ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 8, 1997 TAG: 9704080041
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE THE ROANOKE TIMES
There must be a moral here. Something about the fickleness of fame, or maybe just the peaks and valleys in an artist's life.
Consider that Donna Essig and Mimi Babe Harris won a sculpture competition involving more than 20 artists.
Then they labored for most of a year on a half-sized model.
And that when it finally came time to unveil their plans for a sculpture celebrating Roanoke's Sister Cities program - that is, to reap a little glory - they reaped a waiting whirlwind instead.
The Sister Cities sculpture project is on hold - prisoner of the ongoing debate about developing Mill Mountain.
"I can't even keep track of how many committees there are any more," said Essig, an artist who lives in Franklin County and has fine arts degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois. Harris is exhibition coordinator and art lecturer at Hollins College. "I think we've both been really frustrated by it," Essig said. "We felt we'd jumped all these hurdles - but they keep putting up more as we go along."
In a way, the Sister Cities project is a victim of the program's success. Several years ago, when a Sister Cities memorial on the mountain top was conceived, there were only three such cities -Wonju, Korea; Kisumu, Kenya; and Pskov, Russia.
All were commemorated with a modest planting of indigenous trees on Mill Mountain. Roanoke was included, too, represented by a dogwood. The significance of the trees was noted by a plaque.
Eventually, someone stole the plaque.
Meanwhile, Roanoke was adding sister cities left and right: Florianopolis, Brazil; Opole, Poland; and Lijiang, China. Even now, plans are under way to add a seventh sister city to the list - St. Lo, France.
When the plaque was stolen, there initially was talk of erecting a stone monument to Sister Cities to replace it. That idea evolved into a full-fledged public sculpture, for which designs were solicited last year.
A selection committee sent a prospectus to 1,300 artists around the state. Twenty-two artists sent drawings and proposals. Four finalists presented scale models, including the team of Harris and Essig.
They won. "Theirs was the one we felt most successfully integrated with the site and the mountain itself," said Mark Scala, an art museum curator who served on the selection committee.
So what does the winning entry look like?
Words aren't really adequate. But understand at least that, in its final version, the Sister Cities sculpture would consist of seven columns (eight, if St. Lo is included) - one for each sister city and one for Roanoke - all of them 14 inches in diameter, and between 9 and 9 1/2 feet tall.
The raw material is something known as Dryvit - a building material composed of sand and cement and often used for commercial buildings. Harris said the material is very durable, repairs easily when damaged and bonds well with paint. The columns also will have inlays fashioned from ceramic.
Beyond that, each column is an individual creation. The artists spent months on research while building their model, in order to carve onto each column a kind of continuous frieze of animals, plants and people native to the country it stands for. All of the columns have capitals on top, as in classical style buildings, but with an indigenous twist; the top of Pskov, Russia's column, for example, is an onion dome. Roanoke's column, of course, is capped by a star.
And Harris stressed that the sculpture is designed to be not only looked at, but felt.
"It's made for kids to touch," said Harris. "Even for blind people to touch."
Some people think the sculptures would be best touched somewhere else.
"I've not seen them," said Louise Kegley, granddaughter of J.B. Fishburn - who donated the land atop Mill Mountain to the city for park land half a century ago. "I won't comment on how they look. I just think they would look better somewhere else. My feeling is I don't think anything should be on the mountain that is man-made."
Another Fishburn grandchild, Scott Shackelford, also is against putting the sculptures on the mountain top.
Shackelford, who serves on the Mill Mountain Advisory Committee, said he has heard many ideas for developing the mountain, and "there is a case to be made for a lot of them. Where is it to stop? It could look like Coney Island. That's what I'm afraid of. ... I would love for them to consider another location."
"I really think these things are beautiful," said Betty Field, an avid Mill Mountain hiker who has seen the model for the sculpture. "I just don't want them up there."
Backers of the project say the sculpture was designed for the mountain top - and will not work elsewhere.
Harris said the columns feature animal and plant life in order to harmonize with the Mill Mountain Zoo and a nearby wildflower garden.
Scala, who helped select the Harris-Essig design, agreed. "If it moves, those criteria cease to be relevant," he said. "We may have to revisit the whole selection process."
Robert Roth, the retired physician who heads the Roanoke Valley Sister Cities program, noted the sculpture celebrates cultural diversity, even as it helps to beautify the mountain top.
"We think it's going to fly because it's such a great concept," said Roth of putting the sculpture on the mountain. "The problem is right now, it's all polarized. ... Sure there are people who say they don't want anything up there. I think that's a little too extreme. We're not interested in commercial development."
Mayor David Bowers, meanwhile, noted that the Fishburn grant that gave the property to the city calls, not for pristine wilderness, but "suitably adapted parks, playgrounds, buildings, structures and things similar."
He also noted the area from Mill Mountain Zoo to Roanoke's beloved star, where the development battle is centered - and which would contain the Sister City sculpture - is only a fraction of the whole mountain.
"My point all along has been, this is Mill Mountain Park," said Bowers. "It's not a forest. It's not a private preserve. It's what Fishburn wanted it to be - a park for the people, with buildings and playgrounds.
"I like the idea of the sister city sculpture on the mountain," Bowers added. "We're talking about a very small site."
The project must be approved by City Council. It has not yet been scheduled for consideration, and Bowers said in any case the project will not proceed until all of the interested groups are in agreement.
The artists, who were paid only $200 for materials when making the model, would split $17,000 for the completed project. Sister Cities has set a fund-raising goal of $20,000 to pay for the project - of which they have raised about a quarter.
Those behind the project had planned a dramatic unveiling to kick off the fund-raising campaign - but postponed it when debate about the future of the mountain heated up.
"The timing was just bad," said Susan Jennings, director of the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge, who has helped to spearhead the sculpture project. The Arts Council supports the project. "This started coming up about `Don't put anything on the mountain, don't do this, don't do that.'''
Harris, meanwhile, said everyone who has seen the model has liked it.
"This is organic," she argued of the sculpture, with its sand-based material and its emphasis on plants and animals. "It's giving something back to the mountain."
She also said she and Essig, having come this far, are eager to get back to work and finish the project.
"We're hot to go," Harris said.
LENGTH: Long : 142 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ANEL RHODA/THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. Sculptors Donna Essigby CNB(left) and Mimi Babe Harris are surrounded by the half-size models
of their Sister Cities project, which is on hold now until Roanoke
City Council decides whether to allow it to be installed on Mill
Mountain. 2. Each Sister City is to be represented by a carved
column with themes native to each city. Above is Roanoke's column.
3. The half-scale models of Harris' and Essig's works show some of
the detail carved into the columns. The artists say the sculptures
are meant to be touched. color.