PORT ANGELES — A 16-foot-long, 20,000-pound polished concrete replica of a whale vertebrae is expected to be installed at Valley Creek Estuary Park on Wednesday.
The giant artwork will be moved into place with trucks, cranes and loaders, which are expected at the park at about 10:30 a.m. that day, said Barb Frederick, executive director of the Port Angeles Downtown Association, in an email.
Preparation for the installation was in progress Thursday.
The $65,000 addition to the Art on the Town collection of outdoor sculptures was commissioned from artist Alex Anderson, owner of Alex Anderson Concrete in Port Angeles.
The interactive sculpture — which is designed with a 4.5-foot-wide hole in the middle where children can climb through — will be placed near the historic marker at the end of Cherry Street on Front Street on the Port Angeles waterfront.
The sculpture is 12 feet tall and 4 feet thick. Part of the sculpture will serve as a bench.
Anderson has said he based the sculpture on gray whale bones he saw at the Makah Cultural and Research Museum at Neah Bay but that it isn’t anatomically correct.
The center part normally would be solid in a whale, he said earlier this summer in Agnew.
Charles Smith, chairman of the Art on the Town Committee, said the project “fits with the Northwest and the marine theme we have in this community.”
An anonymous donor paid for the project, Anderson said.
