Laura McDermit will serve as TEMPOart’s first full-time executive director. Contributed / Laura McDermit

The Portland public art nonprofit TEMPOart recently appointed its first full-time executive director as the organization looks to grow.

Laura Zorch McDermit took on the leadership of the nonprofit at the beginning of February, continuing her career in accessible arts administration.

“I’ve been in the arts for over for 20 years now, in museums and other spaces,” McDermit said. “And public art, I think, is just so powerful and essential to just our experiences of place.

“I think temporary public art can also be really powerful because it’s speaking to a specific moment in time. So I was just really drawn to sort of every aspect of the place and what the organization has been doing for the last 10 years.”

McDermit, 41, will be paid a salary of $80,000 in her new role.

She had previously served as the executive director of the Laramie Wyoming Public Art Coalition since 2020, championing fair payment for artists and innovating projects in public space. Also in Wyoming, she was on the creative team of High Iron, a traveling public artwork highlighting immigrant stories of rail labor across the state. She assumed the TEMPOart position while working remotely in Wyoming and will be moving to Portland in March.

TEMPOart board President Meg Adams said in a press release that McDermit’s “passion for public art and her deep understanding of how art can shape and strengthen communities make her an ideal fit for this role.”

Since it was founded in 2014, TEMPOart has commissioned public art in Portland. Often partnering with other educational and cultural institutions, installations are temporary – often lasting between one and two years – and aim to foster community for all ages. Sending out requests for proposals, the selected artists are typically paid $25,000 to complete the public work. Recent TEMPOart installations in Portland include a “carousel” of colorful monsters on the Western Promenade, hot pink netted sculptures in Payson Park, and two towering bamboo egrets on the Back Cove Trail.

Two members of TEMPOart’s board stand in front of the new public art installation along the Back Cove trail on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. Brianna Soukup / Portland Press Herald file

Prior to her time in Wyoming, McDermit spent more than 15 years in Pittsburgh in public programing at Carnegie Museum of Art and Office of Public Art (now Shiftworks) and served as co-chair of programming at the Public Art Exchange, the leading network in public art. McDermit has a master’s degree in arts management from Carnegie Mellon University.

“Having someone with (McDermit’s) ability and experience lead TEMPOart has been a longtime dream of mine,” said TEMPOart founder Alice Spencer, in the press release.

McDermit and her husband, Matt McDermit, have spent time in Maine previously and are looking forward to moving to Portland, she said. As the co-author of a blog and three books about Pittsburgh’s food scene, McDermit said the restaurants of Portland are particularly exciting to her.

“One of the reasons when I was like, ‘OK, we could live in Portland,’ is because of the great food scene there,” said McDermit.

“So I’m really excited,” she continued. “I’ve been to Portland a few times, and each time I’ve been incredibly impressed with the community and the food is great. So stoked on that.”