Artists: Gita Ghei, Max Cora, Erik Legrey, Gail Dahlberg and students of Peg Hansen at Tower View Alternative High School
Year: 2007
Dimensions: 8.5' x 5' x 2'
Medium: Bronze & Tile

Twenty-seven TVAHS students in Peg Hansen's ceramics and sculpture class were involved every step of the way. Students chose images depicting the story of creation, including some Native American traditions. The turtle's name is from the Dakota language and translates to "Big Turtle Lucy"

Above the turtle's head is a stylized RW for Red Wing, and a Mississippi River of blue pieces flows around the base of the shell. Major depictions include Mother Earth; a loon, a fish and a buffalo, representing creatures; a medicine wheel, which works like a compass; a wolf and stars, representing the Native American legend of how the stars came to be; a cottonwood tree, and elements from nature including clouds, the sun and a lake.

The class made hundreds of pieces of tile, including cut shapes for the various motifs, plus they inserted some glass nuggets into the river. With about 300 pounds of tile, the sculpture weighs nearly 1,000 pounds.Add some content to your accordion item here.

Artist: Sam Spiczka
Year: 1999
Medium: Wood & Steel

Born and raised in rural Minnesota, Sam Spiczka became captivated by metal early on through the experience of working at his family’s welding shop. Inspired by natural bone forms, rural technology, and geometric structure, Spiczka has produced a distinctive body of work that is both modern and intensely primal, public yet deeply personal.

A human hand hangs from the center of "Birth of a Martyr." Hands have been a favorite subject matter in Spiczka's work for years, however they have taken on a new significance for the artist following a 2016 lawn mower accident. As he writes on his website, "Hands have their own intelligence, and the memory of their labor is vital to the character of the final piece... Perhaps creating these sculptures satisfies a need for wholeness I no longer experience in my body. Perhaps it is the comic absurdity of incomplete hands re-making themselves in steel. Whatever the ultimate reason, I just find them beautiful and perhaps even, dare I say, inspiring."

Artist: Fernanda Sequeiros Hart
Year: 2009
Dimensions: 13'9" x 18'2" x 17'5"
Medium: Fabriacted Steel

Fernanda Sequeiros Hart is an artist born in 1979 in Caleta Olivia, Argentina. Currently based in Minneapolis, her paintings and sculptures reflect the matriarchal mentality of the family in which she was raised. They bring in elements of the female form and images of the animals that wandered freely on the ranch where she was raised. Why animals and females? Because, from birth to death, their lives display the beautiful and horrific images that have haunted her.

"Ojalá" was created while in residence at Franconia Sculpture Park. Although the word ojalá directly translates in Spanish to “hopefully,” ojalá actually derives from an Arabic expression: “ma sha allah,” which means “should God will it” (ما شاء الله‎). Therefore Ojalá is a word used when one really hopes and wishes that something will happen—almost as if requesting divine intervention.