Art on the Avenues, City of Wenatchee Parks, Recreation, & Cultural Services Department 301 Yakima Street, Wenatchee, WA (2026)

Art on the Avenues(AOTA) is a non-profit 501c3 arts organization that provides an outdoor sculpture exhibit in Wenatchee featuring 88 visiting and permanent pieces displayed throughout the community. Another facet of the organization is the Beauty of Bronze program. Beauty of Bronze is provided by Art on the Avenues in partnership with the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center to give fifth

graders the opportunity to discover and reflect on the sculpture in their community while learning art vocabulary and concepts as artists themselves. Students create their own small bronze sculptures with instructions from regional sculptor Kevin Pettelle, who has several pieces on display throughout the community.

02/08/2020

Gold Rush by Walter Matia

Walter Matia was educated at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he earned degrees in Biology and Art Design. Much of his training was attained during a long apprenticeship in the Exhibits Department of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

After leaving the Cleveland Museum, Walter worked for eleven years with the Nature Conservancy, a national non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of endangered species and unique habitats. He served as the organization’s vice president in charge of land management.

He began casting bronze sculptures in 1980. Initially, he concentrated on bird life, over the years he has worked on sporting dogs and other mammals. In 1987 he began a series of large fountain and garden pieces.

Gold Rush is located at 271 9th Street, East Wenatchee City Hall

02/06/2020

Coyote Leads the Salmon up the River, 1990 (cast aluminum)
Walla Walla Point Park
Richard S. Beyer

The North Central Washington Museum (now the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center) commissioned Seattle artist Rich Beyer to create a cedar sculpture for an 1988 interactive children’s exhibit showcasing the historical photography of the Columbia River.
Coyote Leads the Salmon Upriver enjoyed such an enthusiastic response that Beyer was approached to create an all new aluminum version of the sculpture for placement in the new Walla Walla Point Park. An ad hoc group, “The Friends of Coyote”, approached the Wenatchee Rotary Club in 1989 who decided to bring the sculpture to life. The Wenatchee Arts Commission and the Allied Arts Council both endorsed the project with generous donations from the community, including the aluminum donated by Alcoa Wenatchee Works.
Beyer was a specialist in creating “Placemaker Art” that had at its center the notion that public art needed to tell the story of the place where the sculpture resided. This sculpture illustrates the story of Coyote freeing salmon trapped by a triad of sisters along the lower Columbia so that they could be given to the People upstream. In Beyer’s interpretation, Coyote is carrying a small salmon while looking over his shoulder at the salmon in front who wears a necklace of salmon eggs.
Rich created the figures for the sculpture out of large blocks of Styrofoam which then were packed in sand with vents for the molten aluminum. This allowed for a high degree of flexibility with the forms with each of the finished figures carrying a personality and story of their own.

01/22/2020

Loving Embrace / EGG OF THE BLACK MADONNA
by Leo Osborne

Intriguing, would sum up the wooden original sculpture. Beginning with the creation in wood of LOVING EMBRACE, which piece was molded and cast into bronze.

Upon its return from an exhibit, I felt that the shape of the mother and child form should be softer, gentler and more rounded in form and shape, more motherly, feminine.

I attached it to my craving block and began by taking small bits of the hard edged crystal like base away with a small chainsaw. The piece began to take on an egg like form and that felt so right, the egg of the mother becoming the child in time and space. As I was nearing the final shape, the piece began to tremble and I dropped the saw, with one arm holding the wood, as it split in half and catching the falling side, I became stunned as the natural split in the burl, wrapping itself around the carved shape, with that one last cut had rendered the piece in half.

BUT, what came to view inside the motherly maple burl was a small , tiny tree, with roots into the mother burl and a trunk reaching up and out into limbs that at one time had been forging their way out of the crevice in the wood, to the sunlight. This child tree was birthing from within the mother tree.

I finished the form with rounded shapes and sanded it smooth and figured how to hinge the piece so that it could open up to reveal the inner child. Then it took me over 2 years of experimenting with pedestals to find a way to support the sculpture and yet be able to take it off the pedestal and open it up. This was a major project. Finally I came to the results shown in this final work. The wooden base was from a tree in my work shop and the forged iron holding rods were formed by a local blacksmith. The final pieces were dyed and red paint and strings, with 23 karat gold leaf configuring into the final look.

Thus was born my created work, EGG OF THE BLACK MADONNA.

Loving Embrace bronze, by Leo Osborne, is located at the 5th street entrance to the Wenatchee Apple Capital Loop Trail

Address

City Of Wenatchee Parks, Recreation, & Cultural Services Department 301 Yakima Street
Wenatchee, WA
98801

Website

http://www.wenatcheewa.gov/publicart

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