Client: City of Santa Rosa, CA

Overview

Unum is a rolling landscape sculpture, rounded and honed into a symbol of community. Designed for The Old Courthouse Square, a public square in Santa Rosa, California, Unum is a signature artwork by celebrated sculpture artist Blessing Hancock to emphasize innovation, diversity and engagement in the heart of Sonoma Wine Country.

An illuminated, volumetric enclosure of light and language, the 12’ x 12’ stainless steel sculpture features internal LED lighting to offer different daytime and dusk-to-dark experiences.

Unum, Latin for ‘oneness or together,’ sits on the unceded territorial land of the Southern Pomo People and honors the land itself and the people who have tended it throughout time. The sculpture’s surface pattern represents the community’s aspirations, through text collected during public outreach opportunities. The text is cut into the piece in 30 of the most common languages in Santa Rosa, identified through US Census Bureau data. Through its design and words, the sculpture highlights the area’s unique location and ties to the local ecosystem and culture.

Goals

The City of Santa Rosa wanted to create a unique, community-centric experience for residents and visitors at the renovated Old Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa. The city sought out Blessing Hancock to create an original public art sculpture for the historic square that would capture this vision and bring it to life.

Community engagement is at the heart of Blessing’s art. For each work, she merges her artistic vision with insights from the local community to pull out its story. For Unum, Blessing and the City of Santa Rosa launched a community engagement campaign to solicit words to be included on the artwork. Through in-person and online surveys, as well as youth engagement at summer camps, more than 400 responses were collected and the words that appeared most were selected for inclusion in the sculpture.

Since being unveiled to the public, Unum has become a symbol of community and peace in Santa Rosa. In 2023, for instance, members of the community gathered at the sculpture for a vigil to remember victims of recent California mass shootings and the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

Process

Blessing is a standout in her field for the innovative path she took in the sculpture space, choosing to bring together experts in fabrication, engineering and installation, so she can solely focus on her creative process.

The majority of Blessing’s contemporaries are from architectural backgrounds who run collaborative design studios that often use computer-generated algorithms to design sculptures. Blessing takes a different approach by designing her pieces alone then subcontracting the builds to various fabricators across the U.S. to ensure the right team is bringing her artistic vision to life.

For Unum, Blessing designed the piece and managed the community engagement process, then worked with fabricator and installer Gizmo Art Production and Bryan Starr of Tarantino Engineering Consultants to build the 12’ x 12’ illuminated, stainless steel sculpture.