Steel work

It’s 30 feet tall and made of seven red metal poles — jutting toward the sky at different angles — that support a shimmering net of stainless steel cables and reflective disks.

It’s Eugene’s latest public sculpture.

But what, if anything, does it represent?

“That’s part of the attraction — what the hell is that thing?” said Tim Smith, a member of the city of Eugene’s public art committee, who served on the selection committee for the above referenced piece, titled “Bountiful” by its creator, Dexter artist Lee Imonen.

The $100,000 art project, intended to honor Native American net and weir fishing in the Northwest and part of the city’s new $5.6 million Delta Ponds pedestrian and bicycle bridge, was paid for with federal stimulus money.

The city received $1.2 million in stimulus money to help pay for the bridge that crosses Delta Highway just north of Valley River Center. But when bids for the bridge came back much lower than initially estimated, the city was faced with having to hand back to the federal government some of the earmarked stimulus money, according to city civil engineer Michelle Cahill. Instead of returning a portion of the funds, the city decided to look at adding elements it previously had thought it could not afford for the project.

Although the city has an ordinance requiring that 1 percent of costs for public construction projects be allocated for art, it does not apply to transportation-related projects, said Isaac Marquez, the city’s public art program manager.

So art was not initially considered for the Delta Ponds bridge project that is scheduled to open for use in November and will be publicly dedicated by city officials Saturday, he said.

Faced with having to send some of the stimulus money back, the city decided to apply to the federal government to use the excess stimulus money for a sculpture, an island crossing for pedestrians and bicyclists on Goodpasture Island Road, better lighting for the bridge, and powder-coated railings, according to Cahill.

The city received about eight proposals for art in January, Smith said. Imonen’s proposal “did the best job of meeting the criteria we had selected,” he said.

“It’s also in scale with the bridge (and) took into account the widest audience.”

Most of the other proposals, including a cast bronze sculpture of clasped hands on a pedestal, a series of basalt columns with sculpted metal birds on top of each, and a treehouse that was “sort of a log cabin on stilts,” were much smaller in scale, Smith said.

Imonen’s piece is large enough to be seen from a distance, especially by motorists driving past on Goodpasture Island Road at 40 mph, Marquez said.

“Other (proposals) didn’t address that,” Smith said. “This will draw people’s eyes. There are thousands of people who drive by who will get a little arty hit each day. I like that aspect of this.”

“We also liked the fact that the sculpture is so different from anything else in the city’s public art collection,” Smith said.

Imonen, a sculpture instructor at Lane Community College, built the piece in his Dexter studio with the help of assistant Eric Shultz. It was erected last week by workers for Mowat Construction, the Clackamas firm building the bridge.

Imonen said his idea of the Native American fishing net, with the poles representing sticks pushing out of a muddy river flat, is a metaphor that expresses the city’s long-term investment in restoring the Delta Ponds wetlands and fish passage and their connection to the nearby Willamette River. The billowing net represents a “swollen catch” of salmon and other fish native to the Northwest, he said.

Another reason the selection committee liked Imonen’s proposal is that it fits in with the city’s 2010 public art plan, a vision that calls for art integrated into urban design and more large-scale pieces at prominent locations, Marquez said.

“The materials seemed to make sense here,” Imonen said.