Sculpture designer Shanay Worley and family at the ribbon cutting ceremony, held at Trevitt and West Sixth streets. The sculpture honors four iconic wild species of the Columbia River.
A new sculpture on Trevitt street honors four iconic wild species of the Columbia River. The sculpture's bald eagle will stay silver-headed while the surrounding metal browns from rust, thanks to a sheet of aluminum.
A new sculpture on Trevitt street honors four iconic wild species of the Columbia River. Detail of a lupine flower, bolted solidly together to foil theft.
Sculpture designer Shanay Worley and family at the ribbon cutting ceremony, held at Trevitt and West Sixth streets. The sculpture honors four iconic wild species of the Columbia River.
THE DALLES — A new sculpture on Trevitt street honors four iconic wild species of the Columbia River. Shanay Worley, a student in the two-year Advanced Manufacturing and Fabrication program at Columbia Gorge Community College (CGCC), designed the piece for The Dalles Beautification Committee.
“They just gave me the specs for it — how big they wanted it, what they kind of wanted to say, what the budget was,” Worley said.
The four-sided steel and aluminum sculpture towers over the traffic island at Trevitt and West Sixth Street. The dozen or so attendees of last Thursday’s Chamber of Commerce ribbon-cutting ceremony got a close look at the four symbolic species — salmon, evergreen tree, bald eagle with shining aluminum head, and lupine (one of the Gorge’s signature native wildflowers) — cut into the column's four sides.
A new sculpture on Trevitt street honors four iconic wild species of the Columbia River. The sculpture's bald eagle will stay silver-headed while the surrounding metal browns from rust, thanks to a sheet of aluminum.
Flora Gibson photo
Originally, Worley planned to include a fern, but learned ferns were used more often as a Washington symbol.
Worley designed the sculpture on a computer, inputting all the measurements into 3-D software, and put together a list of materials for purchase. The designs were measured out onto carefully overlapped sections of metal, cut, and bolted together in the workshops at CGCC.
“When you put something on paper and you think it’s gonna be one way, and then you fabricate it and put it together, it’s like your imagination comes to life, and it’s a really beautiful transition,” Worley said. “...I have the paper of what I drew initially ... and then put it on the computer. And now, looking at it — it’s breathtaking.”
In the past, a statue had been stolen, Worley said. Fastened by aluminum security bolts, this one is designed to be immovable. “It’s sturdy and it’s not going anywhere,” said Worley.
The design was fun, even though she had to rethink a few fabrication processes here and there.
The stainless steel panels will eventually rust to reddish-brown, but the bald eagle’s head was backed in aluminum so that it will stay silver, instead of fading to that more hawk-like rusty brown. “It’s metal. It’ll change with the season,” said Worley, who aspires to be a design engineer.
A new sculpture on Trevitt street honors four iconic wild species of the Columbia River. Detail of a lupine flower, bolted solidly together to foil theft.
Flora Gibson photo
“It’s just fabulous. I think you’re gonna have a wonderful career,” one ribbon-cutting visitor told sculptor and family, beaming.
“I’m just grateful to CGCC, grateful to Chris and Robert. My instructors are amazing, and I wouldn’t be where I am without them,” Worley said.
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