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Intricately bound together are inspiration and creation,
and so Art and Nature both abide in beauty at Tempe Town Lake. Several pieces of
fine art withstand the elements of sun, wind, rain and humans. These sculptures
and plaques are a tribute to the river that once ran here, to the people who
once thrived on it, to the creation of the Lake and to the people who cherish
the water here today.
The City of Tempe strives to make the art at Town Lake
both functional and beautiful. Several tree
sculptures act as monuments for
remembering or memorializing loved ones by persons who have contributed
to the Leaves at the Lake program,
formerly the Adopt-A-Tree program. |
Words
Over Water consists
of 600 poems and images about people, water and Southwestern life. These capture
emotions and the essence of desert living while also providing beauty for the
levy around Town Lake. Even light fixtures and sidewalks have been decorated
with elements that blend art with the traditional beauty of the area.
The Tempe City Council in 1994 amended the Rio Salado
Specific Plan by adopting a public art master plan for the Rio Salado Overlay
District. The City's mandate to include wide public participation resulted in an
unprecedented dialogue uncovering the potential for art and culture in the Rio
Salado area. The art plan's theme, "Discover the past, engage the present,
serve the future," binds the program together by serving as a springboard
encouraging many related interpretations.
The City of Tempe's Cultural
Services Division administers the City's
public art program, art-in-private development, community arts and programming,
and manages the City's arts facilities. The Division works with the Tempe
Municipal Arts Commission whose mission is to create an atmosphere in which the
arts can flourish and inspire Tempe citizens to recognize the arts as essential
to the whole life of the community.
The City of Tempe Public Art Program has made it possible
to share the following pieces of art with those who visit Tempe Town Lake.
Tree at the Narrows
 Surprise,
Arizona artist Joe Tyler has transformed his horticultural knowledge to
art with Populis Freemonti - Tree at the Narrows. His 24-foot-tall steel
tree is representative of the Freemont Cottonwood, which used to grow in
abundance along the banks of the Salt River and was named after an early Arizona
explorer, General John Charles Freemont. Located on the southeast corner of
Priest Drive and the Red Mountain
(Loop 202) Freeway, Tyler's tree serves as a
monument, listing each of 500 names on a die-cut metal leaf. Proceeds from
donors went
to the City of Tempe Adopt-a-Tree program,
which is now the Leaves at the Lake
program.
It seems quite natural for Joe Tyler to have plants and
mythology as his major sculptural subjects because of his extensive background
in botany and environmental horticulture and his interest in mythological
stories. He enjoys taking rough, cold steel and bending, twisting, pounding and
heating it into soft and sensual sculptural forms. In addition to his Populis
Freemonti-Tree at the Narrows at Town Lake, his work can be seen in several
places in Tempe including McClintock High School, University Drive east of Mill
Avenue and at Arizona State University. His work has won awards from Valley
Forward Association, the Phoenix Business Journal's Orchid Awards and Landscape
Architecture Magazine.
Trees of Life
 Artist
Marilyn Zwak, Cochise, Arizona, sculpted Trees
of Life
from
adobe
and concrete. A powerful image of universality and connection, the largest being
11 feet high and 8 1/2 feet wide.
The recessed areas in the tree canopies will be filled with adobe
leaves with the names of people to be
remembered through the Town Lake donor program, Leaves
at the Lake.
Marilyn Zwak's neighbor who is a retired rancher jokingly
refers to Marilyn as a "tree hugger." His description is based on
years of observing her use the natural gifts of the desert in a variety of
artistic expressions and he understands her passion for the environment. Her
preferred media is adobe, but she often works with cast concrete. The
majority of Zwak's public artworks have been large-scale public works projects
including the South Mountain Community College Exterior Renovation, the Navajo
Bridge in Arizona's Marble Canyon and the State Route 51 and Thomas Road
Interchange in Phoenix.
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River Then, River Now, River Future
 River
Then, River Now, River Future is a 545-foot-long community mural with16,500
handmade and photo silk-screened ceramic tiles on the north bank. Fifty-four
panels make up the mural, which is permanently installed on the south-facing
wall of the Red Mountain Loop 202 freeway. Under the direction of Tempe artists Jefferson
East and Rebecca Ross, Tempe Elementary School District students and
community members made tiles over a four-year period. As part of Tempe's Earth
Day celebration in 2000, over 300 community volunteers planted native shrubs and
trees to enhance the mural site.
Some of the tile panels in River Then, River Now, River
Future depict scenes of prehistoric frontier life on the Salt River, while
others illustrate the riparian area as a dry and dusty desert. Another section
celebrates the Salt's new role as the Tempe Town Lake.
Rebecca Ross is a photographer, public artist, arts
educator and a project manager for Tempe's public art projects. Over the past
few years, Ross has won two awards for her photography from the Arizona
Commission on the Arts and public art commissions from the cities of Phoenix,
Tempe and Scottsdale. She was named 2001 Art Educator of the Year by the
Scottsdale Cultural Council for her work with disadvantaged youth. Ross is
currently working on a public art project for the City of Mesa.
Since completing River Then, River Now, River Future, Jeff
East has been teaching art at McKemy Middle School in Tempe. Although he hasn't
pursued other large-scale projects in a public venue, he has continued to show
three-dimensional relief sculptures, as well as helping organize and participate
in bringing Tempe's Empty Bowls project into the Tempe Elementary School
District's middle schools. He has lived in Tempe for the past 15 years.
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Rio Salado Path Enhancements
 Rio
Salado's artist-enhanced pathways provide an educational and aesthetic welcome
to the return of water to the riverbed. To introduce pedestrians and cyclists to
animals whose habitat was the Salt River, Tempe artist Laurie Lundquist,
inset impressions into the concrete path of fish skeletons and the tracks of
coyotes, deer, javalina and jackrabbits.
Historic river rock structures inspired modern seating
walls at the entrance to the park. Using integral colored concrete and flagstone
located at Rio Salado Parkway and Rural Road, the colors and textures draw
pedestrians and bicyclists from the street down to the waterfront. Lighting
designs hint at the bending branches of a willow tree, creating whimsy in
functional art. Native Palo Verde shade the seating wall with bright yellow
flowers in the spring.
Laurie Lundquist brings deep interest in the landscape and
natural systems into her design process. Her public art projects are
aesthetically engaging and environmentally responsible. She uses water as a lens
to examine the interface between mechanical and natural systems at work in the
environment. Lundquist is currently working on two public art projects for the
City of Tempe, Rio Salado's Marina-Lagoon Project and the U.S. 60-Country Club
Way Artist-design Pedestrian/Bicyle Bridge and Parks Improvement Project. She
also serves as civic artist for the City of Mesa's Public Art Program.
Cattail Rails and Whirlpool Plaza
Cattail Rails and Whirlpool Plaza,
is a path-side
seating area on the north bank next to Town Lake Marina. This welded metal cattail railing with
recycled plastic seating by Laurie Lundquist overlooks the marina lagoon and the lake.
Words Over Water
 Words
over Water is a 4,800 pound stone book at Tempe Town Lake. Poet Alberto
Rios, Chandler, writer/designer Karla Elling, Paradise Valley and
visual artist Harry Reese, Isla Vista, California, collaborated on the
idea to bring words to public art for a project that creates a sense of history
and community.
http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/abecedario
Six hundred granite tiles, the book's pages, grace the 2
1/2-mile-long seat walls along the north and south banks of the lake. Using
glyphs, icons, prose and poetry in English and Spanish, the tiles are engraved
with the language of the Rio Salado, illustrating the relationship between the
desert and water. This multi-cultural art project traces the river's past,
present and future.
 Alberto
Rios is the author of eight books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of
short stories and a memoir. Rios is the recipient of the Arizona Governor's Arts
Awards, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment
for the Arts, the Walt Whitman Award and Western States Book Award. Rios work is
taught and translated, and has been adapted to dance and both classical and
popular music. He is presently Regents' Professor of English at Arizona State
University.
In her capacity as Program Coordinator for the Arizona
State University Creative Writing Program Karla Elling publishes limited edition
publications - primarily editions of broadsides and artist's books.
Increasingly, she is collaborating with outstanding writers on public art
projects including The Museum Heart by Alberto Rios, a poem written to
celebrate the opening of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Blue
Woman's Last Man, a book arts performance piece produced with author Melissa
Pritchard.
Harry Reese is a book artist and Professor of Art and
Chair of the Department of Art Studio at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. He has written, lectured and taught classes about public art. He has
collaborated on major public art projects with artists Ann Hamilton and Jud
Fine. His work is in the collections of the Getty Research Institute, Harvard
University, New York Public Library, Whitney Museum of American Art and many
others.
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