Georgia Gerber Sculpture to memorialize Terry Reim

Georgia Gerber Sculpture
The News Tribune
by CHRISTIAN HILL

University Place leader's spirit lives on in sculpture

The spirit that led Terry Reim to become one of University Place's biggest supporters is imbued in a bronze duck sculpture that will soon be dedicated in his honor at a place that was still a civic dream when he died.

Reim and his friend Dixie Harris founded the Duck Parade about a decade ago to generate foot traffic for a farmers market, another of their initiatives from the same period. While the farmers market is gone for now, the Duck Daze event continues each June, with participants dressing up like ducks to celebrate the end of the rainy season.

The affinity between Reim and the waterfowl doesn't end there. Like a duck paddling in water, those who knew him say he worked tirelessly while yielding results that looked effortless.

Reim's widow, Ruthann Reim McCaffree, said his mantra was to "move ahead and get things done."

"He was intense and complicated," she said. "He loved this community."

Reim was a strong proponent of University Place's incorporation and wanted to grow the tax base of the fledgling city - a goal officials aim to realize when their Town Center project finally opens on Bridgeport Way.

Plans for Town Center were just starting to take shape when Reim died at age 61 in April 2003. He fell off a ladder while remodeling his home.

Reim couldn't have anticipated that a sculpture built in his honor would be one of the first completed pieces of the development.

The first major tenant arrives in February, when The Pierce County Library System plans to open its new 15,000-square-foot library inside a civic building.

Meanwhile, construction continues on that building, which also will feature the future City Hall, ground-floor retail space and underground parking. The city also plans to sell about a dozen lots slated for mixed-use development around the building.

Drawing on his background as a developer and home builder, Reim led the city's economic development task force and its local chamber of commerce.

Councilman Ken Grassi recalled that Reim once promised cherries at the farmers market. When the vendor couldn't make it, Reim drove to Eastern Washington to pick up the cherries, drove back and ran the booth himself.

"He was a man of his word," Grassi said. "If he said it, he would do it, no matter what it took."

The sculpture captures Reim's deliberative manner, featuring a 41/2-foot-high male duck marching forward with a young duck on his back, its wings held out to keep balance. Walking beside the male duck is another duckling.

The nonprofit group UP for Art, working with Reim's widow and the city, commissioned sculptor Georgia Gerber to create the piece after an open competition.

The sculpture's cost is $30,000. UP for Art and the Terry Reim Memorial Fund donated $15,000. The city is contributing the remaining half from a state grant dedicated for the market square development.

Gerber, a sculptor from Whidbey Island, said the statue symbolizes Reim's drive and the whimsy of the events he helped create. She said her work also touches on themes of family and is "for the public to enjoy forever and embrace as a part of their community."

Reim McCaffree is pleased with Gerber's work. "I can't say enough about her. She took it to the whole next level."

The Reims were fixtures in University Place for the better part of their 40-year marriage, well before UP became a city in 1995.

The couple rented a home there in 1965, after Terry was drafted and ordered to report to Fort Lewis. After he completed his military service, the couple returned in 1968 to raise their family.

Reim McCaffree said the sculpture can be a metaphor for the city of nearly 31,000 residents.

"We're scrambling ... We're working hard to become a top-notch city for the people who live here and come here," she said. "I think the duck symbolizes that spirit, as well."




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Bronze Sculptures highlight Endangered and Extinct Birds

Portland riverfront bird sculpture by Todd McGrain highlights species threats, extinction
OregonianLive.com
by Carolina Hidalgo

Starkly silhouetted against the Willamette River, five somber birds stand on a patch of grass at the southern tip of Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Elegant, melancholy and frozen in time, they silently invite passers-by to touch them, to take photos, to wonder where they came from.

From a distance, artist Todd McGrain, sporting a baseball cap and dirt-covered jeans, contentedly watched this week as people interacted with his larger-than-life sculptures.

Cast in blackened bronze, standing about 6 feet tall and weighing up to 700 pounds, the sculptures came from his studio in Ithaca, N.Y., where he's an associate art professor at Cornell University. Each one memorializes an extinct species.

The sculptures, presented by the Audubon Society of Portland and installed Wednesday, will remain for six months with the aim of raising awareness of the dangers facing today's bird populations.

"Once you know something of the life of that species, you realize that not having it in the world is a huge loss," McGrain said. That realization, in turn, is meant to provoke thought about human consumption of natural resources and disregard for the environment.

Nearly a third of the nation's 800 species are endangered or face significant threats, according to a 2009 report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with climate change adding to long-standing threats such as hunting and deforestation.

"There have always been changes in climate," said Brad Bortner, Portland-based chief of Fish and Wildlife's migratory birds division. "But we're seeing an accelerating rate of change now."

McGrain made three identical sets of bird sculptures as part of "The Lost Bird Project" and has long wanted to display a set in Portland because of the city's progressiveness and social conscience, he said. But there was a practical reason, too.

"Right now, there's a great deal of stress on the environment of the West Coast, and we're at an important place to remember past losses," he said.

He contacted Portland's Audubon Society five years ago after finishing his first sculpture. "I thought it was intriguing back then, and I had only seen one photo of the passenger pigeon," said Executive Director Meryl Redisch, recalling her first chat with McGrain.

Portland's display includes a Labrador duck, shyly preening; a passenger pigeon, an iconic extinct bird; and the Carolina parakeet, stripped of its vibrant color but bending forward with curiosity. Next is the heath hen, which McGrain calls feisty; and a great auk, one he has a particular fondness for and finds hardest to describe.

"There's no single word for the great auk," McGrain said, brushing its surface clean with his hands. "He's a real character. Like a penguin -- just a really wonderful character."

After the birds end their Portland run, McGrain would like them to visit other West Coast cities. "L.A. and Seattle -- wherever they can find roosts," he said with a laugh. He's breaking up another set, permanently placing each sculpture where the bird was last seen. And he wants the third set, still in his studio, to tour the East Coast.

McGrain got to know the long-gone species by visiting museum specimens and studying their relatives' behavior. He kept a homing pigeon in his studio for six months. Before deciding on poses, he crafted about a dozen models of each bird.

The sculptures' dark, minimalist forms are meant to draw people in and to inspire them to seek more information about the lost birds. McGrain spent a lot of time sanding them to be seamless and tactile, he said, like a beach stone. He chose a matte black finish because of the way it absorbs light.

"They're like black voids," McGrain said, watching two young women taking photos of the birds. He plans to visit the sculptures regularly over the next few weeks, photographing the community's interaction with them.

Soon, a sign will go up to explain their meaning.

"The information will really make a difference," he said as a man approached the young women to ask if they knew anything about the birds. When they couldn't help, he strode toward McGrain.

It seems years of getting to know the creatures won't let McGrain forget their transitory nature.

"Well," McGrain began, gesturing toward his birds, "it's temporary."



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