MEMORY CARE FACILITY TO GET WYMAN SCULPTURE
Palm Beach Gardens will probably never have splashy murals like those scattered throughout downtown West Palm Beach and Lake Worth, but there’s no shortage of art to the north.
The art in Palm Beach Gardens is subtler, hidden in plain sight. The carousel at Downtown at the Gardens and that obelisk that lights up at night outside Legacy Place? Yes, they count. So do all the sculptures in The Gardens Mall, and those outside the offices on the mall’s perimeter.
More art, by world-renowned artist Lance Wyman, is on its way to a plaza outside the 256-bed Clarity Pointe assisted living and memory care facility under construction in the Alton development off Donald Ross Road.
Wyman’s sculpture is made of slabs of green and blue glass meant to resemble the heavens and Earth. The positioning of the glass triangles with their colors “represent the spiritual balance one might hope to achieve in the course of this life,” according to Wyman’s artist statement.
A custom LED light fixture will illuminate the space between glass layers.
The sculpture’s plaza will have four artistic columns, two at each entry, and six artistic benches surrounding the main sculpture.
Wyman designed the graphics for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City and wayfinding graphics for the Washington Mall, the National Zoo and the Minnesota Zoo.
His work has been displayed in the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York and the Center of Industrial Design at the Louvre in Paris.
No tax dollars will pay for Wyman’s sculpture, nor do they pay for any other public art in Palm Beach Gardens. If a developer’s construction project costs more than $1 million, the city requires him or her to spend at least 1 percent of the cost on art.
Developers can either choose the art themselves — subject to the approval of City Council — or give the money to the city’s Art in Public Places fund.
In this case, developer Clarity Pointe Development Partners was required to spend $395,000. The estimated cost of the art is $406,500, according to the planner and a city report.