CODAzine

Travel Companions is a 24-foot public art sculpture by conceptual artist Matthew Mazzotta, officially unveiled in August 2026 at Richmond International Airport (RIC) in Virginia. Located in the newly renovated Center Core Plaza between the North and South Daily Parking Garages, the installation serves as the airport's very first piece of public art.

When CODAworx named this year’s class of Creative Revolutionaries in January, the designation was less a verdict than an invitation, a prompt to look more closely at artists whose work was already reshaping what public art could be and do. Now well into the year, the call remains all the more urgent to keep this conversation going.

Walk, bike, or wander long enough through San Francisco these days, and you're bound to stumble into something monumental — a shimmering serpent blowing bubbles in Golden Gate Park, a bronze woman in mid-motion at Embarcadero Plaza, a pair of oversized lips greeting visitors on the waterfront. These aren't one-off installations.

Conceived as both an urban sculpture and a piece of public furniture, the installation draws inspiration from the Indigenous history of the region, celebrating encounter, memory, and collective space through a contemporary design language. Encontros is a public artwork created by Estudio Guto Requena for Sorocaba, the hometown of Guto Requena. Its circular, spiral form symbolizes encounter, exchange, and the crossroads of the Indigenous peoples who historically inhabited and crossed the region.

As people who work in this industry know, there are a thousand reasons for a town to commission a work of public art. Sometimes it's to beautify a neglected plaza, to strategically spearhead the economic revitalization of an area, or to give identity to a neighborhood trying to foster community. But, in a rarer and more recent phenomenon, small-to-mid-size towns in America are investing in public art as a bolster to their tourism industry.

Every year, fabrication studio Rhbu offers thousands of dollars of fabrication services to help public artists realize their projects. This year’s applications are open now, and CODAworx is happy to share this opportunity with our community. Click here to learn more about this program. At Rbhu Engineering, we take immense pride in our commitment to community service. This year, we are providing $12,000 worth of pro-bono engineering services with Rbhu Gives Back.

An Empirical Analysis of Issuing Entity Profiles, Capital Allocation, and Artist Participation Metrics Across Budget Tiers (2024–2026 Q2) In our previous report, Public Art Open Calls: 2025–2026 Trend Analysis, we covered the macro landscape of public art commissioning—examining broad project budgets and highlighting how type of work such as sculpture, murals, and architectural glass shape funding allocations.

This September, when the CODAworx community gathers in Santa Fe for CODAsummit, it will be landing in a place with a data-backed claim to being the most creatively concentrated city in America. A new analysis from IQ2 Analytics founder Peter Zandan makes the case in a report commissioned around a deceptively simple question: is Santa Fe really the country's creative capital?

Among the most anticipated experiences at CODAsummit Santa Fe are the Artist Showcases, spotlighting some of the most compelling voices working in public art today. By popular demand, we've expanded the program this year from 8 to 12 showcases — more talent, more perspectives, more inspiration. Join us to see and hear from every one of these artists who come from far and wide to join us.

Houstonians have cultivated a profound appreciation for the public art program at Discovery Green. Since launching in 2008, Discovery Green has exhibited 26 temporary large-scale public art installations, presenting each free of charge. Millions of visitors have encountered these transformative works, making Discovery Green a key player in the cultural life of the city. For many young visitors, these installations serve as an inaugural encounter with the art world.