To Gillian Christy, blue just made sense.

The artist is making a 12-foot-tall sculpture that will spend at least one year at City Hall Plaza in Portland. Christy works in metal, and many of her large works are chrome and silver. This sculpture is inspired by a swirling strand of seaweed, which exists in nature in shades of brown and green. But when Christy visited the plaza, she thought about the sky above and the ocean nearby. She knew right away what color her piece would be.

“I just thought, ‘Oh, blue,’ ” Christy said.

In June, Christy will install “Winged Kelp” in front of City Hall. The sculpture is the latest project for TEMPOart, a nonprofit that funds temporary art in public spaces in Portland. The sculptures stay for in place for one to two years.

Last year, artists Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein made the two towering egrets that stand on the bank of Back Cove; the piece is called “Dancing for Joy (By the Will of the People).” Previous projects now removed include wooden carvings of mythical creatures on the Western Promenade (“Carousel Cosmos” by Chris Miller) and the hot pink Seussian sculptures in Payson Park (Pamela Moulton’s “Beneath the Forest, Beneath the Sea”).

Laura McDermit joined TEMPOart this winter as the executive director, so this project was already in progress when she started her job. She came to Maine via Pittsburgh and then Wyoming, and said talking to Christy about this sculpture has already helped her learn more about her new home near the ocean.

“What Gillian’s piece does brings this energy and movement to that concrete space in front of the plaza that will hopefully be this invitation for people to explore, to stop for a moment, and think about what the piece is and their own connections to seaweed and kelp,” McDermit said.

UNDERWATER INSPIRATION

Christy, 46, has focused her career on large-scale public art, although most of her work is permanent. She was intrigued by the call for applications from TEMPOart.

“It opened up my mind to start thinking of different materials that could gently move with the wind or, if it’s just temporary, that don’t have to last 50 years as usual,” she said. “It really opened up my imagination.”

Christy is based in Boston but spends summers in Bryant Pond in Maine. Since her family bought that house in 2020, she has gotten involved with the local lake association helping to remove invasive milfoil. Her artistic practice has long been inspired by nature, but that volunteer experience got her more interested in what lives in lakes and oceans.

“I went from always enjoying sculpting leaves and grasses to now thinking about underwater plant life,” she said.

Christy started researching the ocean and the role that seaweed plays in a healthy coastal ecosystem. She found a wealth of information on the website for the Maine Sea Grant, a program at the University of Maine that provides technical and research support to the state’s fisheries and coastal economies. She participated in Maine Seaweed Week this spring, and she’ll be going on a seaweed harvest in May as part of her research for the piece. The sculpture’s namesake is winged kelp — the common name for Alaria esculenta, which is found in Maine.

Christy’s sculpture will be a larger-than-life strand of kelp. A stainless steel spine will twist in a spiral, and vinyl mesh will form the translucent wings. Christy held an event during First Friday in May at Side x Side on Congress Street in Portland, where guests could help hammer the grommets that will be used to attach the vinyl mesh to the sculpture. The material is durable enough to be used for outdoor furniture but still flexible and light. Christy hopes it will help capture the ephemeral quality of underwater photos of seaweed that she studied for the sculpture.

“The piece will be lit from behind, which hopefully adds a little extra ambience to the whole experience of approaching the piece,” she said.

Christy will install the piece before a celebratory opening on June 12. TEMPOart asks artists to develop public programs around their work, and Christy is planning to organize marine science workshops for adults and kids at the site later this year.

“I hope that it really conveys this idea that we as a society need to consider our planet and really advocate for safe ocean waters and do whatever we can to continue learning about seaweed and the things that are in our ocean,” she said.

FEDERAL GRANT LOST

McDermit came to the job this year with two decades of experience and a passion for public art. Her last post was as the executive director of the Laramie Public Art Coalition in Wyoming. The temporary nature of these works also drew her to the nonprofit.

“The idea that it is created for that specific moment, for that specific time and place, is really exciting,” she said. “In public art, there’s this attachment to the permanent, but that’s really important when you’re creating work in a public space to determine what’s going to be important to a community 50 years in the future.”

Every year, the nonprofit pays $25,000 to the selected artist for their work (That artist retains ownership of the piece at the end of the its tenure and can decide its future). Just weeks after McDermit started her new job, she learned that the National Endowment for the Arts had rescinded the $10,000 Challenge America grant TEMPOart received for this year’s project. The Trump administration has cancelled grants of all kinds, including those in the arts and humanities.

Then, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation jointly announced in a new release on May 7 that they would dedicate $800,000 to visual arts programs across the country that lost funding because of the federal government’s cuts. TEMPOart was among the organizations that received $10,000 from the two foundations. Uncertainty remains in federal funding, but these dollars are restored.

“The Warhol Foundation recognizes the essential contributions that small arts organizations make to our cultural lifeblood by giving artists in every corner of the country a platform from which to be seen and heard,” Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation, said. “We want them to know that we see the extremely difficult circumstances under which they are operating and we value and appreciate their work. We are committed to providing some semblance of stability and continuity during this time of unprecedented upheaval.”

“We at the Frankenthaler Foundation are pleased to partner with the Warhol Foundation to support the health of visual arts organizations by stepping forward to assist with these vital and timely funds,” said Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. “While our missions focus support on the visual arts, our shared hope is that this effort may inspire peer funders to support Challenge America grantees working outside of the visual arts, who remain in urgent need of assistance.

Next year will mark the 10th anniversary for TEMPOart.

“Where are the opportunities for more art in our public space?” McDermit said. “I think that exists. So there’s going to be a lot of room for growth and excitement for new projects, so that’s what drew me to come here. And the ocean didn’t hurt too.”

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IF YOU GO

WHAT: TEMPOart opening celebration for “Winged Kelp” by Gillian Christy

WHERE: City Hall Plaza, 389 Congress St., Portland

WHEN: June 12 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

HOW MUCH: Free

INFO: For more information, visit tempoartmaine.org or follow TEMPOart on Facebook and Instagram.

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