New statue picked at festival

Carol Parisi of Westchester, Calif., holds a piece of pottery from Curt Buethe’s Urimusic Pottery. Buethe, who travels with his mobile ceramics studio, was one of the many artists who displayed his work Sunday afternoon at the 11th Annual Fields Project in Oregon’s Mix Park. (Philip Marruffo/pmarruffo@svnmail.com)

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OREGON – Growing up in rural northern Minnesota, Daniel Ingebrigtson never dreamed his grandfather’s 19th-century farm would serve as the inspiration for award-winning artwork in northern Illinois.

The 59-year-old design artist, who now lives in suburban Milwaukee, took top honors in this year’s Community Art Legacy contest, which means his sculpture “Making Hay” will be cast in a near-life-sized bronze statue and installed somewhere in the city.

“Making Hay,” which captures a wheat farmer bent at the waist amid a powerful stroke with a scythe, will be the sixth of 10 sculptures that the Community Art Legacy group hopes to place – one a year for 10 years.

The Art Legacy contest is a part of the Fields Project, an all-volunteer initiative designed to foster the relationship between art and agriculture and make lasting contributions to the city’s art heritage that started with master sculptor Lorado Taft.

“This is a rare opportunity where I could do something a little more serious,” Ingebrigtson said amid the quiet shuffle of art browsers wandering through the Fields Project Arts Festival on Sunday afternoon in Mix Park. “It was such a powerful picture – the human action of a man with the scythe in the field.”

Artists participating in this year’s Fields Project came from six different states, ranging from coast to coast.

Kate Padberg, a 26-year-old art teacher from Kansas City, Mo., was one of the 10 artists who came to Ogle County to stay on a farm and work alongside farming families for 9 days.

The first day she was here, she watched her host family lose sleep over a deluge that dumped 4 inches of rain in one night.

“I remember thinking, ‘It’s just rain, what’s the big deal?’” Padberg said. “Then I realized it’s their livelihood being washed away. ... That would be like all of my drawings being destroyed by water. I can’t imagine.”

“The wonderful thing about this program is that the families are genuinely interested in what you’re doing,” Padberg said, as she recalled how her host family would peek at her work and ask questions as she put pencil to paper.

Joanna Reisner, treasurer and secretary of the Fields Project, said the overarching goal is to deploy art as a reminder of the deep impact farmers and agriculture have on everyone’s life – every day.

“These artists learn so such about the farmer’s life, and it enriches the farmer,” Reisner said. “We’re bringing them together to show that we’re all connected.”

More online

To learn more about the Fields Art Project and the Community Art Legacy, visit www.fieldsproject.com or call 815-734-7578.

To donate

To become a member of the Fields Project Arts Festival and the Community Art Legacy, mail checks, payable to the Fields Project, Inc., to P.O. Box 444, Oregon, IL 61061.

The Community Art Legacy is one of several activities of the Fields Art Project, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts in Ogle County.

Each year, the sculpture’s cost is funded by a partnership between the Community Art Legacy and the in Bronze Foundry in Mount Morris.

Individual/ corporate membership rates are:

Fire: $25-$50/ $100-$250

Blaze: $51-$100/ $500-$999

Inferno: $101-$1,000 and above/ $1,000 and above