Public Art Pitch Reflection

Of the 6 presentations we watched in class, I would have to say that I’m most drawn to the piece entitled “Blue’s Buried Treasure”. If I were a Butler alum looking to invest in art for the campus, I would be looking for something that represented Butler while remaining creative and functional at the same time. I love the idea of intriguing people to walk through Butler’s campus on a sort of scavenger hunt for the next buried item that represents our university, and it is a perfect pun since our mascot is a dog. In addition, this group’s presentation itself was very detailed and fun to listen to as they incorporated poetry in it to make it even more fun. I would very much enjoy seeing these art pieces around campus and I know that other students would as well. The pieces are interactive and invite many opportunities to take photographs, meet up to talk with friends, or to show off our campus.

Of all of the projects listed, the “Jungle Jim” project would most likely require the most funding. Although the project was very innovative and sounds like a lot of fun, it involves a very large piece of artwork as well as a multitude of technical intricacies that must be built in order for a treadmill of that size to function on a day to day basis. In addition, this treadmill must be protected from the elements of the outdoors as well as from the use of a great number of college students, so it will require a fair amount of upkeep. I think that Jungle Jim is a great idea, however because it involves so much technical work it may be prohibitively expensive.

If I were given the opportunity to revise our pitch and present it once more to the class, I would of course take that opportunity to make the pitch better, as any presentation has the ability to be improved. I believe that Lori and I did an excellent job at explaining our proposal including the criteria we used to choose our project, what the project would look like, and why we thought our project would be a great addition to Butler’s campus. We were passionate about our proposal and we were able to speak very well in front of the class. One change I would make would be to disperse our pictures of the proposed statues more evenly throughout the presentation instead of showing them all at the end. In addition, I would try to include a more creative element to the project such as the video or the poems that other groups used, as these provided a more exciting element to the presentations themselves. Overall though, I felt that our group’s presentation went very well and that our project would make a great addition to Butler’s campus.