EUREKA SPRINGS - Al Larsen lifted 3-year-old Evan Osam to touch the chimes that were out of the child’s reach Saturday at the new Eureka Springs Music Park on North Main Street.
“You have to ring it,” Evan said, once back in his mother’s arms. “Can I do it again?”
Megan Osam, of Little Rock, attended the opening of the new park with her mother, Pam Floyd, a Eureka Springs resident, and her sons Evan and Owen, 9 months old. Larsen, a Eureka Springs resident, is a longtime family friend.
“I think it’s amazing,” Osam said. “I think we’ll be coming here a lot. Evan loves music, so this is perfect for him.”
Eureka Springs Music Park, at 288 N. Main St., features three interactive sound sculptures created by Ranaga Farbiarz, who has been making tuned musical wind chimes since the 1970s.
The centerpiece of the park is called GPAC, for the John Lennon song “Give Peace A Chance.” The sculpture is a 28-foot-long metal arbor that stands 8 feet high and is 8 feet wide. In the center of the arbor are two 20-foot-long rows of wind chimes tuned to play the melody of, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
Farbiarz said the design of the instrument led to what he describes as “labyrinthine circularity.” Visitors can hear the tune by ringing the chimes in different patterns. They can play the notes in order down the right side of a single row of the chimes, or they can play half the tune on one row, turn in the middle and play the rest of the tune on the second row.
“It’s one of the simple and profound messages of my generations,” Farbiarz, 64, said of his song choice. “It’s just a classic expression of what I hope for in the human race.”
That hope was evident Saturday with babies, preschoolers and adults interacting with one another as they played the sound sculptures, he said. The GPAC, made of metal electrical conduit, is meant to be a unifying force amid the current climate of political and socialdivisiveness, he said.
The other pieces are the Ozarkaphone, a whimsical xylophone, and the Ranagophone. The Ranagophone is a set of long posts with 4-inch aluminum pipes arranged in a circle. Each piece has a mallet attached to it with a chain.
The aluminum pipe came from end pieces Farbiarz cut from one of the world’s largest wind chimes, a 36-footlong wind chime that used to hang from a tree outside his shop, Celestial Windz Harmonic Bizaar, in Eureka Springs. Farbiarz said he is looking for a new home for the piece. Another wind chime in Casey, Ill., is larger, but the piece is not tuned, he said.
Julia Aho took photos of her two sons, ages 1 and 3, while they tried to bang the Ozarkaphone and Ranagophone to the rhythm of songs performed by the band Trout Fishing in America. Aho is a cellist from Rogers who is currently writing and illustrating children’s books under the name Julia Kay.
“It’s kind of hard to find musical enrichment experiences,” she said. “I saw my 1-year-old try and hit it in perfect rhythm, but my 3-year-old was whacking away with him. It’s just a fun thing to see.”
The development of Eureka Springs Music Park involved efforts from the Eureka Springs Arts Council. The council received a $6,400 grant from the Arkansas Arts Council, which went toward the creation of the musical sound sculptures, said Sandy Martin, chairman of the Eureka Springs council.
“We wanted to do something different and a little bit interactive,” Martin said.
Eureka Springs, with a population of 2,073, attracts more than 750,000 visitors annually, according to the Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce.
“Everything that happens here has something to do with art,” Martin said.
The council is working to spur more activity on North Main Street and contribute to the economic development of that area of Eureka Springs, Mayor Morris Pate said. He said he hopes to clean up the hillside of the 2-acre park.
More projects are planned for the new park, Martin said. Artists will create shells to complement the musical sculptures, and Martin said the council intends to install more musical instruments in the park next year.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 05/26/2013