Artist Selected to Design Functional Public Art Pocket Park

A pocket park is coming to Scottsdale! The city of Scottsdale asked Scottsdale Public Art to help create an artist-designed pocket park on the northwest side of the One Civic Center building, located at the intersection of Indian School Road and Drinkwater Boulevard. This will be a demonstration project to show how a pocket park can be designed and integrated into Scottsdale’s urban environment.

Sculptor and furniture-maker Michael Beitz was chosen by a selection panel of project stakeholders to design this new park space with both public art and seating functionality in mind. “I’m interested in making artwork that looks like sculpture, that also looks like something you’d want to sit down on,” Beitz says.

One of the reasons Beitz was selected by the panel was that, during his interview, he provided a series of sketches showing both his creative process and some initial ideas for the pocket park space.

“I like to play with design as an art form . . . to create places for people to feel good, and then the artwork is activated by the people.”

Michael Beitz

The final design is still being developed and may end up looking different from the initial ideas presented here.

You can learn more about this artist and project by checking out this great KJZZ radio interview.

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