Mari
Gardner
PUBLIC ARTIST + STRATEGIST
Public art takes shape long before it takes its place
American Visionary Art Museum
Baltimore, Maryland
About me
I've spent more than two decades making public art, developing community-based and participatory projects, and building arts programs and the processes that support them.
I've created work across the United States, Brazil, Eswatini, and Botswana, from large-scale permanent commissions to community-based art and participatory media. My permanent work includes commissions for the U.S. Department of State, the American Visionary Art Museum, and the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences.
Alongside my own practice, I've developed and led arts programs, and was director of the Jersey City Mural Arts Program, the largest mural program in New Jersey.
Today, through Pangea Projects, I work with municipalities, institutions, artists, developers, and communities, from early planning and strategy through commissioning, fabrication, installation, and what happens after. The work ranges from public art and cultural programs to art consulting and curation for residential, commercial, and institutional spaces.
I've worked from a boom lift and sat across the table from city leaders. That range gives me an understanding of both the creative and practical sides of the work: what artists need to create work grounded in a place; how communities can have a genuine say in shaping what comes into their public spaces; and how aesthetic, material, and technical decisions carry an idea through fabrication and installation.
Public art shouldn't be something that happens to a place. It should come from one.
Public art · Cultural programs · Art consulting
Services
Commissioned Public Art
Site-specific artwork from concept through installation, across a range of scales and in public and private settings. Art glass, mosaic, steel, mixed media, wall-based, freestanding, and suspended works.
Public Art Project Management
End-to-end management of public art projects, from early site feasibility and budgeting through artist selection, contracting, design review, community engagement, fabrication, and installation. This includes working between artists and the build side, producing the drawings and documentation that architects, engineers, contractors, and municipal staff can act on.
Public Art Program & Cultural Strategy
Development and restructuring of public art and community-based arts programs for municipalities and institutions. Cultural strategy, governance and advisory structures, artist selection systems, budgets and funding frameworks, policies and contracts, and long-term program development.
Art Consulting & Curation
Planning and curation for residential, commercial, hospitality, institutional, public, and mixed-use environments, from defining art opportunities through artist and artwork selection, procurement, placement, and installation.
Community Engagement, Cultural Programming & Participatory Projects
Development of community engagement strategies and participatory arts and cultural programs, from workshops, exhibitions, screenings, and discussions to collaborative public art and media projects. Includes artist mentorship and professional development.
Method
Good art doesn't guarantee a good public art project.
Projects usually fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the art: unclear decision-making, thin contracts, unrealistic budgets, no assessment of substrate or structural capacity, no plan for what comes after.
Art in the built environment rarely comes with a standard set of instructions. Ambitious ideas bring unusual material, structural, and installation challenges. Permanent work needs to be engineered backward from how it will be installed and how it will hold up over time.
Whether the art is in public space, a residential development, a workplace, or an institutional setting, it has to belong where it lands. That means understanding the place and how the work integrates with it, aesthetically and technically.
It also carries a responsibility to the people whose spaces it enters. How people are involved is part of that, but there is no single formula. I look at who to bring in, where their input can genuinely shape the project, and what kind of participation makes sense.
The system is part of the work.
Every engagement starts with the same conversation: what are you trying to do, who is it for, and what do you have to work with? Goals, capacity, budget, timeline, constraints. From there, I build the process or operating framework the work needs, whether that's a single commission, an art plan for a development, or a public art program.
For programs, that framework includes the practical pieces that make them function: governance, artist selection, contracts and rights, site and permitting processes, documentation, community engagement, and long-term maintenance. Then I test it on real projects, keep what works, and change what doesn't.
The goal isn't only a successful project. It's a process you can understand, repeat, and build on.
Artist
Behind the strategy, I'm an artist
My commissioned work spans glass, mosaic, steel, and mixed media at architectural scale, made in the studio and with fabrication partners. Making it informs everything else I do.
Participation has taken many forms throughout my practice: hand-cut stained-glass mosaic work at the American Visionary Art Museum, made over two years with court-affected youth in Maryland; a memorial sculpture built by teenagers in Seattle; a glass and steel sculpture in West Virginia set in a reflecting pool tiled by the community; and participatory film and photography projects in Eswatini, Brazil, Botswana, and Baltimore.
Get in touch
Public art marks a place as cared for.
Whether you're planning a commission, building a public art program, curating art for a new space, or figuring out where to begin, let's talk.
mari@marigardner.com