Idaho Falls Needs More Public Sculptures
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Recently I set out to take photos of public art in the Idaho Falls area. I realized we have a serious dearth of public sculptures in the Idaho Falls area.
When 95% of our city’s public art can be seen in a 20 minute walk around the downtown area, I think we need to initiate more public art efforts. Public art and large-scale sculptures make cities memorable. I think we can all agree that Idaho Falls suffers from non-memorableness in the minds of our visitors. What can we do?
Let’s first take inventory of what we do have. There’s the early Snake River fur trapper on Memorial, the Wilson Rawls piece on the library lawn, the Japanese things on south of the Broadway bridge, the rocks at the Utah avenue roundabout, the artsy benches downtown, the Vietnam Veteran’s memorial in Freeman park, and our Indian friend at North Tourist park.
I would like to see some extremely large sculptures erected at each of the Idaho Falls freeway entrances. This would grab the attention of drivers passing by that may not have thought they wanted to make a stop. Since each freeway entrance involves four triangular plots of land, let’s go all out and erect four large sculptures on each of those land plots, and a four-set at each of Idaho Falls‘ 2 or 3 freeway entrances (thinking of the new one with Sunnyside access).
A sculpture honoring Samuel Bennion would be appropriate at the entrance to Freeman park. Remember this is the guy who was extremely generous in his donations to the Idaho Falls University place. A statue honoring Barzilla (a past Idaho Falls mayor), would be especially locally-impacting.
Abstract sculptures are always nice to leave interpretations up to the viewers. Art could also be targeted to reflect some agreed-upon community values such as family, respect, learning, friendliness, and rising above one’s circumstances.
Finally, Idaho Falls would do well to follow Rexburg’s initiative and enact a rule that 1% of all new commercial development costs must be devoted to public art display on their respective properties.
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Comments
Vote:
0 
0 I realize I forgot to mention the bulbous-like sculpture at the power building. It is partially hidden from view by a bush, though. Maybe if they cut the bush lower, the sculpture would be bigger and the public could appreciate it more?
Since I wrote this article, the eagles and cougar were unveiled at Taylor Crossing, and …. ? I guess the big stone welcome marker was erected on Broadway, however there have not been too many other sculptures around town.
Should Idaho Falls develop some type of goal to erect a new sculpture every 12, 6, or even 3 months? If it’s publicly funded, probably every 12 months would be a happy medium. There could be a little spring event to unveil it.
Vote:
0 0 I would love to see more statues and sculptures around town. Since I’m not a native and am drawing this from memory/heresay, but I remember hearing that the city paid for the trapper statue on Memorial and it cost a pretty penny. Please correct me if I am wrong. Either way I would like to see incentives for businesses to sponser/donate some sculptures
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Vote:
Holy Cow, here’s tons of unusual sculpture photos from around the world:
http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=18259
Imagine if Idaho Falls could have some like this?
Hopefully this will inspire some local artists, inspire some local businesses to do commissions?