Richard Light Sculpture

Turtle sculpture to come out of its shell at Arcadia Creek Festival Place

Special to the Kalamazoo Gazette

KALAMAZOO - A 10-foot--long turtle sculpture, the final piece in the design of the Arcadia Creek Festival Place, will be unveiled Friday. The Downtown Development Authority is set to install the bronze Makinauk turtle sculpture created by park designer and international sculptor Richard Light, a native of Kalamazoo during a program at 3:30 p.m.

Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell and Downtown Kalamazoo Inc. President Ken Nacci will speak at the installation ceremony, which is open to the public.

The sculpture was a collaboration between the DDA and Light, who also serves as design consultant for the DDA.

The DDA went through a comprehensive plan in 2008 and early 2009 in which it set several strategic priorities for downtown in regards to arts and culture, as well as land use and development. One of them was a "city for children," Nacci said.

"If you look at a 'city for children' and you look at arts and culture, how do we wed the two," Nacci said.

"At the time, Mr. Light offered his thinking of a turtle that could, in my mind, serve as fitting in both of those priorities. We didn't commission this piece; we simply accepted the gifting of it from Mr. Light because it seemed to meet multiple priorities of our planning process." In addition to providing a piece of art in the park, the turtle sculpture will also serve as something for children to climb and play on, according to Nacci.

Nacci said placing the sculpture at the Arcadia Creek Festival Place, near the playground equipment, may take residents back in time to the old downtown Kalamazoo Mall.

"Back in the day of the Kalamazoo Mall, prior to its reopening to vehicular traffic, there was playground stuff like a dolphin and a turtle that all the little kids, mine included, climbed upon," he said.

The sculpture will not be the first in town created by Light. In addition to the life-sized bronze statue St. Joseph with the Flower at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 936 Lake St. Siegfried, Crandall, Vos and Lewis Accounting; Fifth Third Bank and several private collections own pieces of Light's work.

Light, a Kalamazoo native who has a studio here at the Park Trade Center as well as one in Ivry Sur Seine, France, trained at Yale University in art and English 1958-62, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 1987-91 and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris in 2004.