The Village of Royal Beach boasts a vibrant public art program that is helping the community brand itself as a beautiful place to live, work and invest. So much art has already sprung up, that the village just launched a new Art in Public Places landing page on its web site.
Thanks to a robust 2018 Art in Public Places ordinance, and to various efforts of previous Royal Palm Beach village councils, public art pieces can now be seen in almost every corner of the community.
Councilwoman Jan Rodusky is overjoyed, since she has relentlessly championed public art in the village since 2016.
“I’m really proud about our village’s arts program,” Rodusky said. “Upholding aesthetic values tends to uphold property values, and the end result is that art is helping make Royal Palm Beach even a more wonderful place to live, work and invest.”
Village Manager Ray Liggins points to the village’s mission statement, promising residents, “The mission of the Village of Royal Palm Beach is to provide services and facilities to create an aesthetically pleasing, active and connected community.”
And the public art program seems to be working. Linda Scott was looking for a new place to live, wanting to move out of congested Miami.
“We were driving around, right before the pandemic, looking for a nicer place to live, and we came to a stop at the traffic light at Okeechobee and Royal Palm Beach boulevards,” Scott recalled. “I look out my window at this giant statue of leaves, reflecting all sorts of beautiful colors. A feeling of beauty overwhelmed me. I decided right then and there that I wanted to live in this village.”
That sculpture, created by artist Mark Fuller, was installed by the village in 2009 to celebrate Royal Palm Beach’s 50th anniversary.
Ironically, Scott now works as a crossing guard at that very intersection and is happy to call the La Mancha neighborhood home.
Some of the goals of the Art in Public Places program include: increasing public access to art, promoting an understanding and awareness of the visual arts in the public environment, contributing to the civic pride and economic development of the village, enhancing artistic creativity in the village, and enriching the public environment for both residents and visitors through incorporation of the visual arts.
The ordinance applies to private developments of 20,000 square feet in size or larger. The requirements apply to both initial construction and to renovation projects. All such developments are now required to purchase permanent artwork for the site equal to one percent of the total vertical construction costs of all buildings on the site. The maximum out-of-pocket costs have a ceiling of $250,000.
The program is so successful that the village hired a public art professional, Mario Lopez Pisani, who enthusiastically spearheads his ongoing mission of helping make Royal Palm Beach a more and more beautiful place to live and raise a family.
Lopez Pisani is a product of the Palm Beach County School District’s arts magnet program, having graduated from the Bak Middle School of the Arts and A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts.
“I love this job,” he said. “I think this program creates value for residents while fulfilling our mission to provide an aesthetically pleasing place to live and work.”
Not everyone is a fan of the program. The man behind Cypress Key, a new development along Southern Blvd., cites rising construction costs.
“Adding this additional cost adds more challenges to the viability of the project,” said Martin Heise of City Construction & Development.
Nevertheless, to comply with the ordinance, Heise hired local artist Lucy Keshavarz to create the sculpture “Ring Canopy,” which was recently erected near Maple Street Biscuit Company, where some of the employees are art fans.
Priscilla Fernandez, an ambassador at Maple Street, pointed to the sculpture and said, “I love this artwork. Not only does it add beauty, but people see it on Southern Blvd., and it draws them into the plaza.”
Server Audrey Winaker of Wellington agrees. “I think ‘Ring Canopy’ is beautiful, and a little beauty just makes everything seem a little better,” she said.
Art is life to Lopez Pisani. “I went to Bak, to Dreyfoos, and then to Tufts University, where I was blessed to learn and appreciate how important art is to our culture and to civilizations since the beginning of time,” he said. “This job enables me to give back.”
Lopez Pisani is ambitious in cultivating an art community within Royal Palm Beach and is currently building a database of residents who are artists and would like to be involved with the village’s future artistic efforts.
Former Mayor Fred Pinto, who recently passed away, was exuberant back when the village enacted its Art in Public Places ordinance in 2018. With a gavel in his hand and a beaming smile, he proclaimed, “Clerk, let the record show that the council has unanimously passed an historic ordinance here tonight,” he said.
The village’s Art in Public Places page contains maps and descriptions of select public artwork, as well as various calls to artists, and can be found at www.royalpalmbeachfl.gov/planning/page/art-public-places.
