Buschmann Park gets new dream-themed sculpture

Buschmann Park in downtown Petersburg received a long awaited addition last Friday. The bronze sculpture named "Everything starts with a dream" by local artist Eric Larson was installed.

"It's a huge relief, I was apprehensive taking it down there, but then once it went in it was like 'oh, yeah,'" Larson says with a chuckle.

Larson estimates the piece weighs around 700 pounds, and there is still some electric work to do until it can be officially unveiled later this year at the Little Norway Festival. The piece will include water raining down from behind the boy with the fishing pole and falling down to the river rock below him just like a fountain, he says.

The idea for the bronze came from a rock at Raven's Roost Park frequently sat on by youngsters fishing. A huge motivating factor in undertaking the project was Larson's desire to finally get a bronze sculpture on his resume.

"I've sculpted in clay and I do a lot of wood sculpture but that was my first bronze," he says. "I saw it as an opportunity to finally get a bronze under my belt."

When he started the project, Larson's wife was working at the school and she thought Gunnar Payne would be a great model to help get things rolling. Larson took pictures of Payne sitting on a milk crate, holding a fishing pole. He then used the images to get the proper anatomy and posture for the boy sitting on the rock.

"Where's his elbow? What's it look like? It was just to have something to go off of," Larson says of working with Payne. "It was never meant to resemble him at all."

As for Larson's next project, he says he will take on "that stupid bear down the street," referring to the bear located by Viking Travel. The bear originally had a fish in its mouth, but people kept stealing it, so the fish was eventually replaced with peat.

"Every time I walk by there I cannot look at it," Larson says of the bear with peat in its mouth. "It looks stupid. So I've always wanted to get it done in bronze and get the fish back in its mouth."

Larson is going to make a fish of bronze and weld it in place so that anyone looking to take the fish will need a lot more than just their hands to take it.