The City of Napa has released a Call for Artists for the 2019-2021 Napa Art Walk. The Napa Art Walk is a curated walking tour program that showcases regularly rotating installation art throughout downtown Napa, California. Since its inception in 2009, this will be the sixth exhibition of the two-year rotating public art program.
The curation team is asking that all pieces submitted for the sixth Napa Art Walk should integrate and embody a specific sense of place. The aim of this exhibition is to prompt the public to identify their own symbolic and literal relationship to the environment(s) in which they live, and to inspire a recognition or creation of experience tied to the place in which the artwork resides. In selection, an emphasis is being placed on potentially interactive and/or mobile artworks. Ten pieces will be selected by an esteemed jury and placed among twenty potential sites in Napa. The honorarium for each artist is $2000 and the artwork will be on display from May 2019 until April 2021.
The call is open to professional artists over 18 living or working in these Western states: AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, OR, UT or WA. The deadline for entries is November 30, 2018 at Midnight, PST. The full call for artists may be viewed at www.callforentry.org.
Napa Art Walk: Program Info
Approved by Napa City Council in 2009, the program will launch its sixth exhibition in July 2019. It has garnered both regional and national attention as an innovative Napa Valley visitor experience that highlights the region’s cultural vibrancy. It has also been featured in several media outlets including the The Miami Herald, 7 x 7 Magazine, The Washington Post, and Sunset Magazine. Top Events USA credits Napa Art Walk for, “establishing Napa itself as a cultural destination.” Visitors and residents alike can look forward to artist talks, docent-led tours of the exhibition, and public photography contests as ways to engage with the artwork.
Napa Public Art: Program Info
Since 2010, Napa has launched several new arts programs including: Art on First, a temporary art installation series on First Street in storefront windows; Napa Valley Arts in April, bringing the arts and special events together throughout Napa Valley each April; and of course, the popular Napa Art Walk. The Napa City Council also instituted a Public Art Ordinance, with a 1 percent public art fee required on new development, and appointed a Public Art Steering Committee. The first City of Napa Public Art Master Plan was approved in June 2014, and the first Public Art Steering Committee art project, “First Street Art Benches” was completed in 2015, with nine custom-designed benches created by Berkeley, CA artist Eric Powell. The City is presently nearing final design for the renovation of Dwight Murray Plaza, one of the most visible and popular plazas located on First Street. Since July of 2018, the public arts program has transferred to the Parks and Recreation Department, within which two new Public Arts Coordinators have been hired to assist in ongoing endeavors and arts program maintenance and development.
For more information about the program and past exhibits, please visit www.NapaArtWalk.org.