Art of the Pacific Northwest - The Art of Boise, Idaho

This is the fourth in the series. I've only driven through Idaho on the way to other states. I'm from New Joisey, but I've never visited Boise. Boise has its Percent-for-Art program that allocates 1.4% of all capital funds for art installations. The city has a wonderful website that highlights Public Art & History Locations. I have chosen to show and tell you about some of my favorites. 

Bronze Sculpture

Keepsies by Ann LaRose is a popular life-size sculpture of children playing with marbles. This one was originally adjacent to a fountain in downtown Grove Plaza in 1998, then relocated to Dick Eardley Boise Senior Center in 2017 to make room for other construction in the plaza. I don't know if kids play the game of marbles much today, but I bet it's pretty nostalgic for the Seniors!

In a plaza adjacent to the Boise River is the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, which is located next to the Boise Library and nearby Boise Art Museum and Idaho History Museum. A statue of Anne Frank peering out the attic window where she hid during WWII was created in 2002 by sculptor, Greg Stone. 

Last year, another statue of Anne Frank was dedicated at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. You may also want to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum located in Washington, D.C. Hopefully, such memorials and dedications will survive the recent vandalism by protest sympathizers. Perhaps some cities will be inspired to commission local artists to erect statues like this one or those honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr. to replace controversial art with new monuments and memorials that will remind everyone that religious persecution and racial discrimination are wrong. MLK statues may be found around the country as listed on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.

Last week, in the southwest England city of Bristol, the statue of slave trader, Edward Colston was taken down with the help of BLM protestor, Jen Reid, dragged to the Avon River and tossed in. It was temporarily replaced (without permission) by Marc Quinn's statue of her. The original status, complete with protest graffiti, has been since retrieved and will be placed in a museum. I wonder if the incident had been planned months ago, given how long it would take to sculpt such a figure.

In 2003, the statue of Sacajawea and Pomp (her son Jean Baptiste) by Agnes Vincen Talbot was installed in Julia Davis Park in front of the Idaho History Museum. The young bilingual Lemhi Shoshone woman helped Lewis and Clark on their exploration from Louisiana to the Pacific Ocean and back. She was married to  French Canadian trapper and interpreter, Toussaint Charbonneau.

Likely the most famous of artists born in Idaho is sculptor, John Gutzon Borglum, who is best known for designing and sculpting the heads of the four U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. The monument cost $989K and was completed in October 1941, although the artist died the previous March. Borglum was the son of a family of polygamist Mormons and he apparently had white supremacist leanings. I'll let you read Smithsonian Magazine's The Sordid History of Mount Rushmore yourself. Talk about controversy!

More Sculpture...

Cottonwoods (2017), Dwaine Carver & Zachary Hill

There's a new sculpture outside City Hall that memorializes cottonwood trees (of all things) that line the Boise River. Apparently, the rusted steel structures replaced the flags of the fifty states in 2017. Even as far back as 2015, state flags that honored the Confederacy experienced controversy and caused the Mayor to remove the Mississippi State Flag. Today, these offending symbols are being removed from the flags themselves.

Some public art pieces have been controversial. John Mason's Point of Origin sculpture of three steel squares was created in 1978 then moved in the 1990s to the lawn of the Boise Art Museum, where it could be more appreciated, I guess, or to make room for something else.

Everyone's a critic! But, hey, that's what I like about art -- the ability to evoke multiple reactions and form our own opinions. There's something for everyone; either you like it or you don't. That doesn't mean that it should be criticized or taken down unless of course, it is particularly offensive or in bad taste. And never mind the cost to move or renovate it?

The expensive River Sculpture (actually a 3D mural of sorts) created by Allison Sky in 1999 and etched in an exterior wall of the Grove Hotel was difficult and costly to maintain with its oozing mist and lighting effects. It was reconstructed in 2015, replacing the painted and recessed river background with mosaic tiles (a lot of work!), among other maintenance improvements, at over 100% of the originally commissioned cost. Amazing!

Paintings

Another artist from Idaho is Jany Rae Seda, who was Boise's Artist in Residence in 2009. She not only paints colorful landscapes but also paints the local wildlife. Her Bull painting somewhat reminds me of the Buffalo at Sunset painting by John Nieto advertising the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington.

Buffalo at Sunset, John Nieto

But I really love her painting of the Purple Moose!

California Impressionist, Erin Hanson has painted Idaho landscapes that capture sunshine and scenic splendor in warm vibrant colors. This one is of Boise in the summertime and is called Reflections of August.

Dawn Rising is simply amazing! An impressionistic expression of sunrise in Idaho also by Erin Hanson!

Murals

Imagine driving through this tunnel in Boise, Idaho. OMG, what a distraction! I'm not sure that the city thought this one through. Maybe they thought the passengers would enjoy it.  It seems like anything goes when it comes to 'art'.

Recall the 1980 Op-Art work by Yaacov Agam in my 2020 Palm Springs post? Or the accordion-pleated double portrait of the Danish Monarchs from the Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen? Here's one from 2004 entitled, Penny Postcard: An American Greeting by Mark Baltes. It's a two-sided mural made of porcelain enamel on steel. I haven't actually seen this, so I don't know what image is on the other side. That's three examples, so I guess it's an art thing!

The Big Back Yard, Lewis

Doesn't this mural remind you of something that Yosemite Sam or Wyle E. Coyote would have concocted to fool Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner in a Looney Tunes cartoon? Artist, David Carmack Lewis luckily painted it on the side of a building adjacent to a parking lot. Like the one inside the tunnel, what were they thinking?

Painted on The Fowler, Lewis' Absence and Presence was thought to be the largest mural in Idaho until he began working on Over The Valley on one side of the eleven-story Key Financial Center building in May of this year.

Don't forget to visit Freak Alley Gallery and Murals, a section of street art and murals along the backside of buildings in the downtown area of Boise. It was started in 2002 and ran and expanded by Colby Akers, then recently taken over by Melissa Nodzu. You can virtually visit by checking out the Silly America - Roadside Attractions blog.