Eau Claire Public Works Director Brian Amundson drafts some street ideas on the ol’ “bum wad” (transparent tracing paper used for laying over maps).

    “No, I’m not an artist.”

That is the gut reaction of our local city planners, landscape architects, public works directors, and parks designers. 

With further prodding, however, most of them acknowledge their skill sets do resemble those of an artist. They have the ability to envision and represent a three-dimensional space, to choose materials, and to realize a cohesive aesthetic. So let’s call them extremely creative and artistic problem-solvers.

As an undergraduate art student, Joe Maurer – now a designer at Next Step Energy and a freelance landscape architect – was encouraged by a few influential people to “think outside the gallery” and to consider public art. When he did, he became fascinated with public art’s ability to “set a process in motion,” compared to the more static practice of creating private art, which the world receives in a gallery.

Maurer is an artist outside of the workplace, but in his case the two fields overlap like a thoughtful collage. Often the base for Maurer’s brainstorming is a patchwork of site-photos, over which he smudges water color crayons to indicate features such as plants, walkways, seating, curbs, surface texture, and the shape of the earth. It takes schooling and lots of practice to learn “spatial awareness” – how to visualize a space from the top, from ground-level, and even from underneath. He also considers layers that are unseen, from social history to climate.

In an era of ubiquitous technology, computers play a role in design, too, but Maurer offers a word of caution. “Software is sometimes a problem because everybody has it. Designs can start to look like they have the same quality. The tools have to be specific to the project. It’s important to the presentation to have yourself in the work – a unique quality,” he offers.

    Similarly, Eau Claire Public Works Director Brian Amundson translates his ideas by hand on “bum wad” – transparent tracing paper used for laying over maps. In his drawing of the woonerf on Thorp Drive, his gently curving road and marker-shaded trees are seen from an aerial perspective. “When they see me coming with my bum wad, they run,” jokes Amundson of his colleagues. “They know I’ve got another crazy idea.”

Finding intrinsic beauty in each site, Amundson tries to conserve the natural quirks of the earth as closely as possible. “I try to be free-flowing in my design. I try not to be rigid … I don’t want to put a cookie cutter stamp on a place,” he says. And each site is a distinct challenge. “You’re not going to find another Phoenix Park, or another Thorp Drive,” he said. Though ideally subtle, the reshaping of dirt known as “grading a site” can be thought of as “earth sculpting.”

Chippewa Falls City Planner Jayson Smith’s role in the creation of public spaces is more about vision than depiction. Currently, Smith and other city officials are reversing the figurative orientation of downtown Chippewa Falls. “Projects in the past typically turned their back on the river,” he says, but their stunning new $10-$15 million plan for a large riverfront park (notice the emphasis on front) calls for walkways, green space, trees, and an “open theater” area. 

“I enjoy seeing improvements, and it’s important to put an identity to a community,” he says.

For Phil Johnson, former Eau Claire Parks & Rec Superintendent and current Ayres Associates architect, the visual magic of a place is not imposed by the designer. “Many times the beauty of a space is created by the users and you just provide the opportunity for that to happen,” he says.

So next time you’re strolling through Phoenix Park, think of yourself as a dab of paint, helping to color the canvas the city laid out.