SaludArte merges public art with public health

The Pima County Health Department is launching Salud Arte, which aims to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through public art.

The program is a community-driven initiative and a collaboration between the Pima County Health Department, the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona, and Pima County’s five supervisory districts.

Funding for SaludArte comes from a larger grant awarded to the Pima County Health Department. As part of that award, the department has set aside five $30,000 awards for the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona to distribute to artists who will create a temporary public art exhibit based on the experiences of Pima County residents during the pandemic.

The project will consist of a partnership between the five selected artists and a group of participants from each of the districts in Pima County, chosen to relay their experiences during the pandemic. The final art product for each district will hinge on a series of five meetings between each artist and the group of respondents they have been selected to represent. The first meeting will begin sometime this month.

The final product will culminate in a temporary public art exhibition located in the respondent’s ZIP code. Sadie Shaw, the community design manager for SaludArte, said the results will be more unexpected than a mural or a sculpture. There are even opportunities in Salud Arte for a chef, she added.

“This grant opportunity is very much tailored to interdisciplinary artists,” Shaw said. “Typically, a public art project would consist of murals and sculptures, but for this particular grant, the nature of (the project and the) temporary aspect lends itself to interdisciplinary artists… Musicians, poets, performance artists – It’s definitely more open.”

Although the public art project through SaludArte will be temporary, there is always an opportunity for the projects to become permanent, Shaw said. But that would have to be done by the artist after the conclusion of the project by either placing the work on private property or going through the proper channels to have the artwork accepted into the county’s Public Art Collection.

Respondents who participate in the SaludArte program will be compensated $100 for each of the five meetings they attend throughout the project. They do not need any artistic background or expertise to participate, but to be eligible, they must come from the ZIP code designated within their district. Those ZIP codes are 85741 (District 1), 85713 (District 2), 85321 (District 3), 85710 (District 4), and 85746 (District 5).

Shaw can’t predict what themes the public art projects will follow, but she said the biggest trend she’s seen is that respondents are hesitant to participate because they don’t think of themselves as artists. But SaludArte hinges on participants from those specific ZIP codes to highlight the importance and intersectionality of public health in Pima County.

Each of the preselected ZIP codes respondents may reside in has been identified by the Pima County Health Department and the Arts Foundation as areas that experienced the most profound impacts of COVID-19. While they may not be the ZIP codes with the highest death rates, explained Shaw, they are areas where other external forces influenced that community’s experience of the pandemic, such as socioeconomic status, race or other factors.

Shaw said most of the 15 respondents have already been selected by the Arts Foundation, but the application for artists remains open. The deadline for artist applications is Jan. 12, and so far, Shaw has seen some impressive ideas cross her desk.

“Just from the applications I’ve seen that have come in so far (this will be) unlike any other opportunity that I’ve experienced. I’ve served on many public art panels, being a former member of the Public Art and Community Design Committee. I think (SaludArte) going to be really interesting and something that the city has never seen before,” she said.

Salud Arte

Information about SaludArte: https://engagepimacounty.civilspace.io/en/projects/saludarte

Application for Artists: https://artsfoundtucson.submittable.com/submit

This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2023.