Client: Friends of the Decorah Fish Hatchery

Location: Decorah, IA, United States

Completion date: 2020

Artwork budget: $216,000

Project Team

Artist

Doug Freeman

Doug Freeman Studio LLC

Bronze Casting Metal Work

Wes Jones & Team

Casting Creations of MN

Foam enlargement

Karl Bekkala

Outshaped

Water jet cutting

Don Morawitz

JIT

Overview

Exploring mystery in the land of an ancient sea.

The Decorah Fish Hatchery is located at Siewers Spring one of the many cold water springs in the north east corner of Iowa. The peaceful setting draws people not only for the fish and the resident eagle family but also for the beauty and spiritual presence of the site. The park like setting is used for weddings, funerals, graduations and other turning points in life.

Goals

The Friends of the Decorah Fish Hatchery commissioned sculptor Doug Freeman to create work that would give form to the spirits of place.

Process

We begin with a careful study of the site.
For this project it included stream sampling with Dr. Kirk Larsen’s biology class from Luther College, a collection day for stories and community observations. A conversation with a community historian. Some collection of fossils, many photographs and careful observation at different times of day and year.

With this source material Doug begins with drawings, sketch book studies and small clay sculptures. A site model is built to scale in the studio to allow for a daily study of the composition.

The client is connected to this process through regular studio visits and email updates with pictures.

Maquettes or design models are created for approval by the client to begin the full scale work. We often do a site visit with full scale cardboard cut outs to test the scale of the work at the site.

Additional Information

These sculptures are scheduled to be installed in mid October of 2020. We will update these photographs with photos of the completed work in the final setting at that time.