On April 23, 2024, The Arts Foundation was present at the Grant Road Phase 3-4 Groundbreaking Event!
The design for this phase of Grant Road provided the selected local artist, Joe O’Connell of Creative Machines, with a breadth of concepts that includes additional travel lanes, new and wider sidewalks, more signalized crosswalks, and improved bicycle lanes.
The enhanced landscaping with the accompanying Public Art will improve both the pedestrian and bicyclist use of Grant Road. O’Connell worked with the Public Art Panel to envision the convergence of the desert landscape and the surrounding city with the public art. The installation of the artwork will be completed during the roadway construction.
Artist Joe O’Connell answered the following questions to give us some updates on the Public Art piece that will accompany Grant Road enhancements:
Q&A WITH JOE
AF: Could you share the name and some updates of the Public Art Piece you created for the Grant Road Project?
Joe: I recently attended the public outreach event for Grant Road phase 3-4 and there I met members of several nearby neighborhood associations. The coyote does not yet have a name, but as we have plenty of time before it is installed (probably sometime in late 2025, but entirely dependent upon the construction schedule) these neighborhood associations are going to ask members for ideas for a name. They have newsletters with an active following. Hopefully in a year or so we’ll have picked a name. The installation site is the SE corner of Grant and Dodge.
AF: Where will the Coyote Sculpture be installed?
Joe: The installation site is the SE corner of Grant and Dodge.
AF: Was the the community involved in the creation or placement of the sculpture?
Joe: This particular project involved many discussions with the selection committee and their diverse perspectives. Some wanted an interactive experience. Others wanted something visible from the road. We also considered multiple locations and decided on the retention basin because siting the public art in that basin would allow the City to chip in paths, lighting and benches and turn it into a pocket park. After considering many other forms, I suggested a coyote so that it would be visible from Grant Road as you are driving by but also to look good when you walked up close to it. That was a purely practical reason for a tall form that interacts with what is below it.
AF: What was the inspiration behind the artwork?
Joe: The artistic reason for a coyote is that we’ve been seeing more coyotes around town even in daytime. Coyotes fascinate us because they combine so many attributes: playful, vaguely threatening, light on their feet, clever. Having a large coyote along Grant Road feels like ‘rewilding’ and the lush flood retention basin where it lives will probably be home to other life forms as well. The selection committee and the people I’ve met from the neighborhood really like the coyote theme.
Check out the following renderings of the Coyote Sculpture and enjoy a sneak peek of the fabricated piece in the studio!
