‘Family’ art in works for park

Sculpture to reflect those who enjoy Two Rivers,Villines says

A sculpture capturing the essence of Two Rivers Park as a place for families will grace the park once it is completed this summer.

Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines said the sculpture - a mother pushing a stroller with a child and a father guiding a child on a bicycle - by local artist Kevin Kresse reflects the significant number of people he has seen using the park, which totals about 400,000 since last April when the county installed an electronic counter on the new pedestrian bridge that crosses the Little Maumelle River into the park.

“It has become a family place - a real family place,” Villines said, calling it one of the “most popular places in our community. It’s a place for everybody.”

Kresse agrees that the park attracts a different mix of people from the serious joggers and bicyclists he has seen on the nearby Big Dam Bridge, which crosses the top of Murray Lock and Dam on the Arkansas River, especially after he visited the park several times after talking to Villines about the project.

“The next two times I went out there, that’s all I saw,” he said, referring tothe large number of mothers with strollers. “I think it’s a really family friendly park, and you go over that short bridge, you’re in another country.”

Two Rivers Park is situated on 1,000 acres jointly owned by Little Rock and Pulaski County on a peninsula at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Maumelle rivers. Though blessed with numerous trails, including about 7 paved miles suitable for walking, bicycling, horseback riding and other family activities, the park had been a sleepy backwater in the region’s park system because it was only accessible by car from Pinnacle Valley Road.

That changed when the $5.3 million Two Rivers Park Bridge was dedicated in July 2011. The 1,750-foot-long crossing connects the Little Rock shore west of Interstate 430 to the peninsula and extended the system of trails west from downtown and toward Pinnacle Mountain.

The sculpture will be placed in the center of a circular drive at the end of River Mountain Road, which is on the Little Rock shore side, Villines said.

On weekends and long summer evenings, the park is crowded with people and their children walking, jogging or bicycling on the trails. The park, situated on the county’s old penal farm, also includes a large area where people raise vegetables and fruit.

“Families have adopted it as their own,” Villines said.

For the next couple of months, Kresse will be a few miles from the park working on the sculpture. Many people who live or work downtown and happen to amble by the Pulaski County Regional Center on the northwest corner of Broadway and West Second Street have taken an opportunity to peek at Kresse’s progress. It is accessible through a couple of large windows fronting both streets. Villines gave a section of the building now used for storage over to Kresse to use as a makeshift art studio.

“It’s been fun being in here,” Kresse said last week during a break from carving foam blocks he is using in the early stages of the process to create the figures that will make up the sculpture. “I’ve done art fairs, so I don’t mind people seeing me work.

“They’ll stare, and I’ll wave.”

Kresse said the dust mask he sometimes wears and the saw he wields during this early stage of the work makes him look like “some insanemaniac.”

For now, he is fashioning the foam blocks into life-size human forms by looking at a small clay sculpture he made, using a proportion wheel to take his measurements. Eventually, Kresse said, he will use live models to add detail to the sculpture and “after I feel good about where it is, I’ll articulate everything with the clay on top” and take his work to a foundry in Oklahoma City to be cast.

“It’s a long process,” Kresse said.

Adding artwork to the park was an idea that began last summer when Villines established a public art fund through the Arkansas Community Foundation and began soliciting funds for the sculpture, according to a memorandum he sent to the Pulaski County Quorum Court last month.

He said he has recruited several sponsors to help pay for the sculpture and the landscaping around it. People who contribute $100 will have their names inscribed in the landscaping surrounding the sculpture, he said.

About $100,000 has been raised so far for the project, Villines said. If more is raised, he wants to establish an endowment for more public art in the county, he said.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/04/2013

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