As the founder of Public Art Company, Raffi Lehrer infuses joy and curiosity into the lives of those who might not encounter art in their daily routines. Driven by a profound belief in that art should in fact be for the public. The art agency is at the forefront of curating large-scale art installations for the 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Collaborating with festival Art Director Paul Clemente and Goldenvoice, they're presenting immersive and interactive installations that redefine the festival experience, showcasing the intersection of art, technology, and community. He shares, "We all care enough about the fan experience to truly, artfully produce an event and allow you, for three days hopefully, to have an experience that's completely different than the other 362 days out of the year, and it opens us up to possibilities that we wouldn't have known about if we were still in our everyday box."

This year's program features three new works by international artists, architects, and designers, promising to create dynamic spaces for connection, reflection, and envisioning the future: Monarchs: A House in Six Parts by HANNAH reveals a blend of 3-D printing with traditional craftsmanship, bridging digital fabrication and what also naturally occurs in nature. ​​Dancing in the Sky by Morag Myerscough is a true nexus of the shared collective consciousness and the experiences we have yet to know with a plaza that points onwards. Like a cathedral in the desert, Babylon by Nebbia offers an exploration of contrasts, blending age-old architectural elements with futuristic design features.

Lehrer tells us from his trailer in the desert amid weekend two, “I think it's amazing that a bunch of kids get to see all this accessible art and really touch it and feel it and experience it. Hopefully, that gets them excited about art. Maybe art becomes their goal, their first time experiencing anything quite like it.” See here, artist and curator, Raffi Lehrer bring art everywhere he goes.

How did the Public Art Company come to be? Can you speak of its inception?

I was actually working full-time at Golden Voice for five or so years leading up to the pandemic, then I left right before the pandemic and started this company. I've maintained my working relationship with my mentor here, whom I worked under for many years, and I now consult with him throughout the year. He's one of several of my clients through Public Art Company whereas before, I was also involved a lot in the production end of things, helping him produce all of the works on-site with our own internal production team of carpenters, welders, and pavers. 

Now I'm more focused just on the curation process. For every project that you see out here, there are three or four proposals that we didn't do. So, every year, we're producing between 12 and 15 proposals specific to the site, and then producing three to five installations. 

You do sound incredibly busy. But you really are filling people with joy, which is such an earnest effort and so, I'm assuming, feeding to the soul?

It's like leisure and pleasure to me, which I think are two of the most essential parts of human existence. There's really one story for me that speaks to the importance of it more so than any other story I could possibly think of. 

I have a very dear friend who I've known since he was 18, and he's in a wheelchair. He runs ADA consulting for nearly every major festival and event in the country, making that experience for people with disabilities as good as it can possibly be. When we first met, he had just put himself in a wheelchair by drunk driving, so he was broken in every possible way. Then about a year later, we were going to UC Santa Barbara together, and we came out to Coachella. It was the first time he realized he could be in a chair and still have an amazing time. That set him off on this path to do what he does now. 

We all care enough about the fan experience to truly, artfully produce an event and allow you, for three days hopefully, to have an experience that's completely different than the other 362 days out of the year, and it opens us up to possibilities that we wouldn't have known about if we were still in our everyday box. I love getting to work in an atypical context for large-scale art because I think it's more interesting than preaching to the choir and working within a more institutional context. The average age is 25 at the show.

And it's safe to assume a lot of them are not necessarily museum or gallery regulars, right?

They go to concerts, but maybe they just don't think of art as something that would interest them, or they just don't even know that the opportunity is there. I think if we can get even one percent of those kids to think about art and architecture and design and their roles in their lives a bit more…Things don’t have a super clear ROI right off the bat, but you accumulate all of those things together. They have sort of ineffable qualities. 

The art is amazing because not only is it decorating a vast field, but it also provides direction. My specific landmark was to meet at HANNAH's Monarchs: A House in Six Parts if we ever got lost. 

That is a great spot. I mean, they're all pretty easy to find. All the works this year definitely have scale in common. These things act as points of congregation. They help with wayfinding. If you didn't have those things, those vertical elements going 50 to 70 feet up into the air, you would have a little bit less to grasp.

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I was wondering what you were specifically looking for this year when you were curating.

Whenever we're looking for work, I think there has to be a certain visceral quality to it that can hit people immediately. That can be through color, pattern, materiality, the process, the form, or any of these types of things. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you've ever walked into a museum in your life or not. You can just sit there, and it speaks to you on some level and makes you feel something. 

I think the piece by Nebbia (Babylon) is a piece all about contrast because of this stark contrast between the interior and the exterior space. You might see that and be like, “Wow, it's really heavy.” The kids today were even saying, “Oh, that makes me sad.” With Babylon, once the kids walked inside, it was that contrast of the heaviness and the solidity and the dark color and texture of the outside against this big, open, airy space inside, which then completely highlighted the stark difference. 

For HANNAH, I think what immediately attracted us to their work was how they were using technology and exploring the juristic building processes and really pushing the envelope, while still managing to make something incredibly expressive.

I thought that was a beautiful way of showing the future of technology.

For me, it's like an alien cathedral, you know? I know they're out there. I think with all three of the works this year, we were really trying to make them seen. I mean, if aliens looked down and saw those works and they didn't attract them to come down and say “Hi,” then I don't quite know what will.

With Coachella being this social media hub now, has that influenced your curation? Do you think in this contemporary world, the image and how we remember things are more important than the actual experience?

That's a really good question. I think that one can't deny the presence of social media and the effect it has on all of us. Everyone is a photographer now. No, I'm not expressly thinking of what the shot is going to be when we're looking at the work, but there are certain things, certain qualities, that make for good work that will inherently look good to photograph. One thing that I always hammer on with artists is the importance of a legible silhouette. When you're looking at it across the field, it's not just this muddied lump, but it's clearly defined in architectural terms. It's a clearly defined elevation that's legible and clear from a distance. I think all these pieces were very interactive in nature. It's that first experience of walking in and being engulfed in this space that you probably didn't even realize was there, and just that surprise, and then, if you're there at night, you see this multimedia experience of visuals created by Nebbia. Did you make it there?

I was around there when I was watching Lana, and went inside. You're right, I think cathedral is the perfect word. It looks so grand when you look up.

It's crazy, and the acoustics change. It can even be a few degrees warmer inside there because you have some cover, so it has its own little microclimate. In the same way, Hannah is very interactive. All of the towers can be walked into; interactivity certainly does well here. In some of these pieces, simply from the scale itself, interactivity can create its own environment. When you see art in other spaces, it's like, “Stand behind the line, don't get too close,” but with these, you enter their world. I think it's amazing that a bunch of kids get to see all this accessible art and really touch it and feel it and experience it. Hopefully, that gets them excited about art. Maybe art becomes their goal, their first time experiencing anything quite like it.

That's beautiful. My last question for you is, what do you hope to see in the future? What do you see already coming through?

More art everywhere.