Colorado sculptor Lawrence Argent’s latest project is far more ephemeral than “I See What You Mean,” his installation of the big blue bear peering into the Denver Convention Center.
Argent and ice sculptor Scott Rella are finalizing plans to begin constructing “Conduit” on Jan. 12, where it will stand on the Gore Creek Promenade as part of Vail’s upcoming Winterfest.
“Conduit” will be a spiral shaped from blocks of ice and illuminated with energy-efficient LED lights. A seashell will cling to the whorl inside the spiral’s summit.
The midwinter seashell “might otherwise seem out of context,” Argent acknowledges.
It’s meant to invoke the ancient shallow sea that flooded a prehistoric, flat Colorado. In Vail’s neighbor, Minturn, evidence of that seaway remains in the fossil sea life embedded in the Minturn Foundation geological layer.
“What’s interesting is that when you go for hikes around Minturn, people always are finding fossils and things,” Argent said. He has not found one of those fossils, but his son, a dinosaur enthusiast, has.
He and Rella last collaborated on 2008’s “Verdant Meadows,” an ice sculpture suggesting enormous blades of grass.
“Conduit” joins a flame-spouting fountain recentlyly installed in Vail’s Siebert Circle after several years of debate. The company WET, which installed the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas, designed the fountain, which employs water, white lights and natural gas throughout displays that cycle from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The fire spouts only after dark. Sensitive automatic safety measures cut the fuel to snuff the flames if the fire is disturbed.
“We’re still tinkering with it because it’s gone out in a strong wind or if someone sticks a ski pole into the fountain,” said Leslie Fordham, director of Vail’s Art in Public Places.
Nobody has tried to use the fountains for roasting marshmallows.
“Not yet,” she said.
Claire Martin
