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• Wanna Paint a Utility Box? Eureka is the Place to Live Your Dreams

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It’s been six years since the city of Eureka launched its program to adorn those big, ugly utility boxes that stand on sidewalks all around the city, and by now most Eurekans are accustomed to having those spaces decorated by artists, hundreds of whom have dressed all of them up with little mini-murals.

Now the city, armed with a new grant from Caltrans, is ready to redo a bunch of those boxes — basically, all the ones along the Highway 101 corridor through Eureka. Work is scheduled to begin on that in the spring. And some of the artists involved are currently a little peeved that their work may be painted over.

“My concern is that there is much really fine art that they are planning on painting over,” writes muralist Debbi Sholes in a letter to the Outpost. “My initial reaction was that there seems to be a large lack of respect for the time and energy to create many truly fine art pieces.  Would this not qualify as a vandalism of our local art?”

That’s certainly the opposite of the intention, according to Sarah West, an economic development coordinator with the city of Eureka who is heading up the project.

A few days ago, West sent an email to all of the artists who currently have murals up on the utility boxes targeted for repainting. Though some of the artists were alarmed, the email noted that the city has opened a special Call for Proposals for people who already have art up on the boxes. If they like, artists can simply re-submit their original plans, and if the Arts and Culture Commission chooses those designs again they may not have to do anything more than touch up their original work.

Submissions are due by the end of the year, and can be sent in via this link. Proposals must conform to Caltrans numerous transportation art guidelines — for instance: no business logos, no advertisement, and no words whatsoever — and artists must be available to perform the work in the spring, whenever the rains slow down. There is a $1,000-per-project stipend available.

Though you’d probably think that public art as something designed to last longer than five or six years, the utility boxes are kind of a special case, according to West. Being working pieces of equipment, they do get a lot of wear and tear, and being at street level means they are prone to graffiti and other forms of defacement.

Though the utility box project was pretty novel at the time, one of the city’s original descriptions of the program foresaw that the murals would be more temporary than those you might see on the side of a building. Utility box murals would be maintained for a minimum of three years, it reads, and ones in the downtown core would be “refreshed” every three to five years to “promote economic vitality by attracting new and visiting populations.”

Nevertheless, West said maintaining good relations with the region’s artists is a top city priority, and she’s encouraging existing muralists who have any concerns about the program to give her a ring at 441-4178. 

“We want to be as sensitive to their beautiful work as we can be,” West said.