OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - “The geometry is pretty critical,” said Dave Waters, vice president of Puritan Manufacturing in Omaha. His company is building the structure of the circular sculpture that’s intended to be a signature piece of art in front of Lincoln’s Pinnacle Bank Arena, the Omaha World-Herald (https://bit.ly/29V7RKF ) reported.
Each of 80 curved, polished pipes must fit through holes in stainless steel rings that will encircle the sculpture.
The 3- to 3-and-a-half-inch-diameter pipes, arranged in a 16-foot circle at the base, will splay out as they climb to 45 feet. “It’s got to be right on the money or things don’t fit,” Waters said.
The sculpture could be considered evocative of a sheaf of wheat or a fountain.
“All of that imagery is there if you would like to see it, but it’s not literal or blatant or essential - it’s optional,” said the artist who designed the sculpture, Ed Carpenter. “It’s an attempt to make something that will be a treasured asset to the city of Lincoln for a very long time.”
Carpenter also incorporated light into the piece, both natural and artificial. Steel and laminated safety glass will reflect sunlight, and programmed lighting sequences will illuminate the sculpture at night.
The piece’s 10 sections, weighing about 4,500 pounds each, will be trucked to Lincoln this week and assembled by Davis Erection.
Nearly $1 million was budgeted for the sculpture, which also features 80 crisscrossing stainless steel cables that will help keep the structure upright.
Waters’ company had worked with Carpenter before: on Council Bluffs Gateway, the sculpture that had its debut in 2012 atop the Broadway viaduct in Council Bluffs. Carpenter selected Puritan Manufacturing for that project from the handful of Nebraska and Iowa companies that bid.
“They did a wonderful job on that, so I went straight to them when the Lincoln project came up,” he said. “They were able to build (Gateway), solving all the issues, and do a fabulous job. And they smiled the whole way through it.”
Other Nebraska companies involved include Lincoln’s Hampton Construction, which is doing the site and foundation work, and Glass Edge of Lincoln, which is installing the glass.
The Carpenter piece is the second for the Pinnacle Bank Arena. The other is inside: Candy Box, by Donald Lipski.
“Our original concept was to have three pieces around the arena,” said Robert Duncan, co-chairman of Lincoln Partners for Public Art Development, which advised in the selection of the piece.
“There are no current plans for something else, but in due time I’m sure we’ll be selecting another piece in that area,” he said. “Our goal is to make Lincoln a world-class art city.”
Family-owned Puritan was founded in Omaha in 1927. The company does a lot of work with structural steel and ornamental metal. It made pieces of the pool used in the recent U.S. Olympic Swim Trials, ornamental ironwork for Fairmount Park in Council Bluffs and structural sheet metal for Gallery 1516 in downtown Omaha.
Carpenter’s work is a small part of their business, Waters said, but “it just makes our jobs interesting.”
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Information from: Omaha World-Herald, https://www.omaha.com
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