Downtown Redwood (Deadwood) City comes alive with public art

The three shadows beneath the bike rack are actually a three-piece robot band, and the shadow in the shade of a stumpy fire plug is a fireman carrying the wrench used to open it. “Shadows aren’t something you really think about until you see something unusual or interesting happening,” says Belanger, 37. “Shadow Art,” as the installation is called, is just the first in a series of permanent public artworks financed by business owners who have taxed themselves to form the Redwood City Improvement Association, partly to bring art to a downtown corridor that could use it. The first commission by the association was for Bart Kresa to create a rotating series of 15-minute light shows projected onto the old courthouse building that houses the San Mateo County History Museum. Called “Magic Lantern,” it screens Tuesdays evenings at dusk, then again in darkness. Peyton is one of two contract curators overseeing artworks that include turning public utility boxes into whimsical paintings and coloring a drab back alley with a row of murals. The new public art program has been so popular that the City Council will consider a San Francisco-like “percent for art,” tax on downtown developers at its June 13 meeting. Peyton cribbed the idea for “Shadow Art” from an installation involving parking meters she saw in Long Beach and set up a competition for a $10,000 commission. Eight artists entered, and it was won by Belanger, who lives in San Carlos with his wife and daughter, and commutes to his day job as a graphic designer in Fremont. After Belanger got the commission, he and Peyton walked downtown from the County Jail to the courthouse dome, and from the main library to the Caltrain depot. Belanger resisted painting shadows under standard parking meters — as too derivative — and never considered painting them beneath the two landmark archways that proclaim Redwood City: “The theme of the project is cartoons, robots and whimsical creatures,” he says, while on a walking tour of the sidewalk. There is a concentration of toy train shadows under the handrail at the train station, but otherwise the renderings are scattered.