Talking about public art in general, it is one of the reasons people come to a town like
ours.
We've got a gorgeous lake and the scenery is lovely and public art is just another wonderful
thing to stroll around the town and see and it's a draw, it's a real draw, it's an economic
addition to a community.
There are the naysayers out there in the world and people that are concerned with spending
the money, it's worth it.
People from out of town love to come and see public art.
What are these people like?
What do they do?
Just as much as you would go to a restaurant and say, what's the local specialty?
The reason why people travel.
Mary D and I responded to a request for proposals for art in the wastewater treatment plant
area in our town in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
We visited the wastewater treatment plant and visited with the manager of Sid Fredrickson
who educated us on the way these treatment plants were.
Sid showed us the process and he showed us charts of the bugs that do the work.
We got doing research on all the organisms that live in a drop of city wastewater throughout
the world.
This is an international scene here and discovered that microbiology is actually a cult, it's
not a science at all.
Now I'm kidding, but microbiologists love their bugs and it's fascinating.
It's absolutely, it'll knock you out.
We tried to pick ones that were sculptable, that were understandable and had some characteristics
that we found interesting and came up with seven.
We had roundworms which we just thought were fascinating.
Right next door is a nematode, probably the most populous animal on our planet.
Then we have the ciliates, the crawling ciliates.
And the free swimming ciliates we liked a lot and represented them.
In the bacteria area we had filamentous bacteria which we thought were great shapes to put
out in front and show people how these things will knot up and mat up and cause problems
in the treatment plant and if they're too successful, which quite often they are.
The rotifer we thought was just an amazing creature, it's kind of like a featured creature.
We made some vitreous enamel plaques at the sidewalk level where a person can walk along,
they can see what that bug does in the process.
And it's kind of a colorful little plaque so that school kids or college kids or any
visitor could come by and sort of get an idea in advance of what's going on in the treatment
plant.
And we did make them a nice stout steel that we allowed to rust and then treated them, clear
coated them so they'll be permanently rusty and they fit right in.
They feel like a natural part of that area.
They come sort of growing right up out of the bark on the ground and they feel like they've
been there for a thousand years.
They fit in.
They just look very natural and at home there.
