Herky on Parade 2024: A Prologue

 A couple months ago I applied for a call to artists for the 75th birthday of the University of Iowa's mascot, Herky. 2024 marks the third round of statues - and this round will be creating 75 more sculptures! The first Herky on Parade sculptures were placed in 2004.

Unfortunately, I can't give many details until the public reveal of the new sculptures on May 1st, 2024. I'm not even allowed to share my design on paper. But I what can tell you is that I am one of the chosen artists for the project! 

I'm keeping track a record of my time and taking progress shots (I forgot to do this while I was working on my lighthouse) so I can write a blog post later on giving all the details!

Me and my Herky!

I can also tell you that Herky is a big guy! He's taller than I am, although if I'm honest that's no great feat. He's about 6 feet tall and about 4 feet wide elbow-to-elbow. 

It's a horde of... Is it Herkys or Herkies?

I picked him up in our minivan, which turned out to be over 8 hours of driving. It was also two days after a 48-hour blizzard that covered the whole state in heaps of snow, coupled with sub-zero temperatures. The interstate looked like a warzone; in one quarter-mile I counted 13 vehicles in the ditch. Most of the wrecks were mangled up semi trucks. It was scary to see, even days later.

Just me in a van with a body in the back, no biggie.

Herky and I finally made it home, and Jon was volun-told to help me bring the big man inside. When I was painting my lighthouse, I was able to just work in our garage (which was lucky, because I don't think the round bottom of the lighthouse would have fit through the door.) That wasn't going to be an option this time due to the cold temps, so Herky has to live in my studio for the next two months. 

Don't judge my mess, I need a certain amount of chaos for proper creation!

As you can see, Herky takes up most of the room. There's no door on my studio, as we love the daylight that streams in from the sliding glass doors that take up one whole wall of the room. I do have a short flexible gate though, as a psychological barrier to keep children out. 

Anyway, every time I walk by, which is often because my studio is centrally located in our house, out of the corner of my eye I see Herky standing in there and it startles me! Even knowing that he's there, he still gets me. It's going to be a relief when he's finally finished and out of the house.

... And that pretty much covers what I'm allowed to say at this point. My girls love talking about Herky (yesterday they kept asking me if I was going to paint his butt.) They would be a lot more excited if I let them climb all over him, but I hope someday when they are older they will be proud of their mama for more than just toasters. 

For (some) more information, you can follow Herky on Parade on Facebook, plus there is a website that details the project.

Glass in Flight at Reiman Gardens

There is a special exhibition this year at Reiman Gardens in Ames, IA. Glass in Flight consists of 19 sculptures by Alex Heveri and will remain on display until October 8, 2023. Heveri, a sculpture artist from Arizona, has been working with steel and Dalle de Verre glass for over 25 years. "Dalle de Verre" is French, meaning "glass slab." It is a medium similar to stained glass, but the key difference is the thickness of the glass. Stained glass is usually thin, the same thickness as a window pane, while Dalle de Verre is made from thick chunks which produces deeper colors in the art. You can easily see (both in person and in photos) that the edges of the glass in Heveri's series have been chipped - this technique increases the refraction of light through the sculptures.

Yay, flowers!

This was my first trip to Reiman Gardens, and it would have been a wholly delightful experience had we not been under a heat advisory that day! Regardless, our family had a wonderful, albeit sweaty, time there. 

The first stop was, of course, the butterfly wing. My girls thought it was a magical place, and couldn't believe how many butterflies were there! The butterfly exhibit has hundreds of butterflies, from 80 different species! I'll admit I've never seen butterflies before that actually looked happy as they flew in and out of the foliage! However, these were not the butterflies that I was looking for.

As soon as we stepped out of the building, we were greeted by blistering heat - I mean, sculptures within the landscape. To my pleasant surprise, not all of the sculptures in the Gardens were a part of Heveri's Glass in Flight! 

Expand by Tom Reife. Stainless steel, 2016

This stainless steel sculpture by Tom Riefe reminds me of a burst of flames! But the geometric and symmetrical design also reflects patterns found in nature, which is appropriate for the Gardens.

Blue Dasher by Alex Heveri

I didn’t take photos of every single piece Heveri has at the Gardens, as ideally you dear readers will get the chance to see them yourselves! The first one I photographed is “Blue Dasher,” a beautiful royal blue dragonfly with clear wingtips. I love that the stand is also a part of the art, resembling a segmented reed or bamboo.

Continuing along the path, we came to a drool-worthy herb garden (pun fully intended.) It’s been a dream of mine to have a small herb garden, and while I did keep an oregano plant alive in a pot for three years, the most I ever do with herb plants is lovingly smell them a few times a week (shout out to Jon, who does 99.99% of the cooking in our home.) Maybe someday, because this herb garden at Reiman was beautiful, aromatic, and huge!

 
Pink Amethyst by Alex Heveri

Past the herb garden, we found twin “Pink Amethyst” butterflies. The butterflies were unique among the Glass in Flight sculptures in that their wings weren’t made from glass mosaics but huge slabs of stone! I knew amethyst came in a whole rainbow-range of colors, but according to the plaque for these two sculptures, there are no pink butterflies! How fascinating!

If I had a large enough yard, I wouldn't mind having a couple of these myself.

We found multiple pieces like this embedded in the foliage. They didn’t have informational plaques, so I don’t know who to give credit to. Within each larger “frame” were a group of smaller frames with a variety of dried leaves pressed and preserved between panes of glass. An odd little display, but worthy of mention regardless.

 
Tailed Jay by Alex Heveri

The next three pieces were my favorites – this one, “Tailed Jay,” is a lovely emerald-colored butterfly. It has a twisting metal base, with multiple swirling lines and small colorful glass accents. I took a picture from underneath to really express how fun this one is. It can’t be easy to create the flight of a butterfly in metal, but Heveri found a way.

 

More Bees Please! by Alex Heveri

This lovely archway is my other favorite of Heveri’s sculptures in the Glass in Flight series! While I personally have an irrational fear of stinging insects, I know how essential they are to our ecosystems – and how endangered they are, too! This rust-colored arc is composed of many hexagons; some open, some filled with weathered metal, and others filled with amber-colored glass. 3-Dimensional bees with transparent yellow bodies are swarmed all over the archway. A fitting tribute to honeycomb!

 

By Dale Lewis

Another beautiful piece of art, the third favorite of mine, is a small cherry (I think they are supposed to be cherries, at least) tree made of silverware. The name at the base says “Dale Lewis,” but that’s all I know about it. The sculptor used spoons for leaves, and wrapped fork tines around to hold the “berries.”

Yellow Stag Beetle by Alex Heveri

Heveri’s sculptures aren’t limited to just dragonflies and butterflies; this one is a Yellow Stag Beetle! It’s found in the middle of a feast of mulch and branches, which is exactly what real yellow stag beetles eat!

 
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail by Alex Heveri

At the far end, right next to the Gardens’ iconic hexagonal wood tower, is the colorful Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Bright yellow, blue, and orange stand out next to the clear and stark black stripes. An excellent example of dalle de verre, it’s well worth the trek back to see.

It pains me to stop here without mentioning so many, many other cool artistic features and artworks we saw at the Reiman Gardens that day; from trained-into-arches trees, farm animals made of peat with flowers for bodies, a giant gnome, to vine-like handrails and so much more! These gardens in Ames were absolutely worth the sweat-soaked clothes I had at the end of our trip. I’d really like to come back in other seasons to see the different displays.

Heveri’s Glass in Flight exhibition will be on display until October 8^th, 2023. I hope you take the time to see it before it leaves Ames! To learn more about what’s going on at Reiman Gardens, you can find them on Facebook plus their website www.ReimanGardens.com is packed full of information.

What a dork!