[Mpls] North Mississippi Regional Park

[Steve Brandt]

Here's a little more information about the sculpture, from back in the day when the Star Tribune used to...oh, never mind.  Steve Brandt/Kingfield

Paper: STAR TRIBUNE (Mpls.-St. Paul) Newspaper of the Twin Cities
Headline: Artist's chisels and saws mold park in Camden // What was once "a really ugly site," according to artist Zoran Mojsilov, is now a sculpture park in north Minneapolis, the first of three opening in the Twin Cities area this month.
Date: 06/08/96
Section: NEWS
Page: 01B
Edition: METRO
Byline: Mary Abbe; Staff Writer
Graphic: PHOTO
Length: 32.4
Subject: profile;park;art;minneapolis;opening;article
Keys: zoran mojsilov
Slug: CAM08



               Honk if you love sculpture. Truckers do.      For weeks, truck drivers have been tooting their approval to
Minneapolis artist Zoran Mojsilov (pronounced ZOR-an MOY-si-lov) as
he welded steel, chiseled granite, hoisted boulders and chain-sawed
his way through huge tree trunks on the site of a sculpture park
opening today in north Minneapolis.     Built in three months, the blocklong park is all Mojsilov's
creation. The Yugoslavian-born artist has carved seating, supervised
bulldozing, coordinated planting and created the park's five
sculptures - including a 20-ton granite monolith. The park is on an
inauspicious triangle of land overlooking Interstate Hwy. 94 and the
Mississippi River in the Camden neighborhood, an enclave of modest
bungalows, gas stations, pizza joints and diners.     "I was a blue-collar kid, so I feel at home here," said
Mojsilov, 41, as he paused with chain saw in hand to survey his
handiwork this week.  "When truck drivers honk and give me
thumbs-up, I like that. It's happened here more often than anyplace
I've worked and to me, that's it. I've made it."     Mojsilov's park is the first of three outdoor sculpture sites
opening in the Twin Cities area this month and the only one paid for
with public money. It was funded by a $50,000 grant from the
Minneapolis Arts Commission and the Camden Planning Council. The
other two, in Eagan and near Taylors Falls, are semiprivate parks
run by nonprofit corporations.     "This was a really ugly site when I first came here," Mojsilov
said, noting that the plot had been barren since a post office was
torn down years ago.  In February, he won a citywide  competition
for a  "neighborhood gateways" art project to represent the Camden
area.  Researching the community's history, he discovered it had
been a lumber-processing site during the heyday of Minnesota's
timber industry in the late 1800s.
 
Metaphorical mounds      He designed a series of mounds whose peaks and valleys
symbolically represent the nearby Mississippi and echo the burial
mounds of the American Indians who once inhabited the area. They
also conceal the huge concrete bases - up to 10 feet deep  - that
support Mojsilov's sculptures.       His chain-saw-carved benches and paths lined with wood chips
are practical amenities that recall the timber trade. Trees and
shrubs planted along the freeway will eventually muffle vehicle
noise and shade the sculptures. The Camden Garden Club will add
flowers and the city of Minneapolis plans to sod the site this
summer.     "I made it a little bit like McDonald's," Mojsilov said. "You
can drive by and see most of it, but if you want a full lunch, you
can come in and sit a bit, too."     David Hanson, the Minneapolis official who oversaw the project
for the city's volunteer arts commission, said the Camden site is
the largest of six projects completed since the Neighborhood
Gateways Program was started in 1992. The program has an annual
budget of $155,000 for neighborhood art, equal to 1 percent of the
city's net debt-bond proceeds.      "He's dealt with the magnitude of the space very well and the
sculptures he's put there are really dramatic," Hanson said.     A sculpture called "Saturn" is the most eye-catching. Perched
on a vast hill of earth at one end of the park, it resembles a
granite egg surrounded by seven smaller rocks suspended in a spiral
of stainless-steel rods. Hidden in the mound below is a 9-foot base
of reinforced concrete and a steel armature that  clasps the boulder
the way a ring clasps a diamond.     "It's a combination of mathematics and nature," Mojsilov said,
explaining how a machining firm used a computer to calculate the
precise curve needed for the 16 tubes that make up the spiral. In
his studio, he did a preliminary assembly of the spiral - which is
21 feet in diameter - but completed the piece on-site after a crane
hoisted the 10-ton boulder onto its plinth and he anchored it with
steel rods.
 
Not a money-maker    Mojsilov estimates that he has spent more than $35,000 on
materials, labor and equipment for the project.  Stainless steel and
concrete alone cost more than $10,000. Additional money went to rent
cranes and bulldozers, build forms, buy and transport stone,
purchase trees and shrubs, and hire neighborhood kids to clean up
the site.     "If I make any money I'll be happy," said Mojsilov, adding that
he didn't hold back or worry much about the costs, "because it was
important to me to give them something that people would like."     Overhearing the artist's comments over coffee at a local diner,
north Minneapolis scrap-metal dealer Sherwin Pollock interrupted
with advice on how Mojsilov could have trimmed costs by modifying
designs and using lower grades of steel.     "I think it's functional and depicts what he's trying to say,"
Pollock said, when asked what he thought of the sculpture Saturn.
"It's the universe. Here at the center is the sun and on the
perimeter, orbiting the sun, you've got your worlds. Or it's a
cornerstone with people, businesses, all pulling together into
one."     "See," Mojsilov said, smiling happily. "This is my curator.
This is the public."