Giant flower likeness to be center of proposed park

A nature-made layer of New Bern’s history is getting a bit of a modern twist: The spider lily, which made its U.S. debut in this city, may soon have a place of honor downtown, as the 26-foot steel centerpiece of a sculpture park near the Neuse River.

At the moment, the sculpture is “in pieces all over California,” as a team of artists and engineers works to shape it, refine it, and “super build” it to withstand Eastern North Carolina’s weather, including hurricanes. But by the end of the summer, the ramped-up kinetic artwork could be standing in a grassy area near the roundabout on Broad Street, with its entire top spinning in the wind and catching the sunlight.

The piece was commissioned by Dr. Jim Congleton, a pediatric dentist in Trent Woods who is an art aficionado and an amateur botanist. In 2005, he sought out Susan Pascal Beran, a San Francisco Bay-area sculptor who specializes in kinetic art and bio-mimicry — a design discipline centered on studying nature, and then imitating the best parts of it.

“I’ve been doing this sort of work for 30 years, and my orientation has always been to draw from nature, because it is the best teacher,” she said recently. “So this project really, right away, spoke to something in me.”

Congleton found Pascal Beran and her work at a sculpture show in Colorado, and a five-year plan was set in motion.

Congleton knew that he wanted to donate a significant piece of public art to New Bern for its 300th anniversary in 2010. And it didn’t take long for him to know what it should be: the likeness of a spider lily, an orange-red flower that Capt. William Roberts brought from the Far East back to his home in New Bern in the 1850s.

Roberts had served on a ship in Japan for quite some time, so as a gift to his family upon his return, he brought back three bulbs — none of which amounted to anything right away. And then the rain came.

Soon, the flowers were blooming all over New Bern, throughout the South, and beyond.

“I just think that’s a neat part of our history that not a lot of people would think of, or maybe even know about,” Congleton said. “It’s a neat history lesson for children. And when you tie that to sculpture, you are really giving people an appreciation for two things at once: our history and our public art, which I would really like to see take off in the next few years.”

Congleton paid more than $100,000 for the sculpture, though he won’t say just how much it costs.

“It’s a whirligig, really,” he said. “And it sure will be beautiful with the river as its backdrop.”

And this flower is no pansy.

The anatomy of the sculpture is pretty impressive: It’s made almost entirely of stainless steel, with “bits of titanium to dance in the wind,” Pascal Beran said, and glass in the center to capture the sunlight. All told, the piece weighs just shy of 2,000 pounds, including the base, and portions of it are specifically treated to be resistant to ultraviolet rays.

The artist has built two similar sculptures for Dallas, she said, but added that New Bern’s is a “super build,” because of the scale of the project and the conditions it must withstand.

“I intend for this to last the city for another 300 years,” she said.

Pascal Beran has put “literally thousands” of hours into the project, but doesn’t know exactly how many.

“I try not to go there,” she said, laughing. “I get caught up in something I love and lose all track of time. I don’t think about the time it takes, because when I do, I realize sometimes that I am working for Burger King wages.”

When the project is finished, New Bern’s Swiss Bear Downtown Development Corporation wants to make it the focal point of a new park just off Broad Street. The nonprofit organization will pitch, maybe as early as this week, for the city to take over the maintenance of the sculpture once it is in place. Susan Moffat-Thomas, Swiss Bear’s executive director, said she hopes to see a “lovely park built around a lovely structure.”

Moffat-Thomas said Swiss Bear is planning a fund-raising campaign and hopes to get about $180,000 from donors to go toward the project, which for now, is being called simply Broad Street Park.

“This sculpture donation is a fabulous gesture, and the city’s master plan calls for the placement of art objects in this area, so it’s a great fit,” she said. “Art like this is very important to a community as cosmopolitan as New Bern, and it celebrates a part of what makes the city unique.”

Nikie Mayo can be reached at 252-635-5665 or nmayo@freedomenc.com.