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[ ♪♪♪ ] MAN: There's a rush when the bronze comes out of the crucible.

You watch it, and it's just so fluid and graceful.

MAN: The best part is when you have this clunky machine and you see it start to move, and then all of a sudden, for just a brief second, it transforms into something else where you're like, "What?!"

WOMAN: I love a sense of lightness and a sense of brightness.

If I can lift somebody's mood through our art, that brings me a lot of joy.

[ ♪♪♪ ] JULES GILFILLAN: If you've lived almost anywhere in Oregon, there's a good chance you've seen some of Pete Helzer's work.

Pete's public sculptures range in style from his whimsical turtles at the Oregon Zoo... to this highly relatable moment depicting a dog and a girl in Tualatin... to this stirring tribute to Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks at the bus station in Eugene.

PETE: You know, the Rosa Parks piece, that was a real honor for me.

What's interesting is that the people of Eugene have sort of taken ownership of that piece.

She doesn't get vandalized so much, she doesn't get tagged so much.

There's always somebody down there kind of watching out for her.

We first met the Dexter, Oregon, artist in 2003.

He was working on the clay bust of late Oregon author Ken Kesey and getting some pointers from Ken's daughter, Sunshine.

I also worked on the nose a little bit since... -Uh-huh.

-Since we talked.

Yeah, and the only thing I could say is that it's... From the side, it's still a bit point-- It's become kind of pointy now.

And maybe it just needs just a bit more of a ball.

Here on top, this way?

-Right at the...

Right there.

-I'm going to flatten it a bit.

SUNSHINE: So I can come in and, you know, help Pete out with things that, you know, even him, who's studying the photographs, there are just things that you wouldn't notice unless you'd lived with it for years and years.

With Sunshine's help, Pete's sculpture of Ken Kesey reading to his grandchildren is an iconic part of downtown Eugene.

But he won't have that kind of help on this project, a bronze statue of Louis Southworth.

I think there are three photographs of Southworth that we know authentically is him.

So this is the one I've decided to use for the Southworth sculpture.

When it's finished, Pete's sculpture will be the centerpiece of a park in Waldport dedicated to this Oregon pioneer.

MAN: So here we are on the future home of Louis Southworth Park in Waldport, and when it's completed, I think it'll probably be one of, you know, only a handful of places that are honoring a specific Black person in Oregon.

Louis Southworth was a jack of all trades.

He was brought to Oregon as an enslaved person in 1853, and he finds himself in this place where legally he has no rights, no opportunities.

And yet he creates opportunities for himself.

He was known for his fiddle playing, and after going to Jacksonville and working in the gold fields and then going to Yreka, California, for a time, the story goes that when he was in California, he played fiddle for a couple of dancing schools, for girls' dancing schools, and earnings from that are what he used to-- along with the gold earnings-- purchase his freedom.

And then he eventually came here to Waldport.

And so for 30 years, he lived on a piece of land which he claimed and was able to successfully file a Homestead Act claim for.

Louis established himself in the community, operating a ferry across the Alsea River.

He was ferrying goods for people to build their homes and so, I mean, just on that level, you know, he was responsible for the town being built in a lot of ways.

Jesse Dolin grew up in Waldport right across the way from Louis' land.

And what's amazing to me that I didn't learn, you know, being a student here in Waldport was that he donated land to build Waldport's first schoolhouse.

He just persevered, and he was embraced by a white settler community during a very chaotic and divided time in our state's history.

I mean, an incredible story, and I just couldn't believe it hadn't been told.

To Jesse, 12 acres of vacant property in downtown Waldport was the perfect spot to build a park in honor of Louis Southworth.

So I had this dream to do a life-size bronze sculpture, and I had remembered seeing this incredible bronze piece in Eugene of Ken Kesey reading a book to kids, so I did some research and found the artist's name, and I just emailed him.

Jesse's email arrived just about the time Pete was thinking about retirement.

[ chuckling ] I-- Bronze keeps getting a little heavier every year.

I'm turning 76, and then I got a call from Jesse Dolin, and I was really blown away by the vision that Waldport had for this park.

We can estimate his size by the length of the bow, and they haven't changed much over the years.

With only three photos to work from, Pete worked with models to sculpt Southworth's dimensions and appearance.

But getting from a clay sculpture to a bronze statue has a few steps.

First, the bust of Southworth's head was encased in a plaster mold and filled with wax to form a wax positive.

Another heat-resistant mold was then built around the wax bust.

And then that's put into what we call a burnout kiln.

Wax is then melted out of that mold.

That's why they call it lost-wax casting: the wax gets lost.

With the wax now lost, the empty mold is ready for bronze casting.

[ ♪♪♪ ] One, two, three, up.

Good.

Good landing.

Okay, John, grab the bar.

Up.

Okay, nice and slow... here we go.

There's a rush when the bronze comes out of the crucible.

It looks like orange juice, you know?

It's like, that's a metal, that's heavy, and yet you watch it, and it's just so fluid and graceful.

That's a rush.

It's always been a rush.

It's been a rush for 50 years.

There you go, right to the top.

In about 15 minutes, it's time for the big reveal.

Okay, we're going to see what we got here.

Then you have a bronze sculpture.

[ ♪♪♪ ] For something on the scale of the Southworth project, casting the parts is sort of the beginning, because the parts have to be assembled into a statue.

You've got welding and you've got grinding and you've got dremel-tool work.

There are parts of it that are exciting-- bronze pours are exciting-- but the foundry work is a lot of work.

[ whirring ] This is probably the most complex piece I've ever done.

The reason is he's playing a fiddle, and twisting your arm around in that position, that was difficult, getting the hand to look natural.

I finished the hand, I looked at it.

It looked fine from one angle.

I'd go to another angle, it looked like he had a broken wrist.

Cut it off, start over.

Keep in mind, Pete's making all these adjustments in bronze.

So it means cutting things off, putting them back together with the weld and then grinding it down and then texturing the surface so it matches everything else.

But also if you're a quarter of an inch off at the elbow, you're going to be two inches off at the fingers.

So I had to make some adjustments in the wrist and the elbow to get the bow to lay across the strings.

With all the pieces assembled and the seams smoothed out, the statue is ready for a patina.

I tend to like to over-patina, so I go darker, and then I work back with wire brushes and buffing pads until I get the exact color that I want.

So I try to highlight the areas that are raised and leave the recessed areas a little darker, and that gives it much more depth and more sort of-- I like to think of it as more life-like features.

[ ♪♪♪ ] All right, let's try to lift it.

One, two, three, go.

You guys are doing great.

Set it up, get it over here.

You gotta come-- Right there, perfect here.

Louis Southworth.

[ all cheering ] -JESSE: Hi, everybody.

-CROWD: Hi, Jesse.

JESSE: Thank you all so much for being here.

This is such an exciting day for the city of Waldport.

It's satisfying on so many different levels to see this project come together.

It's really overdue.

Knowing the story of Louis Southworth has really deepened my connection to this place.

No doubt Louis Southworth was a remarkable individual, but his story is not an individual story.

It is the story of every 19th-century Black American who made a life for themselves in Oregon in the face of legalized inequality.

And it is the story of those who fought against that inequality because they recognized the goodness in those who were different from them.

Our ancestors knew that ordinary people can make a difference.

And so to have a park honoring him shows people that, yes, Black people have lived in Oregon, Black people still live in Oregon.

Having named places is a way to honor our ancestors and demonstrate what communities value.

JESSE: All right, ready?

One, two, three.

[ all cheering, applauding ] [ playing folk tune ] PETE: Working on this project has just been a real uplifting experience from the very start.

He was clearly a fascinating character, and the other thing I wonder about often is whether my ancestors knew him, because he lived about 18 miles from where my ancestors were farming, so there's a good chance that if they didn't know him personally, they would've known of him.

So I feel all kinds of fellowship with Louis Southworth.

I'm selective about who I memorialize.

They have to be significant to me in some way.

I also try to stay within the Pacific Northwest, within Oregon mostly.

So it's like developing and participating in creation of a sense of place, and I think that's where it becomes important to me as a person.

[ song ends, crowd cheering and applauding ] Move the spike down, the point of the spike down.

Oh, I like that.

I like that a lot.

[ ♪♪♪ ] JENNIFER: Our mission with our artwork is to lift spirits and brighten the world.

I'm Dave Frei.

And I'm Jennifer Corio, and we make up the artist team for Cobalt Designworks.

The world right now is heavy.

I feel the heaviness, and I think that's why I'm always striving to design with a lightness.

DAVE: Creating a piece of public art, you're putting out something that's visual and creates a conversation.

It becomes a part of the community, and I think people tend to have pride in it, even if it's a little controversial.

It becomes something they can talk about and share with people visiting the community and it becomes important to them.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Can you show it in the round?

Yeah, let me do something real quick here.

JENNIFER: Oh, I like that.

I actually think we exaggerated the spike... Mm-hmm.

...in my original design.

The piece in Ashland was all about a work of art that speaks to the transformation that the railroad made.

They have a whole railroad district that was created in the late 1800s when the railroad came through.

And Ashland was a very important part because it was the final connection between Portland and San Francisco.

When they finished the rail, it marked the complete circumference of the railroad around the nation.

So it was a golden spike moment.

The golden spike became a canvas for some words.

Then as I dived into the history, I saw just how pivotal the Chinese were in coming over and building the railroad.

And it says in English, "In honor of the Chinese men who laid these tracks despite discrimination and without recognition, today we offer our belated gratitude and sadness."

DAVE: Which one do you want green?

Mm, try the dog.

DAVE: Okay.

Here we go with our green imagination in stuff we use.

JENNIFER: We met almost 24 years ago now.

We were both working at Hewlett-Packard at the time, and Dave was doing R&D, mechanical engineering work, and I was in the marketing department.

A friend of mine knew him, and I thought he had smiling eyes.

Um, I thought he was really handsome.

I'm going to rework the dog.

Yeah, find a dog with a bigger jaw.

[ both laugh ] But I want the dog to look friendly.

He lived out in Battle Ground, and he had a shop that he built that was at least five times-- -Three times.

-Three times bigger than his house.

He'd have all these different cars in there.

I thought it was cool, but I let him do his thing.

I had been working in marketing for about five years.

I was doing a lot of project management and more process-oriented stuff.

And taking these art classes at Clark College, I started exercising my creativity.

And so with these art classes, I was having a blast.

DAVE: She was coming home from her classes and sharing, "I got to use a plasma cutter today.

Do you know what those--?"

"Yeah, I have one."

And you said, "We learned how to TIG."

I go, "Oh, I have a couple of those."

She started realizing she married into a dowry of a fabricator.

[ both laugh ] JENNIFER: Dave and I started coming together, and we would work in the garage and just do it as a hobby.

DAVE: Jennifer had had some successes with a sculpture she and I did, and all of a sudden HP had a downsizing, and I qualified for early retirement.

We took the leap and started Cobalt Designworks.

[ ♪♪♪ ] JENNIFER: I work in my design studio.

I'm the one who is looking for the art opportunities.

Once we have secured a commission, the first part for me is the most exhilarating.

Then the most daunting part is playing detective on trying to talk to as many people as I can about what they want this art to represent.

Then I'll also start collecting images.

I might take out some of my son's books, books that I read to him as a kid, right?

They are just a source of so much fun inspiration.

Like this one, color.

I mean, the stories are fun, but just the pictures... [ whirring ] DAVE: A lot of the work requires hand-forming, hand-shaping.

A new area for me, but it's been really enjoyable in learning how to shape metal and get the shapes we want it.

A lot of people think of metal as quite rigid, but it really is very much like pizza dough.

So when you press it out and stretching in certain areas, shrinking in other areas, you end up creating bowl shapes and waves and shapes like that.

So the material will take a shape just like bread dough or something soft like that.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Because all our pieces are one-off, everything has to be assembled.

The fabrication process takes hundreds of hours.

So it's a matter of breaking it down into different pieces and stepping through and trying to create one step at a time.

[ clanging echoes ] I will say we've worked with some delicious colors.

We work with powder coat mostly.

Sometimes we do automotive paint, but mostly powder coat because it's much more environmentally friendly.

They electrically charge the sculpture, and then they spray the powder, and the electrical charge is what attracts the powder to the piece.

And after it's been coated, it will go into an oven and it gets baked on.

Anything over 6 feet has to go through an engineering process and has to have a structural engineer look at it.

JENNIFER: Dave and the engineers are always bringing me back down to earth.

They're reminding me that gravity is a thing, you know.

[ both laugh ] Uh, and sometimes, you know, they're like, "You've got to thicken this up," and I'm like, "Oh, that takes away the sexy look," but we-- there is a back and forth, and it ends up being both graceful and structurally sound.

[ ♪♪♪ ] DAVE: We're finishing up a collaborative project with the Vancouver School of the Arts.

It's their design, but we are doing the actual fabrication.

JENNIFER: The visionaries behind this project really want the students to learn how do you work with a client to get-- to come up with your concept?

How do you find funding and apply for grants?

JENNIFER: They're just getting to see the whole process, and I think this will really help launch them if they do want to go into public art themselves.

DAVE: Okay, so I'm going to get the cocoon.

You can go ahead and get up there.

JENNIFER: Okay.

DAVE: So we each have our role in this process, and it's the coming together that really builds both our business and our relationship.

Okay, you're good.

That's feeling solid?

I'm convinced our relationship has gotten stronger and stronger because of what we're doing here.

[ ♪♪♪ ] JENNIFER: I love a sense of lightness and a sense of brightness.

If I can lift somebody's mood through our art, that brings me a lot of joy.

And so it's meaningful to know that these things will last for a long time, decades to come, and they'll be out there, hopefully making a lot of people smile.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Just infusing some motion in there is really interesting to me, because suddenly it can-- The best part is when you have this clunky machine, and then you see it start to move, and then all of a sudden, for just a brief second, it transforms into something else where you're like, "What--?

That was much more human than machine, and what's going on there?"

And then it goes away again.

It's just a machine.

Because just one or the other is sort of limited and not very true to the... to the real story, which is that we're all a little bit elegant and a little bit awkward, clumsy.

So this... this piece is called "Skittish."

I really wanted to make a chair that was kind of nervous and wanted to get away from you when you came towards it.

It really bothers me that so much kinetic sculpture is rooted in a static base.

Well, how could you make a kinetic art piece that's not rooted in a static base, that's totally kinetic?

And so immediately, I was like, "Well, it's got to be something that jumps up off-- gets itself off the ground."

So this thing's entire purpose is to just crank itself down, stretch out its bungee cords, and then release and jump itself up, get itself just a little bit off the ground.

It's constantly struggling to get its thing done, and then its thing is... what's the point of the thing, and then it's over and you've got to start all over again.

I think one of the things that I look for when I go to see art is I want it to engage me.

And I want it-- I demand that it engage me.

And if it doesn't engage me, um, with relative ease, then-- then it doesn't-- I feel like it hasn't done its job.

[ ♪♪♪ ] It's moving, so how can you-- you can't ignore it.

If something is this big and moving this much, you can't ignore it, it's in your face, it's in your presence, it's in your space a little bit.

In some ways, you can lose a lot that way, also.

If it's moving too much, if it's invasive too much, it's going to drive you away.

You're going to say, "Oh this is difficult and uncomfortable, and I'm going to leave."

Or it can... it can go the route of entertainment.

It can just be sort of, "Oh, this is fun, it's interesting, it's eye candy," and you forget about it and you walk away.

And what I hope is that I'm getting somewhere in between, where you're engaged by that but you're also intrigued by that and you're wondering what's going on.

As you turn this crank, you raise and lower the rods and the whole mechanism.

That changes both its center of mass and also how flexible the parts above are.

Because I'm 6'8", I often find that I'm sort of towering over other people I'm around, and it's sort of been that way since I was about a sophomore in high school.

So it's always led to me sort of mitigating my stature in social interactions just so I'm not too-- don't come off too intimidating or overbearing, which is weird that that's something that I sort of unconsciously think about all the time, but it's sort of become the natural way of doing things.

So when I go to sculpture, I think-- I think I start with that, start with my scale and slightly oversize my scale, and I think about how something oversized can sort of impact you with its presence.

So when a viewer comes to this, they're going to find it a little oversized and a little... a little bit overbearing.

And in some ways, I can use this to explore the sort of aggression in social situations or sort of let my overbearingness take its form in this static thing which somebody can walk away from if they choose to.

[ ♪♪♪ ] There are so many things that, you know, we fill our lives with or that are surrounding us all the time that aren't really that useful, that maybe we think about as really useful, but we could-- we'd be fine without them.

And so that was, I think in some way, a background to a lot of these things.

It's like they're-- they're useless in a really explicit way.

[ ♪♪♪ ] To see more stories about Oregon artists, visit our website.

That's... And for a look at what we're working on now, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Pretty cool, huh?

Yeah.

-PETE [ laughs ]: Hugs!

-We're in Oregon.

-MAN: Got it!

-[ crew laughing ] Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... and OPB members and viewers like you.