Things get real for downtown art displays

By Phil Cobb | January 29, 2015 |

Stand for the Flag by Lee Leuning and Sherry Treeby

As Frank Sinatra once crooned in the Cole Porter standard “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — “Use your mentality, wake up to reality.”

That could be the theme for the third annual round of professionally created sculptures on the Maryville square. Abstraction be darned, all three of these pieces look like something.

Over the past two years, the Maryville Public Art Committee, which selects works from an inventory offered through SculptureOne, has gone for a mix of representational and abstract figures.

But sometime around the second week of May look for “The Mystic Family” by Colorado artist Gary Monaco; “Talk-Talk-Smile” by Nebraska artist Les Bruning; and the representational “Grackle Mania” by another Nebraskan, sculptor Del Pettigrew, to give way to three new works, all drawn from life.

Well, if you count fairy tales as life.

Though two of the works are solidly in the realist camp — almost photographic in fact — a third sculpture is a whimsical, and to any current or former 5-year-old, instantly recognizable rendition of Humpty Dumpty.

Standing 44 inches high, the bronze statue, titled “Egghead,” was created by Minneapolis, Minnesota, sculptor Kimber Fiebiger.

The other two sculptures, also bronzes, are titled “Stand of the Flag,” by South Dakotans Lee Leuning and Sherry Treeby, and Catching the Wind, by Greg Johnson, who lives and works in Georgia.

Both Leuning/Treeby and Johnson, who cast the centennial sculpture on the east lawn of the J.W. Jones Student Union at Northwest Missouri State University, have previously had works installed on the square.

“Stand for the Flag” is a relatively small piece that depicts a be-medaled, bearded veteran, with one leg amputated, leaning on a crutch and saluting. “Catching the Wind” shows a girl in cutoff overalls flying a diamond-shaped kite.

MPAC was created about two years ago and directed by the City Council to come up with a plan for installing public sculpture on the square and perhaps other locations such as the Fourth Street corridor between downtown and Northwest Missouri State University.

Members of the volunteer panel soon decided the city should display works by professional artists and turned to SculptureOne, an organization that also provides objects for the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, SculptureWalk.

According to the terms of a lease agreement with the organization, Maryville can receive up to 10 artworks a year for $2,000 per sculpture. The pieces remain on display for 12 months before being replaced each spring.

The program is funded with local tax dollars and appears as a line item in the municipal budget.