It was not love at first sight, art-wise, for members of the Falls Church City Council.
As a result, city staff will return early in the new year with refinements to a proposed “LOVE” sculpture that will adorn the west side of the City Hall campus.
The location for the placement of the sculpture won general if not unanimous agreement at the Council’s lone December meeting. But when it came down to selecting a design from among the nine submissions, things got more tricky.
“We are just not getting consensus on this,” Council member Debora Schantz-Hiscott the the midst of a lengthy discussion and multiple attempts at hammering out agreement among the seven members.
“Everybody’s tired, we’re all in different directions,” said Schantz-Hiscott, who ultimately proposed to defer further consideration of designs until the new year.
That action, which came more than three hours into an already action-packed meeting, was unanimous. And it included a Council request of staff to attempt to combine preferred elements of two different submissions.
If that effort succeeds, the final sculpture could see the letters “L” and “V” made of reflective steel and the letters “O” and “E” each incorporating a “word cloud” featuring descriptors that local residents believe best exemplify the town.
With design suggestions flying fast and furious from the Council dais, City Manager Wyatt Shields ultimately asked for some breathing room.
“I think we need more time on it,” he said, suggesting the matter be sent back to the city’s Arts and Humanities Council for another look.
That advisory body had unanimously recommended a design — dubbed Option #1 — with three of the four letters spelling out LOVE made of reflective steel, and the “O” featuring faces emblematic of city residents.
The Planning Commission supported that recommendation, but some Council members gravitated more to the word-cloud concept. It was Option #2.
All nine submissions for consideration came from city-government employees. That was intentional — the goal of this art competition was to say thanks to municipal workers as part of a larger celebration of the city’s recently concluded 75th-anniversary celebration.
The Council discussion ultimately moved into the the idea of combining elements from the two finalists.
“Would it offend the artists to merge designs #1 and #2?” Mayor Letty Hardi asked. Or, she asked, would that result in “butchering it all”?
Cindy Mester, the city’s community-relations and legislative-affairs director, said the two staff members whose submissions were selected as finalists might be amenable.
“I think they would collaborate with us,” Mester said, cautioning that “merging two distinct looks” could be challenging.
At least one Council member offered suggestions to make the final submission more to her liking.
“I’m not a big fan of the current font and colors that are used,” said Council member Justine Underhill, who serves as liaison to the Arts and Humanities Council.
The city’s ordinances give Council members the final say on public art. During the discussion, Council member Marybeth Connelly acknowledged the challenges involved.
“There’s almost nothing worse than art by committee,” she said. “It’s such a hard thing for us to vote on. None of us are artists — we’re just people with an opinion.”
In the end, the Council “came to the consensus of not having any consensus,” Schantz-Hiscott said in pushing the matter into the new year and moving on to other business.
The vote to approve placing the artwork on the City Hall campus passed 5-2, with Council members David Snyder and Erin Flynn believing there were more preferable locations available.
Incorporating the word “LOVE” as the central theme of the sculpture seems to be a nod both to artist Robert Indiana’s 1964 pop-art design of the same name, and to the “Virginia Is for Lovers” tourism slogan used by the state government since 1969.
Funding for the project — $10,000 — was included in the budget for the city’s 75th-anniversary celebrations.
