Artist Matt Babcock stands next to his sculpture of a mountain lion on Lark Avenue with Pam and Bryce Babcock. The sculpture, unveiled on Oct. 4, is the second in a series of five Babcock is creating to be installed at gateway entrances to Los Gatos. (Photo by Hannah Kanik)
There’s a new cat in town, in the form of a 5 1/2-foot, 80 pound sculpture made out of aluminum.
The sculpture, designed by Seattle-based artist Matt Babcock, is the second of five “gateway” artworks to be installed at Los Gatos’ most common entrances to welcome people into town and boost the local public art presence, said Maureen Javey, chair of the Los Gatos Arts and Culture Commission.
The new installation sits on Lark Avenue at the median of the freeway entrance and exit adjacent to the North 40 development. The beige cat is scaling a navy blue mountain adorned with the words “Los Gatos.”
“This project, which has come together slowly…really is intended to be the spark to ignite a more robust public art program in our community,” Javey said.
The first gateway sculpture, also by Babcock, was installed in May 2021 at Los Gatos-Saratoga Road at the Hwy 17 entrance.
The project started back in 2015, and the town awarded Babcock the contract to design all five of the sculptures in 2019.
“It’s slow because the wheels of government turn slow,” Javey said. “It took longer than we thought, but I, for one, accept the slow pace, just because I know we’ll get to where we want to be, even though it’s not the pace we want to be at.”
The town funded the first two installations with $25,000. The Arts and Culture Commission is set to present a proposal to town council in the coming weeks to establish a permanent public art fund to pay for the remaining three sculptures.
Babcock said each sculpture will be the same — a big cat on top of a sign that reads “Los Gatos” to honor the namesake of the town— though each one will have a different color scheme. The Lark Avenue cat is scaling a blue mountain, while the Los Gatos-Saratoga Road installation’s mountain is sage green.
“Part of my goal as an artist is to help people connect with things that are larger than themselves, like the natural world, and that often ends up being sculptures of animals,” Babcock said. “So when I saw this call for Los Gatos and read about where the name of the town came from, well it seemed like a no-brainer: We need a mountain lion.”
The arts and culture commission got a few dozen responses to its bid from artists as far away as Argentina. They chose three of those submissions to present to the town and put it up to the public for a hearing.
Babcock, who attended that hearing, said he was so surprised to see so many residents at the town council meeting.
“I’ve been to a dozen (council meetings], and this was the first time more than one or two people from the public showed up,” Babcock said. “The room was basically full. There were a lot of people who wanted to see the proposals and have a voice.”
The arts and culture commission is also asking residents to fill out an online public art survey to help the commission make decisions about future public art projects.
Originally published at Hannah Kanik