Albert Paley Sculpture - Iowa Installation

Albert Paley installs his biggest sculpture yet

A new monument towers over an interstate exit in Iowa near the Missouri River.

It's called Odyssey, created by the internationally acclaimed sculptor Albert Paley, and its four spiky metal forms rise 100 feet above one of the country's busiest highways. Work crews started installing the sculptures on each corner of the South 24th Street overpass Aug. 5 and plan to finish this week. When they do, the $3 million monument will become a landmark for the 85,000 cars and trucks that pass daily along that stretch of Interstate 80/29, a link to , Kansas City and Des Moines.

"The four sculptures are seen as the gateway of Iowa," Paley said on the phone from his studio in Rochester. "The whole thing is about an act of passage, of creating a sense of place and an identity. When you're driving, especially on the interstate, it becomes fairly monotonous, but the magnitude of these sculptures really defines Council Bluffs' image."

Artist's largest work

Paley has created more than 50 site-specific works over the course of his career, including colossal gates and archways for public buildings such as the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery and the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and a state courthouse in San Francisco. In Iowa, he built a boldly modern entrance for Iowa State University's 119-year-old Morrill Hall in Ames and a gateway made from farm tools near Perry's Hotel Pattee.

But Odyssey is his biggest work yet. He and a team of 16 studio assistants assembled each of the four sculptures from 46,000 to 70,000 pounds of bronze (which has a green patina), Cor-Ten steel (which develops a rust color) and brushed stainless steel (which reflects sunlight). The mixed materials refer to the visual dialogue between land and air and sky and light, the artist said. Each of the four towers is a puzzle of up to 15 pieces - cones and cylinders and jagged discs - that jut up from the highway landscape and stand out even among the clutter of signs for hotels and gas stations. The Iowa Department of Transportation had to approve the plans to ensure the artwork wouldn't create a dangerous distraction, but Paley has few doubts about its visual impact.

"I put an emphasis on a very strong visual profile so they would stand out against the starkness of the sky," he said.

He added that the abstract forms suggest some sort of transformation, from an agrarian to an urban civilization, for example, or from an old era to a new one.

"It's something we deal with all the time, but we rarely take note of it," he said. "What I do kind of focuses that and gives it a symbolic context." Tour nearby sculptures

Odyssey, it turns out, marks a turning point in more ways than one. It's the eighth and most recent addition to an ambitious public-art plan the Iowa West Foundation set in motion five years ago, which includes a new fountain downtown at Bayliss Park and a remarkable collection of contemporary sculpture near the Mid-America Arena and Convention Center.

Just off the highway near the "Odyssey" exit, visitors can pull out their cell phones and dial (712) 212-9088 for a free (and fascinating) audio tour of the works nearby, including:

"There's really a buzz around town," foundation president and CEO Todd Graham said. "The whole project has been fairly well received."

Although some residents haven't exactly fallen in love with sculptor Deborah Masuoka's gargantuan rabbit heads in downtown's historic Haymarket district, Graham said more people like them than don't. Besides, he told the Register last year, "If everyone loves a piece of artwork, it is probably not very good."

More to come

The next steps in the foundation's public-art plan involve adding artwork to the West Broadway bridge leading into downtown and placing sculptures throughout the proposed 90-acre riverfront park near the elegantly curved Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, which opened two years ago. The foundation also worked with the Minneapolis-based real estate developer Artspace to transform an old warehouse into apartments and studio space for artists and their families. The building is scheduled to open in the next few weeks.

City leaders hope the projects will transform Council Bluffs into a permanent destination for artists, and Paley, who regularly travels between his studio in New York and a second one in California, thinks his newest sculpture will help put western Iowa on the map. He compared his work to a certain monument on what was once a forgettable speck of land in the New York harbor.

"If it weren't for the Statue of Liberty, I'm not sure many people would remember that island," he explained in a statement the Foundation released earlier this month. "Drivers will see this from miles away, and their view will change as they get closer and closer. As they pass through the gateway, they'll experience something, and they'll remember."