,000 go exactly? Because I don't think it's in our account. It isn't. So it went to the town of Amherst. Paul said that's where it is. And so I sent him an email today, asking him to please put it into our account so that we can have control over our funds. So who paid that $5,000? Nefa. Nefa gave us, so of the $10,000 grant that we got, they paid the first installment of $5,000, New England Foundation for the Arts. Thank you. Remind me, Terry, how many people, how many artists submit? We had three proposals. So it's, I would like to have a little vote on it. I would like to use $3,000 of those funds to reimburse the three artists whose proposals we received and in gratitude for their time and apology also for how this went down. I think that would be the right thing to do. Putting money into the artist's hands is something we want to be doing anyways. So I think it's a good use of the funds. Okay, so wait a minute. So we've got three artists you're gonna wanna pay for something. And are there any other artists who might feel like they should have been paid too? Well, three people put in proposals. We have three. I'm sorry, that was all of the people. That's all we had. Oh, okay. And you're paying in what? How much for exactly what? $1,000 each. Or what? It's something that Paul and Kim and I all kind of agree would be a cool thing to do. Yeah, but for what are you paying them $1,000? What do they do to earn $1,000? So we know. That's a great question. For turning, for submitting a proposal. Robert, you had a question, sorry. I do. But I was gonna suggest $500 each with the idea that it is under the $600 threshold, which means they would not receive a 1099 from the town for that. Okay. Okay, that's a good point. Yeah, I think the thing $5,000 for a proposal is gonna create like an accessory. Yeah. I think if we go back to the context of our discussion with Dominique, you know, $1,000 for just preparing a proposal is a little high, I think. Okay, okay. Not to mention, you know, it sets it. But if we had accepted two of the proposals and rejected one, let's say that the facts are different. We got the money, but we rejected one proposal. We didn't like it. We took the other two and then the third proposal said, yes, but in that project, the other that you couldn't complete, you paid for all the proposals and I want my 500 bucks. Yeah, I think this is a unique scenario here, Dara. I feel like how you word this is really important because- Very, very, very much so. I don't wanna have a precedent of paying people for proposals. Nope. The failed proposals shouldn't get any money unless prior to anybody making a proposal, they were told that this is what proposals would do and $1,000 is way too much. Okay. I don't think, I've got concerns about paying for any of it, even though I would love to from one point of view, but the other point of view is I think what the future might get messed up. Anybody else? We need to worry a bit about the precedent. It sets both formally and also by grapevine what people might hear. Yeah, right. It's very interesting that they decided to leave the $5,000 with us. It is and they specifically said they would love for us to put some money into the artist's hands and that's why I even, you know, that's why. The artist's hands who, yeah. Can we think of some before they actually do something for the money and we get it into their hands for actually some kind of deliverable? Because I would love to do that. Well, they have not put the time into creating these projects because these were just proposals. These were like this. Give them the extra track. So that would be put in scale contracts on a project that we've already been canceled. I'm saying do some other display where they actually have to do something and but they already pre-approved so they know they're going to win. So if you do this project, we will pay you 500 bucks or the thousand bucks or whatever you want to pay them but they have to deliver something for it so it's not a precedent. Or maybe put something in the town hall of their three presentations. I don't think that's not ready. Right. But not right now but we have two other artists for fall and winter. So I'm just wondering maybe down the road. Somewhere, maybe. Okay. I think that's a smarter way to go that I can understand that the town feels bad about how this kind of fell apart. But to me, the best news in this is that it sounds like the fences were mended with NFA. So we're in good standing for the future. Yeah, we're not invited to apply for the 2024 but beyond that, we are invited to apply again. I think that's good. And if we can do, I like Mikey's suggestion about something not monetary but still helpful to them that we could do. If I'm phrasing that right, Mikey. Okay, Lori, what are you thinking here? Well, it's all very vague that they gave the 5,000 without it being without anything attached to it with this sort of vague, we wanna support artists and then it goes to the three artists. It feels a little arbitrary that it goes to the three artists where it's canceled. So, I mean, I don't know if attaching, if we attach, if it makes sense to create something out of it but I can't quite think through if there's an issue with saying, we're really disappointed that we've had to cancel this and we invite, we've had three submissions and we're inviting all three artists to participate in an exhibition at our town hall next spring. And we would give you an honorarium of each one of you $500 and to present us with, to give us something that we would exhibit. Okay, that's a possibility. Your proposals next spring. I actually really like that idea and we could set aside a time, we could say in the spring of 2024, we will use, we will be paying an honorarium of 500 each for a exhibit on you three artists. What do we think about that? It's that. That works for me. I'm gonna have to write an apology letter to these three folks and I'll need some help with verbiage because I'm really good at writing but I don't want this to come just for me. But in that letter, that's where I would propose this. And if they have an interest, we would go forward and if not, then we would drop it. So, yeah. I would like to see that just put a legal eye on it. Yeah. Oh yeah. And I think that the money, if the town will put it into our account, I mean, that's really fantastic that we ended up with this amount of money to work with and that money will be used for public art in Amherst. So it will find its way into the hands of artists through however we choose to use it and also maybe using it to promote something that we're doing in the future. I love that. Yeah. Dara. Yeah, curiosity. What was the NEPA representative's reasoning for letting the town keep $5,000? I think because this was a grant that was a two-part grant. It was a, I think taking it back would be problematic financially also as part of the agreement. And I think contractually and legally, it's probably a lot cleaner and less messy to just let us keep the money, honestly. That's all, I mean, that's what I think. I think she had the power to say we're not gonna ask for this money back. And so we said, thank you very much. It's a pretty amazing and positive outcome for us given the whole trajectory of this. Yes, it's been a rough, I know Laura, I know you're probably breathing a big sigh of relief here. I am a little. It's the rose decorated finale to something that could have dumped us into the mud. So I think congratulations for your handling of it. Yes. All right. So I think though, that we should spend something noticeable of the $5,000 soon. Right, okay. I think that would be good politics with NEPA. Okay, so we have a block party coming up, but that's, you know, more than, that's, I think that we can let them know that we once we hear back from the artists if they're, that we're putting this exhibition together and then we could even expound upon the exhibition in terms of, you know, public art and Amherst or, you know, we can do more with it than just the three when the time comes. Yeah, I love it. Nope. Yeah, something like that would be good. Okay. I think this is a, I think we're all in agreement that this is a really good way to go forward and try to make lemonade out of these lemons. Yeah, I mean, I actually think that if we could use this exhibition as a way of educating Amherst residents on public art, that would be fantastic. Okay. In support of our work and in support of what public art brings to the town. So it could be, you know, it'll take some work, but if we're thinking about it for the spring, we have some time. Okay, so let's put this on the table for October for talking more about this. And I could use some help offline, creating an apology letter and kind of setting this up and welcoming them for a project. I'll have you on board, Jim. I'll help too, Tara. Great. Okay, I can't do it with a quorum, but I can do it with fewer than a quorum. We can talk about that. And then in October, we will meet again and I'll put this on the agenda. So just make sure that you don't do anything to make the people working on it look like a subcommittee because if they look like a subcommittee, then you have to have a public meeting for the subcommittee. Right, we're not gonna do that. You see, if I do it as a lawyer, that's not a subcommittee. And furthermore, if I were to go so far as to be foolish enough to say that I'll represent the town in this little tiny matter, then it wouldn't be subject to the open mean law either. Okay. But I don't know if the town wants me to do that and I'm not sure it's appropriate, but there's a possibility. All right, so Tom and Jim and I are gonna work on a letter. Apologizing for this and kind of seeing if there is interest in having some kind of gallery exhibit at Town Hall. I'm saying next spring just to kind of put a time on it because I don't know what time. Is that okay, Mikey, to say next spring? Yep, on this exhibit, I'll have to have a lot of help. Oh yeah, oh yeah, he will. Thank you, definitely. And something we might think about with a little bit of this money is to get new pulls. Maybe right now we have these things that we have to tie up, but there's different systems and maybe a better system would work with a painting shoulder on the walls. Well, that would be a great use of funds for public art. Can you give me a dollar amount and an idea of what that might hold? I'll do some research on it. Okay, that'd be great. If you bring that back to us, Mikey, I think that's something we can totally agree on. Okay, okay. First I have to get the money and I've asked Paul to put that in our, I just said, please put the money in our account as if I have the power to do so. So we'll see what they say about that. Yeah, and I also like to come up with something that's very visible to the public with the money. Definitely, yeah, I love that idea too. All right, well, let's keep our thinking caps on about those things and we'll, let's put in this on the October agenda so we can talk more about this. I think it's a really great idea and we'll also talk about spending funds as Mikey suggested. Okay, great. I'm not gonna vote on anything here because really we are not in agreement about paying about my first idea. And I really like the idea that we've come up with together as a group. So let's kind of flesh this out. Thank you so much everyone. And then I have the portal gallery which we've already gone over with Dominique and that will be, that's evolving as well. I don't think I have to go over that again. So let's move on. Let's move on to the treasury report. What you got, Robert? Nothing to report, actually. But as mentioned, I will follow up with Halle on these questions related to Dominique's contract. But since we're not paying anyone at the moment we're receiving any money, there's very little to talk about in the treasury report. Can you give me what we have in the account right now so that I'm aware? I cannot give you an exact number off the top of my head. We had, I can't, you know, when I report a couple of months ago, let me look and I don't wanna put out a number that's not accurate. So it was at least a couple of thousand dollars, I remember. And I think it was actually more than that, but I'll get the exact number. I'm not gonna put that in the minutes, Robert. I would love to at some point discuss upping the amount we give to our Boltwood artists, 1500 is something we've had for a while and it's, you know, it's not a lot of money. So something that I think about, you know, going forward. Okay, okay, let's talk about, oh, oh boy. Public art publicity, that's something I'm not ready to talk about. I've come up with some images for logos and they are so not ready. I'm not ready to show you, but I've been working on a couple of things. I'm gonna wait for October on that. I was kind of thinking though, there's something that doesn't require any work like that is to try to get some publicity whenever we switch the town hall gallery. Yeah, we actually put that on Facebook every month. I was thinking about trying to call Steve Ferrara of the ZET and see if he would do a feature on it. And then- Do you know him? Enough. Okay. I think- I had some dealings with- Maybe writing a press release would be a smart endeavor. Writing a press release and then giving it to Steve and calling him up and seeing if you'll do something with it or anything to get it in the Gazette. Okay. Because Facebook only reaches a certain subset. Right. The Gazette would reach a much wider audience. So we need to have something that would be newsworthy. Okay. To go into the Gazette. And at least it would go into, there's a little thing about what's happening is around town at a minimum it would get there. Right. Well, the way it gets into there is there's a calendar and there's a calendar for the Gazette and there's a calendar, I think, there's a couple of different calendars and you just go in and you put all the information in. It's different than the press release. Like the Valley Arts newsletter. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So those are two different things. Great. Yeah. So I have put things into the Valley Arts newsletter but I have not sent press releases out to media yet in this area. I'm still new to town so I'm not quite sure where to send things to. I can help with creating press releases. Let somebody send you where I send, I mean, it's not for art related but where I send things for events. So I can send you those links. Okay. And then what you do is you just put in the information and they ask you to upload an image press release. So I can send that to you. Thanks. Teri. Should I send that to you, Teri and Mikey? Yeah. Probably similar to the Valley News newsletter Valley. Yeah, wait a minute. Tom, do you want to take on that part? Yeah. Sure. Thank you. I think that that's a good way to start and then after you get something in the paper a little bit then it'll be easier to sell a bigger article on what the... I think the key, from my experience if you want an article written and you want that chunk of time, journalist, you lead with a press release. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, Tom, do you want to write that? Is that something you're... I'll do that. Right. And I'll make sure to get all the information on Bella Halstead to you. I can walk it over. Great. Wonderful. If you want to see these. I mean, I would love to. As a copy editor, I live for those things. Give me a press release. I'll get my red pen out. It'd be great. So the easier you make it for the reporter to publish an article, the more likely it'll be that they'll publish it. That's right, Robert. Two things. Quickly, I just found the email with the balance in our account. It's 4,184 and 28 cents. Okay. That was back in March and I don't believe there's been any activity since then we haven't paid anybody. Okay. And then... Pardon? Sorry, the pennies were what? 28. Thank you. Yep. And then to the issue of publicity. I'm wondering, it makes me wonder if someone were to ask because I believe there was an article in the Gazette where there was some kind of media attention about the make it public. It was. Yep. In the reminder, I believe. Yeah, I saw it somewhere. Right. I'm wondering if someone should ask what the status of that is, would it be a good idea for us to have some sort of prepared message to respond? So as opposed to, it was just kind of a convergence of mishaps. I sent an email to the town manager and Angela Mills about this exact thing, saying we will probably want to be getting ahead of this news and writing a press release and sending it out there. And could we have the help of Brianna Sunreid, who is our communications director and handles those kinds of things? Or what can I... How can they help us? Since I'm waiting to hear back about that. Because I agree. I think optics for losing this grant don't look great. And I brought that up many times with Paul before we lost the grant. I said, if this falls through, I feel like the optics are really bad on this. I mean, it's really not our fault as a commission for what's happening here, but it does reflect poorly on us and on Amherst. And that's why Paul really did try to get them to rewrite the contract and just did not work. So hopefully they're gonna help us. And we do need to write something to get ahead of it, I agree with you. Okay, I have a suggestion for how to handle things like that. It seems to work better if you go in there saying what you did right than if you go in, sometimes you have to apologize. I'm not saying that I was wrong because it was kind of, yeah. But at this point, I suggest we only talk about positive things if we can figure out how to do that. Well, we should. I mean, if we're gonna turn this into lemonade like we talked about in our next meeting, we'll talk about more specifics, how we're going to invite this to be a town hall exhibit instead. That can be how we lead. We can lead with, this is what we did right. This is what's gonna become of this. We've sent apologies, et cetera. I think that there's certainly a way we can write it so that we accentuate the positive but still admit that there were mistakes. I can think of a really big positive myself. We got $5,000. Yeah. We got $4,000 in the account and now we got $9,000 in the account and that doesn't sound like failure. It feels ugly to me. I'm a little, you know. I think the unforeseen circumstances are reason that it didn't work go through was that we had one of the main people involved who was going to carry it forward as a town personnel who took another position and that left an empty. That left us with needing to replace that person and no one who had actually done the training involved in what we're doing and the town is still has that position open. So it was just unfortunate events that happened. Yeah. And Gabriel did try to do that. He didn't allow us to move forward. We tried to get someone to step in and still we weren't able to do it. I have a headline to suggest. Despite having personnel disappear, the APAC Commission has obtained a $5,000 grant without even having to specify exactly what it was for. Oh boy. No, I'm not, I'm not joking. I don't know. This is our, we're talking about, are we talking about doing a press release or we're talking about how we're going to respond? Just how we're going to respond in general. I'm just trying to say, you know, we're talking a lot about all the bad things that happened and I'm looking here and I'm saying, Jordan, this is fabulous. We had somebody else leave a position that we couldn't control. It wasn't our fault and we still got a $5,000 grant and that doesn't sound so terrible to me. Well, I think we, however we word that, I do think we want to be careful about how we're characterizing receipt of that 5,000. In other words, I don't think we want it getting back to NIFA that we're talking about having received $5,000 for doing nothing because- There you go. No. We're not going to have to explain why they allowed us to keep $5,000 when basically we bungled our end of the project. So all I was suggesting was that should anyone ask us, we have a prepared response. I'm not necessarily advocating that we put up a billboard and, you know, advertise that we got $5,000 for this. I wasn't suggesting putting that in the newspaper. I'm suggesting when we talk to the town manager and other people around town, that's all. I'm trying to get us off this, what a tragedy and onto something more positive. That's all I'm suggesting. Yeah, I mean, I think we can definitely use the funds for a lot of positive things. And as we move down the agenda, you know, talking about the presence of the block party and strategic planning, I think we have some real projects to move the commission and the town's public art forward that we can definitely find. In fact, you know, $9,000, you know, that's a good starting point at which to craft a budget once we come up with a plan of what we actually want to achieve. Yes. So that's October. Yeah, Dara. I don't even know where to start, really. I, if I'm sitting in here with all of you listening to us, talk about it. And if I were somebody who had heard about it being advertised to submit proposals and I bothered to submit a proposal and then I was told that, well, we couldn't get it together enough to follow through and take advantage of the grant to complete the work that we had promised on our end. And, but we're gonna give you $500 or whatever, I don't know if we decided $500 or 1,000 because we didn't vote on it. We decided against it all together, yeah. Okay. And so, yeah, because you don't want to sound like you're paying off people to be happy for our failure. Yeah, we actually talked about not going that route at all and instead inviting them to be part of a town hall exhibit in the spring. I think that's a much more positive outcome for this. We've been just to be clear, I wouldn't talk to the people who made proposals in the same tone that I would talk to somebody else. Like I wouldn't be telling them what a great job we had because we got 5,000 because they didn't get anything. So I would be, all right. Tom, you have something to say. Yes, you know, we've had, we've had very extensive discussion about this. We've let it all hang out as they used to say. And this is all public record. Remember this Zoom session is kind of. Yeah, true. Okay. Moving on to, oh. But so since you said that, just to be clear, I don't think anybody here is proposing that we say anything that isn't completely accurate. I think what we're saying is that there's things you can emphasize that are good and things that you can emphasize which are bad. And it's a mistake to only emphasize the things that are bad when there was some good that came out of it. And so taking a positive attitude as much as best you can is I think at least what I was trying to advocate. And with respect to the people that were hurt, then I'll be very apologetic because they were hurt. All right. I think we're gonna put a period on this conversation and move on. The block party is in 10 days and we need to have a little plan of action here. And so a little conversation about that. I don't remember what time it starts. I'm going to be there. I'm going to make name tags for you all. I don't know what they look like yet, but I'll have name tags of some kind. I might be beyond on a piece of paper, but you'll have name tags, okay? I will be out of town, unfortunately. I know, we will miss you, but yeah. I have to spend two hours at the Amherst booth of the Historical Society booth. So I'll do both. Great, awesome. So for the minutes, can I put the date of the block party in? September 21st. I believe it starts at four o'clock is my guess, but I'm not positive. I think it's from four to eight. Four to eight, okay. Tommy has something to say there. Well, I'm just going to say I'm available and we'll be there. Great. So I'm considering buying a large roll of paper and bringing a lot of artists tool, a lot of artists pens and markers and et cetera, and rolling it out on a table and having people just come and give us some art. And my main focus I think should be on promoting the Boltwood Gallery, which hopefully will be installed. So I will hopefully have something about Dominique's seeing beyond the self. And it might be fun to have a mirror motif for some kind of, you know, how do you artistically represent yourself and here's some paper. Very simple. I don't, you don't need to reinvent the wheel here. There's a lot of students that'll be there. Kids and students love drawing, I think providing them a place where they can express themselves. And we can use the motif using Dominique's exhibit as kind of a focal point if we want to. Anybody have any ideas about that? Yeah, Robert. I just saw a poster online that said the hours were from five to nine. So we just want to clarify. No, I think the opportunity to make art is a great idea. I also think this is a great opportunity for us to gather information. You know, we've talked in previous meetings about trying to engage the public to get a sense of what the public actually wants to see in the way of public art in town. Yeah. How they think about the public art. I think the cultural council kind of took off so, already started. I'm sorry, go ahead. I wanted to create a survey, but the Amherst Cultural Council has promoted a survey themselves about what they want the town to, what grants they think the town will be interested in. And it's so closely aligned with what we do in focus that I'm concerned that if we also have a survey, it's gonna kind of see you the results. So I wasn't sure about it. Well, first of all, no, I wasn't suggesting a survey. I'm curious to hear more about that survey. But no, what I was gonna suggest was that we have something, you talked about paper. I mean, even if it's something as simple as pieces of paper and pencils or pens that people can write on and we have a small sign or something that just says, please share your ideas or what would you like to see as public art in the town of Amherst? I mean, it's- The role of paper, the role of paper idea should accommodate that too. Because I can walk up to it and sketch something, I think I might wanna present or I could just write my name and address an email and say, please contact me. That does open some opportunities, yeah. Yeah, I found too in the past where I've seen client colleges do this kind of thing. What's really remarkable is when you get something on paper like that, it really spares the next person who comes along to give you some. If it's just walk up and talk to us, they don't know where to start. So I think that this is excellent, I think. That's an awesome idea, both of you. Thank you, Robert, and thank you so much. So maybe just some of those big, either a big role of paper that people can just add their ideas to or those big- Making a big scroll. Yeah, those things that are used in meetings, something that's easy. And then we would be able to refer to and to read and process them all. But I think it's an easier way than trying to create a survey. And as you say, there are problems with that than just, you know, hopefully we capture a good amount of information from that. Okay, I think that's a great idea. Tom, go ahead. I think we can plan to just stay very close to our commission's main business, knowing that there are other groups, you know, working in complimentary fashions. Right. And go back and scoop up what they, we can go around spy on what they're doing to ask what results they got there. I do have a different suggestion, which is I wonder whether it would be helpful to have some illustrations, maybe just eight and a half by 11 printed pictures of past public art that the town has sponsored. Again, just in the interest of, of, you know, preemptively answering the question, if somebody walks up and says, gee, what is public art? What are you guys doing? We can say, well, here, you might remember those Emily Dickinson snippets that were on those little white constructions several years ago or whatever else. You know, of course, the electronics boxes, pictures like that. Again, just if they were put in laminated holders and then taped to the front of the table, you know, people could see those right away. Oh, that's what it is. This group was behind that. You know, until I joined this commission, I had no idea where those paintings on the electronics, you know, the traffic signal boxes came from. That's where our boxes, yeah, yeah. But don't forget they have copyrights and you got to make sure if you're going to hand something out or use it that we have the right to do that. Well, I think these are, some of them are on the website. So they've been kind of published already, but- I don't think copyright would be a problem if you're not using it to make money or I don't think that's an issue for just- No, I think that is different. The owner of the copyright would have the latitude to decide whether they were approving or not. But if things are essentially in the public domain for one reason or another, then that's another matter. But I think the point that we should be a little careful about how we use images of people's art as well. I mean, there is a thing called fair use, which means that even if it's copyrighted, if it's both within the fair use exception that you can use it, but I really don't want to- You know, that's a very tricky decision. We don't want to work off the legal tightrope on this. But I think if the town has published images of these before, I think we're probably okay. Again, I'm not sure, but I always end up playing when it works. Okay, so like if I go 85 miles an hour and a 55-mile zone on Monday, does that mean that on Tuesday I can go 85 miles an hour and a 55 zone because I've done it before? Yes, no, actually the town, if the town has decided that it had, it was clear to publish an image of artworks that it sponsored. If they've already decided that, I think we as a town organ can probably do it again. But I'm going out- Dara, stop me there, Jim. I think Dara wants to say something. Jim, I'm sorry, but this is kind of- Two things and not quite related. One is maybe something should go in every future contract that says the commission has a right to use images of work that they've sponsored in the public context. Well, I'm not saying it's not already there, by the way, just to be clear. I don't know if it is or not. And I'm just saying that should be if it's not. Yeah, I agree. I think that's good. If it's a public art, I'm sorry, go ahead. The other thing is, I'm wondering if anybody on the commission has any contacts with or anything to do with anybody on the cultural council? Well, I have talked to Matt Holloway and he's a really, really great guy. Yeah, many. I can't say I'm pals, but I've had a few conversations with him and I think he's a great guy. Why did you- Well, because I was in a meeting a week or two ago listening to him talk and he was talking about a sculpture that they had basically bought to put up in front of the library. And so it feels like to me there ought to be a back and forth between the cultural council and the public art commission. Oh, believe me, I have brought this up with our town manager. I have said we need to join forces. I gave him an outline of what we should be doing. He got an earful about this exact topic because I think we're all- That would be great for us to see. Yeah, I will share that with you. He said thank you very much and I don't know what he's gonna do with it. Maybe nothing, but I said what I wanted to say which is that we all have to be working together. Well, see, because their money comes to them every year from mass cultural council. Yep. So they always have a significant budget to spread around in any way that they are counseled. And we don't have a line item. So- I know. Yeah. They don't really have a line item either. They get their money from the cultural council. They get NCC funds, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good point. It's interesting to watch the, like they decide a lot more things than this commission does. Which is so exciting. I love what they're doing for the town. Yeah. I would love to join forces and I've talked to Matt about that and I hope that we can make something happen. Like some collaborations. Yeah. That's great. Robert, did you have something you wanted to say? Probably. Oh, I remember now. So for the block party, I'm wondering if Dominique can provide perhaps any drawings or something that we could have at the table that would spark interest for the boltwood gallery. Yeah. And I also, I saw on the timeline of the contract that, you know, the unveiling was perhaps going to take place at the block party. I'm just wondering if that's realistic. You know, that people would be diverted from Pleasant Street to go over to the parking lot. I just, I wonder about that. Right. And I'm thinking that, and marketing is not my skill or talent, but if it would be better to make it its own event. Plus I'm just not sure. I mean, although it sounds like she's far along in the creative process, but I, you know, I just don't know if that would be the right night to try to bring people over to the boltwood gallery. I think it would be a great time for us to promote it. And. Yeah. Which is why I was thinking if she could provide some samples that we'd have at the table and then explain about the portal gallery because I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't be familiar with it. Yeah, I'm going to invite her to the table for to be present and to talk about her project. I talked to her about this already. I can also ask her to bring some pictures of the art. That'd be great. So I think it may be a better idea. We don't have the people power to actually have two things, you know, at block party. So I agree. This would just basically be a promotion. And I think we do need to set up an unveiling night. I look, I need to figure out, we all need to figure out when we can schedule that. I love that idea. I'm, I don't have anything on my, set on my calendar for when that date could be. I could talk to her about it and see what she thinks. If she wants to have an October unveiling, we can make that happen. A few weeks notice, we should be able to do it. So I'll talk to her about it and I'll bring that up with her and I'll let you know at the next meeting. Also, do you know where our table will be at the block party? I don't know. I mean, it's one strip. So on there somewhere. I think we're getting a, I don't even know what the word, what is the word? A booth? A booth? Think we're getting a booth? Anyway, I think we're getting a booth. I'm bringing my extra table just in case. And I'm going to talk to Matt about it and Gabrielle and see who has the information about this because this is something that BID does as well. Mikey? This Larson is in charge of it, I think. She's on the BID. Do you know this? Very well. Would you ask her? I'll be at a meeting with her tomorrow night. Hey, while you're there in a meeting with her, would you just kind of say, hey, what's public art going to get? I know that last year with the Historical Society, because I'm on both, they gave us a table and two chairs and then we had to bring the rest. Okay. We were in front of the, where the new burger place is now. So, and Amherst Neighbors was by us. So I think pretty much the arts were in that area. Okay, great. By CVS. If you'll ask her, I'll find out and I'll tell you. You can share with us, it'd be great. And I'll bring my table just in case and I've got lots of pens and I've got artists in my house, so I've got all the time. But we have no brochure, I have some old brochures, but they're pretty old. I'll bring them, cause it might be interesting. Laurie, sorry. Yeah, I wanted to go back to that and the brochure I think ties in. I like, Tom, your idea about having images of what public art we have facilitated in the town in the past, although I still am unclear about exactly what they are rather than poetic dialogue and maybe the. On the website actually, they've got. I know, but they're not all, they're all mixed in. Some are, some are, some are things we've been involved in. Some are things that UMass has done through the University Museum. They're, it's all a big jumble. So I think we're a little premature in terms of being able to get this together for the block party, but I think it's very important for us to think about putting this on our agenda for what we want to do going forward and cleaning up what's on the town website and also creating a brochure. And I do think I just wanted to go back to this, this rights to use images. If we take an image of public art, that image is, there's no copyright problem as far as I know, of taking an image of a public art piece and including. That's a copy. I'm sorry, but that's a copy. That absolutely isn't, is it? It's not a copy of the art. It's an image of the art. You can take a photograph of a public art piece and put it on your Facebook without any copyright. You can put it at a stand, you know, there's not, if you use it in your own artwork, that's a problem. That, you know, let Mikey fucking in. What you can't do is sell it. That's my professional art opinion. Have you worked with art? Okay, well, the law says that you cannot make a copy of a copyrighted work, unless it's... We're not making a copy of the sculpture. We're just taking a photograph of it in a public space. I'm not going to discuss it anymore. Anyway, that's all. So, right to reproduction side of it, which is what I've done with historical societies, you can't sell it. You can't put it in a photograph and sell it. But exactly. Right, so that's the big dichotomy. So we had it next to like a big pot and we said, hey, please donate money to public art. We would be, that would get us in big trouble. Right, we can't do that anyway there. You can't sell anything. Yeah. The thing is, you've got to, it's probably covered in our contracts. So what I'm only really trying to say is we have to think about it. It's the serious thing in copyright violations. If you make one of very big deals. So all I'm saying is, let's check our work and not make assumptions about what we can do and what we can't. Because what I've worked with, I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I have done work in the area. And really the test is more, is it fair use? And there's a lot of factors that go into fair use in saying, well, you can copy it if you don't sell it, may or may not be true. And so- Okay, before we offer these images, we will look this over in the contracts and see what's legal. I also still do have old brochures from years past that I'm going to take a look at. And the information might be old, but the pictures might be on there still. I don't know. So I'll take a look what they have. So Justin, so I'm not saying we can't do that. I'm just saying we have to watch our step. Lori, I like the idea also of getting new brochures made. I think that's really important to work, to work on that kind of thing for the future. I think I'm going to send a follow-up email about this meeting so that we are all on the same page about what's happening on the 21st. So that we're all prepared. Then any other tidbits that we need to kind of sum up here. I know I'm running after eight o'clock, I'm noting the time. Also noting there's a number of things still on our agenda. So I want to check in and see what our time is like, everyone. I honor and I'm grateful for your time. Can we go further or does somebody need to bow out or try to go forward as fast as we can, is that okay? Yeah, I'd love to finish at 8.30 though. Okay, that sounds great. Let's do that. Okay, so let's move along then to, okay, I'm not going to talk about the APAC logo right now. I am going to say that the town website needs work and an audit. And if you have changes or you see corrections that need to be done, send me an email. I'm going to be talking to Brianna about updates to the website. They're very excited that we're even interested in updating the website. Because no other commission is really into it. And I really am. So that's very exciting. So we'll get that whipped into shape, made it look a lot better. Tom. Am I mistaken or did I see in the newspaper in the last few days that Brianna is leaving? Oh, Brianna Sunard's leaving? Another person leaving? I can apply for her job. Just kidding, just kidding. That is very sad. She's wonderful. So I will look into that. She's been really cool. Yeah, Amherst is losing people. They're moving on to other jobs. Oh, I hate it. Anyway, yeah, town website changes, audit. If you have stuff, send it to me. I'd like to get those sent along. Do, do, do, fast, fast, strategic planning discussion. I know, Robert, we really want to talk about this. We still may need to table it because I don't think we have enough of an idea, but can you give us kind of a summary of what we can look forward to in talks in the future about strategic planning? I could say a lot, but I need someone else to talk. And I think you've got really great ideas. Well, thank you. I think we've touched on a lot of topics tonight that relate to that. I mean, one being in town, the presence of the cultural council, the BID. I mean, there are organizations that should be working very closely together that at the moment, from my perspective, don't have particularly great communication with each other. And I think if, you know, this commission, I think many of us are still feels relatively new. It's just been a year. But personally, I find it challenging because I just don't feel like we have a clear direction on what we're trying to accomplish really. And so I think if we were to take some time and do some planning and figure out strategy, I mean, one of those points being collaboration with the other arts related organizations in town, and really how to engage the public and the five colleges. I mean, there's no shortage of artists in this area and lots of people who do a lot of thinking about arts and society and community. I just think we have a great deal of untapped potential, but it feels like in my time on the commission, we've been very reactive for obvious reasons. We're not really being particularly proactive. And I think the planning process would allow us to do that and use our funds wisely and well and build momentum for actually raising more funds. And whether that's in conjunction with the cultural council or being able to go back to NIFA and say, we've really got our act together. Here's our strategic plan for what we see as public art over the next one to three years. I just think we may not be as effective as we could be if we don't develop a plan. Hopefully we can carve out some time and it's gonna be more than one meeting. It's gonna be a process. And ideally, I think it would engage other people not on the commission if we really want to get the input of a lot of different voices. So I'm hoping that's something that we can make a priority as we go along. Absolutely. Jim, did you want to say something to that? No, I did have a mistake, sorry. Oh, you raced your hand. Robert, yeah, you just put everything into perspective here. Those three issues are really big with me creating partnerships and collaborations, engaging the public and networking with the artist community are really big things on my list for strategic planning going forward. I think I'd like to spend a lot more time on this in October. If possible, I'd love to have a separate meeting just on strategic planning. I think it'll be really great for us all to talk about this, to come up with a different mission statement. We have a very vague mission statement. I really love to kind of make it more concrete and then come up with doable goals, things that we can actually accomplish, not too big, starting off small and then growing on successes. That's what I would like to see us doing in the future. So how about October, we put a big pin in strategic planning and make it a big item on the table to talk about. Is that okay? Yes, Mikey. We also have the town hall exhibit for spring on there too. So just for both of them, okay. Okay, those are two big things we're going to be talking about. Are you thinking about one meeting where these are prioritized or are you thinking about a separate meeting? It might be a, it might not be a bad idea to have a separate meeting about strategic planning because I think it's a little bit more. I would vote for that. The ordinary business has a way of eating up the clock. It does, yeah. So what if we, how about if I send out a Google Doodle? Is that the word, Google Doodle? How about I send out a Doodle to get maybe a mid-October meeting just on strategic planning, see who can attend that if we can get enough people to get together and talk about it. And then we can go into our November meeting and have a place where we can actually vote on something maybe, you know, bring something to the table to talk about. Does that sound doable? I like it. You just had a question about, I imagine we cannot really have a retreat. I mean, whenever we assemble as a group we're subject to open meeting laws, Chris. Yes. Yes. So I did wanna, I talked to the town manager about this exact thing and he said he's going to be suggesting a plan in the future where you plan on having a hybrid. So you'll have like, six of your meetings per year could be in person. Six would be online, but you have to have a space where the public can attend if they want. And so I said, well, that sounds like town hall. I said, we have to have evening meetings because we all work. And he said, and I said, that's a problem. And he said, it's not a problem. The custodians work for the town, we can work that out. So something I thought I'd bring up is the possibility of open meeting laws being relaxed a little. And this came from our actual town manager so that maybe we can have, as long as we keep having these remote meetings which are very inclusive and allow a lot of participation or at least the possibility and potential of that, we can also have in-person meetings happen in the future that we also obviously invite the public to attend as well. So that's something that I think is gonna be coming up in the future. I hope so, I'm embracing it. I would love to get together in one place and have some coffee together and chat in real space. All right, so I'm gonna be sending you a doodle about mid-October to talk about just strategic planning and we'll see what we can get on the books, okay? And then October meeting will probably be that will be the first Monday in, we had that poll, you all said, except for Dara and I'm so sorry, Dara, but Mondays seem to work for everybody. I know that wasn't your favorite day. Is it okay to continue on making Monday meetings work? I think Dara was the only one who was like, ah, Mondays aren't my favorite, I agree. October would be October 2nd, so I'll be sending you a doodle to make sure October 2nd works for everybody and then we'll have hopefully a mid-October meeting for strategic planning. Anyway, how's that sound? Sounds good. I feel like I'm talking a lot, I'm sorry. Yeah, what we didn't get to is grant cycle, which is only to say the grant cycle has begun. September 1st was the date that MCC started out as grant cycle and our local cultural council has opened up their books, but we can't ask for money without a plan. So we need to talk about some plans and I wanna try to have an ask before the close of the grant cycle if possible. If we can come up with something we would like to see. I do wanna do electrifying Amherst again, which is the Transformer Box project. It's something that Paul said that he would like to see us do as well. So I think we could get some support on it, but we will talk about all that in October. For now, is there any other business that we did not anticipate prior to 48 hours before this meeting? Anybody have anything they wanted to bring up for new business? I have exhausted you all. You're all exhausted and you're falling asleep. Okay, it's been almost two hours. You were very patient and wonderful. I will be sending you emails, keep an eye out for them. And then I will see some of you on September 21st in person in downtown. I look forward to seeing you and Lori have wonderful holidays. We'll miss you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I am going to ask somebody to make a motion to adjourn these. Unless there's anything else we need to discuss or anything anybody wants to announce. Nope. Okay, so I- I hope that we adjourn the meeting. The second. Second. Great. Show of hands or an eye. All right. All wonderful. Motion passes. Thank you so much for your time. So much of your time tonight. I really appreciate it. And I'll be talking to you on the email soon. All right. Thank you. Have a good night. Bye-bye.