State Street Campus Garage/Hawthorne Court Public Art Project Meet & Greet

media release: The city of Madison is inviting three finalists to propose designs for public art in the new State Street Campus Garage and adjacent Hawthorne Court.  

The call for artists received a large amount of interest, resulting in 66 eligible submissions from around the world and locally. The finalists were chosen by the Madison Arts Commission following the recommendation of the State Street Campus Garage/Hawthorne Court Ad Hoc Public Art Committee.

The committee was looking for applicants with experience creating large-scale vibrant public art projects that use, incorporate, or play with light. The Committee selected the top three scoring applicants to proceed as finalists for the design phase.

"Thank you to every single artist that applied to our ambitious Percent for Art redevelopment project. Madison would be lucky to have any one of our impressive applicants at the helm, and we're beyond grateful they took so much time out of their busy practices to curate such thoughtful applications. Picking only three finalists of 66 extremely qualified artist and design teams from around the world was a delightful challenge for our committee, and we're confident the Madison community will be just as delighted by our selections." TL Luke, chair of the State Street Campus Garage/Hawthorne Court Public Art Committee

The three finalists selected to advance to the design phase of the process are Matthew Mazzotta, STUDIOKCA, and Area C.

On Friday, November 14, 2025, from 5:30-6:45 pm, the Chazen Museum of Art will host a community meet & greet with the finalists. Join us to hear brief presentations about their artistic practice and learn more about the project site and design process.

Matthew Mazzotta works at the intersection of art, activism, and urbanism. His projects integrate civic participation and social engagement into the built environment and reveal how spaces have the potential to become sites for intimate, radical, and meaningful exchanges. He begins projects with a temporary listening space — Outdoor Living Room — where he captures voices from local people. Matthew received his BFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology. He is a TED Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Grantee, a Smithsonian Artist in Research, and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.

STUDIOKCA is an architecture and design firm based in Brooklyn, New York, led by Wisconsin native Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang. Their practice explores the ways in which context and locality offer opportunities to design objects and spaces that respond to program needs and environmental conditions. They are interested in how materials can be crafted or purposed to solve a problem, shape a narrative, create a sense of place, or offer unique solutions that resonate with sites. Jason was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Madison. He received his Bachelor of Arts in architecture and history at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Lesley was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture with a specialization in mathematics from Columbia University. Both Lesley and Jason received their Master's in Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. In 2012, they co-founded STUDIOKCA.

AREA C Projects is a Providence, Rhode Island-based public art practice consisting of Erik Carlson and Erica Carpenter. Drawing on backgrounds in multimedia installation, architecture, audio composition, performance and experimental technique, they create public artworks that reveal unexpected points of commonality in our shared surroundings. Since 2010, they have worked with communities and institutions to create enduring permanent artworks for municipal plazas, transit hubs, libraries and universities. Erik Carlson has over 15 years of public art practice and 14 years of architectural experience. Erica Carpenter has a background in spatially driven poetics and helps shape the team’s conceptual process. They work in a broad array of media including glass, wood, metal, light, and text – sometimes applying these analog elements on their own, sometimes in combination with digital media – and often using community outreach or archival materials to deepen ties to local life and culture.  

The finalists will develop design proposals that use light but are also equally visible at night and during the day. Their work must be integrated with the design of the new State Street Campus Garage, including the regional bus terminal and adjacent Hawthorne Court. The Committee hopes the design proposals are reflective of Madison’s unique character, diversity, and values.

Design proposals are due January 13, 2026. The city will then share the proposals and open a community survey. We anticipate the State Street Campus Garage/Hawthorne Court Ad Hoc Public Art Committee will review presentations from finalists in February 2026 and propose a recommendation to the Madison Arts Commission at their February 2026 meeting.

The selection will likely be announced in March 2026. Installation is planned for Fall 2026.