The Shape of Community

Rise

Artist: Jenn Peek
Location: Westhoff Park

Rise is an 8.5-foot-tall aluminum fabrication that beckons people in to stand and embody their version of a phoenix rising

Balance

Artist: Debi Zoe Worley
Location: CarShield Field

I hope to inspire the viewer to reflect on their own experience and need for balance. Long before we can remember, we have all been working on our balance. An infant struggle to balance their head on their shoulders will work incredibly hard to balance their way to crawling, standing, walking, and even running. Our concept of balance has changed and developed since our days as an infant, but the need to find that center of gravity is not less essential today as it was all those years ago. As adults, we might recognize the forces that push or us nudge off-balance through a myriad of circumstances. Do we recognize when we are off-balance? Often, we must dig deep to find our center that keeps us grounded.

Grandiloquence

Artist: Jillian Springer
Location: Ozzie Smith Sports Complex

Grandiloquence means a lofty, extremely colorful or bombastic way of communication. This piece is part of a series of interactive works about the deficiencies of adult communication. Grandiloquence is 250lbs of painted cast aluminum. Please feel free to interact with it! Sit in the inviting purple seat and send your voice through the megaphone. Say whatever you want because you’re just talking out of your back end after all.

Force of Action

Artist: Noah Kirby
Location: Fort Zumwalt Park

This piece utilizes ideas about disruption patterns, spatial mapping, and camouflage as a means to create form. The aesthetics of the sculpture loosely reference the triangulated look of first generation stealth technology. My intention was to create a form that is a collection of figures moving through space as if they were one object.

Quill II

Artist: Dan Perry
Location: Renaud Center

Quill II is the second in a series of sculptures that explore how communication methods have changed over time. Information is now readily at our fingertips, but it still requires persistence to see our message through.

Imperfect Regress

Artist: Ben Pierce
Location: City Hall

I Have been living with depression for many years (way before I began making art). Only recently have I begun to speak openly about it with friends and family. A lot of mental illness is suffered in silence- I am choosing to use my art to help others speak up. Maybe someone will hear about this or read this and feel HOPE. You are not alone! Or through my openness about depression, it will allow others to not suffer alone by giving them courage to seek help or confide in someone. Maybe this can open that conversation for them. My art/sculptures possibly would not have been created if it weren't for my need to externalize what I go through inside. I hope you find your own voice and can endure any obstacle that comes your way.

Learning Curve

Artist: Fred Napoli
Location: Civic Park

A curvilinear sculpture, this piece manipulates space to represent motion through implied momentum, positive and negative spatial juxtaposition, and tension and release. Colors and shapes can suggest peace and tranquility, or the opposite, such as discomfort, conflict and our difficulty navigating through daily tasks. I have attempted to address the paradox everyone faces as inhabitants of a changing world through the interaction created by sculptural form colored in various hues with the suggestion of elements in constant motion.

Fettle

Artist: Luke Achterberg
Location: O'Day Park'

Luke Achterberg explores the subcultures of Americana found in automotive customizing, style writing, graffiti, comics, snow/skateboarding and street art—all of which display extremely high technical skills developed outside of academia. Working to overturn the standardization of mass production, he is continually playing with balance, both physical and aesthetic, to create a pronounced visual sleekness.

Ravens Chair

Artist: Elizabeth Arzt
Location: Dames Park

The Ravens Chair is a carved features imagery of the Haida tribe and is a piece that embodies the rich cultural heritage and artistic traditions of the Haida people. The chair is carved from a single piece of beech wood from her family farm in Maryland and it includes decorative characteristics that are inspired from the Haida symbols and figures - particularly the raven.

Spike

Artist: Vincent Houston
Location: Civic Park
First Featured: Shape of Community 2022-23

My background is 40+ years of creating sculpture from glass and steel. I started doing glassblowing when I was 16 years old. I attended Columbia College in Columbia, MO, to pursue my degree in Fine Art. I left school to travel with art festivals and outdoor shows demonstrating my glass works (lampworking).

I switched to working with steel in the early 1990’s. It was then I was able to do larger sculpture work and create corporate pieces for local and national businesses. Working from company logos and the specific needs of my clients, I am able to create beautiful steel for them to display in their main lobbies or in an outdoor setting. Champs Chicken in New Bloomfield, Missouri is one such client. My work is also in private collections. I have made steel sculpture both large (13 feet tall) and small. I am pleased to work with collectors who enjoy both art modeled from nature as well as dragons and other fantasy pieces.

Blue Rail

Artist: David Lobdell
Location: Civic Park
First Featured: Shape of Community 2020-21

Lobdell’s sculpture deals with communication and he is engaged in a complex investigation of language through a blending of historical sources, both ancient and modern. Binary code forms the conceptual skeleton of the digital age and Lobdell has playfully investigated inherent verbal analogies through both the literal sculpting of human skeletons along with describing the movement of binary code through space. Vortexes, Euclidean planes, streaming lines of code and spiritual mandalas are formed from the basic building blocks of zeroes and ones.

In The Room

Kelly Ludeking
Location: O'Day Park
First Featured: Shape of Community 2020-21

“In the Room” is the material manifestation of my ruminations on the movement of family farming toward industrial agriculture, a transition I experienced firsthand growing up on the Ludeking farm in Iowa.

This sculpture was created largely with discarded symbols of the farming and fueling businesses. The bulk of the elephant’s head is a combine corn head, an imperative piece of equipment to harvest corn. The body contains a fuel tank, something most family farmers had on site to refuel their tractors. There are semi-tractor parts scattered throughout the sculpture to represent the global transportation of what the collaboration of our earth & people have produced. Having been raised within the endangered family farm culture, I reflect on my upbringing often, realizing how government subsidies & interests influenced so many aspects of our lives. The elephant in the room explores the ambiguity of collaboration versus exploitation where familial and planetary resources are considered.