This year marks our city's 100th centennial, so the celebrations were extra fun. The fun started early with a 5K run. I ran in it, no camera to prove it, and made a personal best time. I didn't win a pie, but I did it.
We also have an Art Show as part of the festival. I entered three quilts this year. Each of the kids entered too. We even came home with some ribbons to show for it.
self-portraits in the back row
Eliza did a water color right behind her
To top off the day, we had the Art Dedication for Tom Otterness's "Wild Life" sculpture that was installed down main street this week. I have been a part of the Public Art Committee for almost 4 years, and this was the end of it. The culmination of all of our meetings, portfolio reviews, proposals, and more. The art is now here for the community to enjoy. We are honored to put Connell on the map as one of the locations with Tom Otterness art. He is quite world renowned. This project cost over $400,000. You ask where a tiny town got the money for that kind of art? It is part of the Art in Public Places program. We just happened to have a very large prison built here. Any time a government building (prison, school, university, etc.) is constructed, 1/2 of 1% of building costs is given for Public Art. We had over $600,000 for public art with the prison expansion. Amazing. You may remember the first installment that was installed last year.
Tom Otterness is from New York, raised in Kansas. We were so excited to have his project completed in time for our Fall Festival. Tom was able to ride in our parade, along with our Mayor, Mark Anderson from the Walla Walla Foundry, and Scott Frakes from DOC. Rhonda and I walked the streets handing out flyers to announce the art dedication following the parade.
I haven't met a lot of famous people. I was so impressed with Tom Otterness. Tom is such a humble, nice, and personable real person. He brought his wife for the celebrations. They stayed in our little town for three days, visiting with people, eating at our restaurants, he even bought a Festival T-shirt to wear in the parade. At the dedication, Tom was so gracious to sign autographs on coloring books he provided of the artwork, for two hours. He took special time with each person. I was impressed, and my children will remember it.
I was in charge of the dedication, along with help from the City Staff. It went off perfectly, thanks to many hands. A sad day to end our committee work after 4 years, but such a celebration to have it all done and completed! I have many new friends because of it.
I will take more pictures of Tom's sculptures today. We are going on a family tour of them this evening to touch and sit with each one. They consist of six tables down our main street at different locations. Each has bronze "wild life" personified to our small town life. They are fun and the kids love them. You'll have to come visit and see for yourself!
Even though we are covering it, this is my family's "personal" sculpture. It is entitled "True Love". There is a mommy and daddy rabbit with six little baby bunnies all around them. You can see two of them on the little house on the table---"eating us out of house and home." The committee always joked that this one was mine, especially since I had two children while serving on the committee :) So here we are with our six baby bunnies.
Miriam couldn't get enough of the baby bunnies. She wanted to be touching them constantly.
