Three new sculptures have been installed in roundabouts around the city: there’s a man on horseback herding his sheep at Heritage Farms Parkway and 550 East, a cougar and its cub at the parkway’s intersection with Mill Road, and a coyote at the base of Coyote Parkway.
Heber City public information officer Ryan Bunnell said the lifelike sculptures are part of a bigger initiative to add art to public spaces around town.
“Art in Public Places was an incentive that was initially created with the Community Alliance for Main Street reboot that happened five or six years ago,” he said. “CAMS took that and helped to really springboard the awareness of art, initially on the Main Street corridor as the goal.”
He said the new sculptures join an elk at the roundabout on 600 South, along with murals sprinkled across downtown.
All the sculptures were created by the same Wyoming-based artist, Jonathan LaBenne, whose work city manager Matt Brower stumbled upon while visiting Jackson, Wyo.
“It’s a really fun story,” Bunnell said. “Our city manager was traveling, and he saw a statue of a moose. He had been puzzling over a way to put art installations inside the roundabouts.”
So, Brower asked the hotel concierge about the statue, and soon enough, Heber had commissioned sculptures of its own.
The shepherd sculpture cost $35,000, the cougar was $15,000 and the coyote was donated by LaBenne. The money came from the city’s new Trails, Arts and Parks Tax.
Bunnell said applications are open for the next round of arts grants. Heber residents with ideas for art to benefit the community are invited to apply.
“It takes a community for art to be a sustained thing,” he said. “We encourage anybody that has even the slightest inclination to apply.”
The next grant application workshop is Feb. 20 at 5 p.m. in City Hall. The deadline to apply is March 7.
