'Spiraling Serenity': Portsmouth selects public art for Peirce Island

PORTSMOUTH — The City Council has approved a public art sculpture/installation for Peirce Island called “Spiraling Serenity.”

The council voted unanimously to approve the hiring of DiBari & Associates of Miami, Florida, to “design, construct and install” the public art feature on Peirce Island, based on the recommendation of the city’s Public Art Review Committee.

The committee, in a presentation to the council, stated the “artwork aims to blend the beauty of natural patterns with the natural settings of the park to welcome the community and create an engaging connection with the space.”

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The cost of the contract with DiBari & Associates for "Spiraling Serenity" was approved for $140,000, which comes from the city’s Percent For Art program.

The program was established in 2006 to increase the number of significant works of art in the city available for the enjoyment and enlightenment of citizens and visitors, according to city documents.

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The city’s public art ordinance dictates for each major publicly funded construction project, the city allocates 1 percent of the project budget up to $150,000, according to city documents.

The approved Peirce Island public art project stems from the upgraded $92 million wastewater treatment plant , which was celebrated upon completion in 2021 as the most expensive public project in Portsmouth’s history.

'Welcoming' art public can 'engage with'

PARC Chair Christine Dwyer said DiBari & Associates has done public art “installations worldwide.”

She said the project “is attempting to use the natural … settings of the park to be a welcoming artwork that you can engage with.”

“They really picked up on respecting the natural environment within Peirce Island,” she said. “It’s based on a leaf form … and in the small spaces not done yet, will eventually be shapes of the leaves of trees that are on Peirce Island.”

She explained that when you’re looking at the public art “from the side, you’ll walk into it as a spiral.”

They’ll be a stone dust path around the sculpture, which will make it handicapped accessible, Dwyer said.

“While we have not … proposed outdoor lighting for it, that could be something that would happen,” she added.

Picking a location on Peirce Island

Dwyer reported that PARC first worked on where the public art would go, noting “Peirce Island’s a large site.”

“We selected the area that is close to the first parking lot right after you cross the little footbridge,” she said. “It’s near the pool, near the playground, it’s visible from lots of locations.”

Dwyer acknowledged “when you look at a piece of art like that, it takes a little while to unpack what was in the artist’s mind.”

“There’s a lot of symbolism that’s involved in this,” Dwyer said. “It’s based on the golden spiral … that you see frequently in nature. It’s one of the patterns that’s a natural form that’s found many different ways in nature.”

“And it evokes harmony and balance,” she added.

She told the council that “the reason that this (proposal) rose to the top was a real organic response to the natural environment.”

“We thought it would appeal to children and adults,” Dwyer said. “Unfortunately we have very few pieces of art in the city that appeal to children, so this being near the playground and the pool, we wanted it to be something you could see children running into the spiral and running outside the spiral, and be intrigued by it.”

They received 22 responses from the Request For Proposals they released on the public art, before narrowing it to four finalists and then to one, she said.

The length along “the bottom of the spiral is 22 feet, and at the highest point of the spiral when you go inside, it would be eleven feet,” Dwyer said.

She explained “a lot of the money and a lot of the work” on the public art feature will be “subsurface.”

“The very first set of activities are going to be about engineering, just to determine exact placement because they’ll be a full concrete base underneath with a post that makes the spiral - while it looks elegant - … very sturdy, especially in the environment of Peirce Island.”

The material for the installation is steel, and then “coated with Epoxy and then a UV paint on it,” she said.

“You’ll notice it’s painted to blend in with the environment, the darker green at the base, moving up the blue color of the sky,” Dwyer added.

City Councilor Kate Cook credited PARC with the process they went through, saying she came away “really impressed.”

Mayor Deaglan McEachern called it “a great piece of art.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 'Spiraling Serenity': Portsmouth selects public art for Peirce Island