I was invited to come shoot some nighttime photography as part of the local Des Moines area Flickr Group. You can see most of my shots from this outing at: Downtown at Night Photo Album.

You can check at all the participant’s photography by visiting: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1014797@N22/ or watching the slide show below.

This video documentation of the six-month installation process of the Pappajohn Sculpture Park was produced by Blur MediaWorks as a gift to the City of Des Moines and the Des Moines Art Center.

Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief. Des Moines puts on a face of such a progressive city with its awesome new sculpture park until you see what was selected for bike racks around the park. I invite you to play the game, of the 10 images of bike racks on the photo above, one type was selected for the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, and five other types can be found around downtown and three types are possibilities that could exist in downtown with had a few more creative minds that participated in the selection of bike racks.

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It appears that works put down some sod this week at the east end of the park. Things are beginning to show a wrapping up and a countdown to completion. I can’t wait, this is a huge amenity for us downtown dwellers to go walking through every evening.

From the June 26th Press Release:
MAJORITY OF SCULPTURES INSTALLED AT JOHN AND MARY PAPPAJOHN SCULPTURE PARK: The Des Moines Art Center and city of Des Moines are pleased to announce that installation is nearly complete at the John & Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

Featuring 24 sculptures by 19 artists, the Pappajohn Sculpture Park will be a priceless addition to Des Moines’ Western Gateway Park. The installation of the sculptures highlights a process that began over two years ago with the generous donation of the sculptures by philanthropists John and Mary Pappajohn to the Des Moines Art Center.

Currently, all but one of the sculptures in the Pappajohn Sculpture Park have been installed. The final piece, Nomade (2007) by Jaume Plensa, will be installed in early July. Meanwhile, landscape architects will continue paving walkways, installing lighting elements, and laying sod. While much of the work will be complete in July, the John & Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park will not officially open until September. In the meantime, the Des Moines Art Center thanks everyone for their interest and patience during the construction process.

One of my favorite summer events is the annual downtown Des Moines Arts Festival. Here are some highlights about this year’s event, for more details check out their website at: http://www.desmoinesartsfestival.org

DATES: June 26 – 28, 2009

TIMES: Friday, June 26 – 4 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Saturday, June 27 – 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. (Fireworks at 10 p.m.)
Sunday, June 28 – 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

WHERE: Western Gateway Park, Downtown Des Moines, Iowa

WHAT: Des Moines Arts Festival
– 175+ Premier Professional Visual Artists sponsored by Aviva USA
– 24 Emerging Iowa Artists sponsored by Principal Financial Group®
– 24 Non-profit Organizations sponsored by Prairie Meadows showcasing services and activities
– GuideOne Insurance Interactive Mural presented by the Des Moines Art Center
– Non-stop live music on the U.S. Cellular Stage
– Gavin DeGraw and Collective Soul on Friday night proudly presented by
Hy-Vee in celebration of the Hy-Vee Triathlon and sponsored by Budweiser
– New Jazz & Wine Pavilion presented by Meredith Corporation
– Performing Arts Stage featuring dance, music and theatre
– Live Street Theatre
– 30 Interactive Arts Activities
– 376 students from 96 Schools in the Des Moines Art Center’s Nurturing a Student’s Vision Program
sponsored by Hubbell Homes
– Interrobang Film Festival presented by Nationwide
– 24 Eclectic Food Booths sponsored by Hy-Vee
– Sculpture Garden

ADMISSION: FREE

Over the last serveral weeks, sculptures have been appearing every days as installation begins for the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden in the Western Gateway Park. I scoured the internet to find everything I could about this park to bring it all together in one place. Here’s what I found:

In February 2007 Des Moines Art Center Director Jeff  Fleming announced that Des Moines philanthropists John and Mary Pappajohn plan to give the Art Center a minimum of 16 major sculptures by internationally acclaimed contemporary artists. The Pappajohns are known worldwide and ARTnews magazine listed them as one of the top 200 art collectors in the world.

The collection of sculptures by artists Louise Bourgeois, Scott Burton, Deborah Butterfield, Anthony Caro, Tony Cragg, Willem deKooning, Mark di Suvero, Barry Flanagan, Ellsworth Kelly, Martin Puryear, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Judith Shea, Tony Smith, and William Tucker will be the most significant donation of artwork to the Art Center in a single gift in the museum’s history.  According to art critics, the Pappajohns’ donation will likely bring Iowa renown as having one of the best public sculpture gardens in the world. In a new partnership formed with the city of Des Moines, the sculptures will be installed in the city’s Western Gateway Park in a permanent feature to be named The John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

Here are some of the works that have all ready been installed as of today (May 29th, 2009):

Spider, 1997 – Louise Bourgeois – American, born France, 1911 – Bronze – 94 x 94 x 84 inches

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As you may know, Earth Day is being celebrated on Wednesday, April 22nd and Des Moines like countless other cities around the world is taking part. Here are some of the events happening downtown:

On Wednesday downtown corporations and organizations will team up for the 2nd Annual Earth Day Trash Bash – a spring clean-up event organized by Operation Downtown, Des Moines Parks and Recreation, and Downtown Community Alliance. Volunteer teams will work from 2 – 4:30 p.m. to clear away litter that has accumulated on our streetscapes and trails over the winter months. After a thorough sweep of their assigned territories, teams will gather at Nollen Plaza for refreshments, music and awards.

Also in celebration of Earth Day, the Des Moines Botanical Center at 909 Robert D. Ray Drive, is offering free admission on Wednesday from 10am to 5pm.

And the Iowa DNR is unveiling a new trash sculpture. The sculpture will be unveiled between 11am to 2pm in the main lobby atrium of the Wallace State Office Building, 502 East 9th Street, in Des Moines. The artist David Williamson and DNR staff will be available to greet visitors, answer questions, and most importantly, gather public input to complete the project, only 60% of the trash sculpture is now complete. The sculpture is made of trash dredged from the Winnebago, Shell Rock and Cedar rivers last August by hundreds of volunteers on the DNR’s annual Project AWARE river cleanup event.

The Vegetarian Community of Iowa is hosting a celebration at Ritual Cafe. There will be sample of vegetarian food as well as the full Ritual Cafe menu available from 4pm to 7pm.

If you don’t have a chance to participate in one of these community events, you could always go for a walk and pick up trash you find downtown to help keep dow

For the city of our size, Des Moines has an awesome collection of downtown green spaces. Within just a few blocks of most downtown office buildings or residential units you will be within footsteps of one of the following green spaces:

• Capitol Building Terrace
• Hansen Triangle
• Nollen Plaza
• Principal Riverwalk
• Simon Estes Riverfront
• Western Gateway Park

An just outside the main downtown area, is Gray’s Lake and Waterworks Park. The City of Des Moines’ Parks and Recreation Department is responsible for 72 parks with over 3,000 acres of green space and more than 30 miles of walking and biking trails.

I believe that urban green spaces, like those that we have in downtown, are an essential component in transforming and enriching our city. If Des Moines wants to continue and attract more people to move to and live in downtown, this amenity is an important factor for a lot of people. History has shown that parks play a pivotal role in shaping the success of urban areas. Take a look at Central Park in New York City, this is considered one of the first formal “parks,” and was created to be passive and beautiful, in contrast to the density of urban life. Central Park has become a destination, not only to it’s residents and workers, but to the tourist who come to New York City, and would consider a visit to Central Park as a “must-see” on their itinerary.

Two of our public green spaces are on the verge of some wonderful changes. Western Gateway Park will be turning into a world-class sculpture garden and Nollen Plaza has some plans to completely update and transform it into an awesome destination in the heart of the Downtown Core Neighborhood. Proposed inclusions in the Nollen Plaza update include a civic gate that acts as a waterfall in the warmer months and a frozen wall during the winter. Newly created public restorms would be incased inside of a large video media cube.

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This past weekend I was in Chicago visiting some friends. We were driving down McCormick Blvd while traveling to the burbs and I noticed along the side of the road, for about a two-mile stretch, a collection of awesome looking outdoor sculptures. I found out that this area is called the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park. This park runs East of McCormick Blvd., between Dempster Street and Touhy Avenue, and spans a two mile stretch along the Chicago River and includes 72 sculptures. This got me even more anticipating our own sculpture park here in downtown Des Moines. Last week the bulldozers were tearing up the current grassy area in preparation for what’s to come by next spring.

Just to give you a little background on the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park, this park was founded in 1988 by a group of private citizens to establish and maintain a sculpture park in a two-mile-long, park setting just north of the city of Chicago. The park has been designed and formally landscaped to include bicycle paths, walkways, and seating areas, surrounded by over 70 large-scale contemporary sculptures created by noted regional, national, and international artists.

Approximately 25% of the sculptures on display make up the parks permanent collection, including works by Testa, Wareham, Gall, Ihara, Johnson, and Peart. The remainder are on loan for various periods of time from sculptors or collectors such as Zimmerman, Katz, Baur, Parker, Gallucci, Blik, Anderson, Agard, Gall and Heinrich.

The park showcases sculpture in a wide variety of styles and materials, encouraging viewers to think about and evaluate the creative process of sculpture. Since the Sculptures in the park are available for purchase, maybe these could be some of the ones that Des Moines buys for our park or set up a traveling trade agreement between the parks.

Take a look at some of the great sculpture in the park:

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Announced in July 2004, as part of one of downtown’s largest employer’s 125th anniversary celebration, the Principal Riverwalk would be one of the largest downtown transformations that the city has seen. It’s now more than four years later and I thought it would be appropriate for an overview of what was planned and what has been delivered since then.

With an opening cost projection of around $26 million, a ground breaking ceremony for Phase I took place on July 22nd, 2004. Principal would originally donate $10 million with the rest to be raised through community, civic and state monies. At that time, it was purposed that later phases may incorporate a half million dollar skate park and white water rapids courses.

By March 2005, costs estimates were more than double, now a total cost was being estimated around $55 million due to some additions to the original plan such as upgrading the Meredith Trail connector to Gray’s Lake and upgrading Principal Park to include a plaza with fountains right outside the park. Also the Hansen Company Triangle was being added to the mix.

By end of 2006, cost estimates were now totaling close to $74 million almost three times what the original cost estimate was in 2004. As 2006 drew to close, five projects had been completed totaling $15 million. The Brenton Skating Plaza, cost $4.5 million, more than double the original estimate. The Union Railroad Bridge that opened in July cost $4.5 million – $2 million more than expected.

The largest aspect of the Riverwalk project yet to be completed is the Center Street pedestrian bridge. Construction began on the site Aug. 15, with an expected completion date of late next year.

The bridge will be 400 feet long and feature 100-foot-tall arches. This bridge will be much bigger than the blue arched bridge on Interstate 235, which is only 280 feet long.

The Center Street Bridge originally was sited directly above the Center Street Dam, but will be built slightly upstream instead. The shift will make construction simpler and allow better access for any future work on the dam. It also cuts costs by shortening the span.

All riverwalk projects for Phase I should be completed by year-end 2009. I can’t wait to see it all done. This will make downtown living even more appealing.

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Did someone steal the the 4-ton 25-foot tall Nomeade sculpture from Western Gateway Park? No, but if you drive down Locust Street right now, you won’t see it. That’s because it has been temporarily moved to the Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Arrangements for loan of the art were made prior to purchase of the piece. Prior to being in Des Moines, it was in Miami, Florida at Miami Beach’s Lummus Park.I used to walk in that park all the time, when I lived in south Florida. It’s will be back this coming spring as part of the Pappajohn Sculpture Park that is currently being developed between 13th and 15th Streets and Locust Street and Grand Avenue.

The Nomade was purchased in December 2007 by John and Mary Pappajohn and placed in a temporary location in Western Gateway Park. This piece and 16 additional sculptures by world-renowned artists are being donated to the Des Moines Art Center. John and Mary Pappajohn, local Des Moines philanthropists, are donating a collection of outdoor sculpture valued at between $20 million and $30 million for Des Moines’ Western Gateway Park. This donation is believed to be the largest single public gift in Des Moines’ history.

The Pappajohns’ sculpture donations include:

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