The Family Sculpture Trail at Two Rivers Park is nearing completion after bids for the project’s construction were opened, and the foundry that cast the sculpture finished the job about a month earlier than expected.
In a couple of months, Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines said, two bronze statues of a family enjoying a day outdoors will greet patrons of Two Rivers Park in the traffic circle by the parking lot on the south side of the park’s bridge.
Villines said the project is the last major development in the overhaul of Two Rivers Park that began a few years ago.
“I think for the most part with what we’ve done in the past year on the north side of the river,” the county is finished with the park, he said. On the north side, the county has added an overlook and a boat launch, among other things.
Two Rivers Park is the farthest west of the “trail of parks” along the Arkansas River. The “trail of parks” concept came from former Little Rock Parks and Recreation Department Director Julius Breckling, who first mentioned the term more than 30 years ago with his idea of linking a chain of parks along the river.
The $5.3 million Two Rivers Park Bridge opened in 2011, attracting patrons to the park’s 1,000 acres jointly owned by Little Rock and Pulaski County on a peninsula at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Maumelle rivers.
Project workers retrieved the finished bronze sculptures from The Crucible Foundry in Norman, Okla., last week, and on Thursday unsealed the seven bids made for the traffic circle’s construction.
Bids for the concrete paving, stone retaining walls, brick paving, lighting, landscaping and irrigation ranged from $59,780 by J Con Inc. to $103,523 from River City Construction. Pulaski County Lead Buyer Tina Brookens said the contract would be officially awarded and signed in the next few weeks.
Villines said he was planning to install the statues in the completed landscape in March or April.
The sculptures were paid for through the Arkansas Community Foundation, which raised funds for the project. The sculptures depict a woman pushing a young child along in a stroller and a man helping a young boy ride a bike.
The sculptures will be placed in the middle of a brick sidewalk that goes through two green spaces, a smaller one built on top of another.
“It really reflects what you see there - family units,” Villines said.
Villines came up with the idea in 2012, drafted what he thought the sculptures should depict and showed them to artist Kevin Kresse, who was contracted by the Arkansas Community Foundation to create the art.
“I said, ‘Can you do something like this?’ and he turned it into a work of art,” Villines said.
Kresse, 52, started carving the figures out of blocks of foam a little more than a year ago. He then used oil-based clay melted into liquid to paint the figures before sculpting with clay details down to the curves in the pants of the park visitors.
Kresse took the figures to the foundry at the end of September, where they were cast into solid bronze.
“I was real happy with how it turned out,” Kresse said.
Kresse said he attempted to portray positive emotions in the sculptures, as well as a diverse family.
The final product satisfied him.
“It was hitting the right notes for me,” he said.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 02/10/2014