North St. Paul City Council — Transcript
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Story
North St. Paul advances public art initiatives despite lack of quorum
Utility Box Art Program
Arts Events and Programming
Spoken Word Event Relocation
Budget and Funding Discussions
City-Wide Community Events and Services
Votes (4)
Public Art Project Updates
The commission reviewed progress on public art. The City Council approved the penny press expenditure, and staff is collecting art for the vendor. A new initiative for a monument marking the 45th parallel, an idea from Commissioner Sharon Clark Williams, received informal approval to proceed with planning. Details regarding design and exact placement within the city (e.g., southern side, near parks or trails) are yet to be finalized. Laura String was absent, so concrete stamps and sidewalk poetry were not discussed.
Utility Box Art Program
Two new projects for utility box art were announced. One is a photography-focused project planned for Silver Lake, which has received a 'go ahead' for the call for artists. The second is a broader media project, 'the good life in Minnesota,' which will soon issue a call for artists once staff approvals are finalized. These projects aim to diversify the public art displays in the city.
Art Cart and Art Night Events
The Art Cart program is progressing, with contracts sent to Kid Create and volunteers secured for upcoming events (Ashley on May 22nd, Tom on July 9th). Decisions are still needed for the specific activity for Big Truck Night and the feasibility/budget for a community art event at the Autumn Arts Festival. Recent Art Night activities, including a canvas painting session with Lisa Richie and cookie/candle making, were successful and well-attended, with both cookie night and candle making events now fully booked.
Community Spoken Word Event
A proposal for a spoken word event, initially slated for Big Truck Night, received a preference to be relocated to the Autumn Arts Festival. Commissioners Laura and Eliza will work on details, with Tom and Ashley serving as liaisons to the festival organizers. The relocation is seen as beneficial for fostering a more performance-oriented atmosphere, and there's an interest in collaborating with North High English classes to engage students.
Notable Quotes (9)
it was great. I think uh Tom did a fantastic job. He had some really great photos of the last couple of years of the commission and all of the work that we have created and put together so far um as a group. And then the plans for the penny press we talked about the council approved um that expenditure. So now we're in the process of getting the art collected to send to the vendor and have that uh go through that process.
So, we have proposed that we take advantage of our unique geographical location and put a monument that we are at the 45th parallel halfway between the North Pole and the equator. We've gotten a thumbs up on that. So, I'll go ahead with getting more of the details down, buttoning down um how to get actual monument made, design ideas and so forth and get that going with the city.
It kind of goes at an angle through the city and it goes through the southern part of Casey Park and it goes along the Gateway Trail. So, those are like three key locations that are like right near that line.
Okay, with the utility boxes, we are going to do one down at Casey, not Casey, I excuse me, Silver Lake, and that is going to be a photography project. So, it'll be something a little bit different than we have been doing recently. Uh, we've got the go ahead on that call for artists together and we will proceed with that.
We've got the another idea, the the good life in Minnesota. That is a optional media except for photography. Obviously, if you want to do photography, you do the photography one. So, it could be any kind of media, any kind of style, but it has to be representative of Minnesota in a positive way.
the the one thing I think we have I guess we have to decide or commit to what activity we're going to do for big truck night, right? If we're going to do rocks or something else. And then I think we need to figure out if we can um or how it would work to do the community art event for Autumn Arts Festival, whether there's budget to do that with the festival slashevents city budget. I guess that's a Tom question or Ashley or Ava.
oh, art night. We had um a lovely art night with Lisa Richie who um ran that. She volunteered her time and she had us do these uh canvases. She had a bunch of stencils and we painted on top of stencils which was very fun. Everyone got to do two canvases and she had the whole palette of colors.
Um, so I did send the proposal for that to Jordan and it came back that there is a preference that the spoken word happen at the Autumn Arts Festival instead of at the big truck night, which is fine with me. So, um, yeah, when that when I get together with Laura and Eliza, then we will work on some of the details for that and connect with it would be Tom and Ashley who would be the liaison to the autumn art festival.
I think too it'll be more of like a performance versus big truck night. you know, there's a lot of people and I guess kind of the festival people are walking around too, but we've got more of like a people usually expect that there's a sit down performance or something or the other.
Ordinances & Resolutions (2)
Internal document or tool used by the commission, referenced by Carrie Neto for public art project updates.
Published by the St. Paul Arts Collective, featuring 100 Minnesota artists including Amanda Black, available for free download.