Metal fish design hooks fans

SANDPOINT — For a few weeks this fall after the downtown arch is completed, Nelson Boren will tune his design.

He will tighten the nuts securing the 80 aluminum fish on the arch until they swim less frenzied and the clinking noise they make in the wind is more chime-like than a clashing of cymbals.

Boren, who is known nationally for his Western-style paintings and murals, is an architect by trade.

He designed the arch for the thoroughfare alongside the Panida that drops east to Sand Creek with another passion in mind: He is an avid fisherman.

The project for the arch over the street to Sand Creek started in 2006 with a public arts grant, but artists and the city’s art council began meeting earlier this year to get the project grounded.

“We held meetings with potential designers so we could explain the process to them,” Joan Bramblee, assistant city planner said.

Eight designs were selected as viable.

A selection panel met twice since March, narrowing down the entries vying for the $37,000 project, which is paid with an Idaho Department of Transportation grant.

Boren’s fish design was selected as the best fit.

It uses I-beams from the byway project donated by the contractor, and aluminum fish cut from discarded highway signs.

The signs, including stop signs, turn-lane signs and traffic light warning signs provide color and weather resistance.

Some of the signs are big as a sheet of plywood.

“This is 48 inches from flat to flat,” Boren said pointing to a huge stop in his Shingle Mill Road studio. “I can get fish diagonally across here. Some of them will be as big as five or five-and-a-half feet.”

The fish will appear to swim the span of the arch, fastened in various degrees of tightness, so they will move in the wind and appear to be swimming.

Boren, who earned a degree in architecture from Arizona State University and whose municipal projects can be found from Arizona to Jackson, Wyo., heard the concerns that the fish may clank too loudly. When he was asked to “tune” them, his first thought was of music.

“Beethoven’s Ninth, or Led Zeppelin?” he asked. “We’ll figure it out.”

Figuring it out will require tightening each of the 80 fish to the bolts welded into the beam and cross member material until they swim with ease.

“I just got this idea to have a school of fish swimming over the street,” Boren said.

The breeze would move them.

“It just kind of came together,” he said.

Like any design, he said, simplicity matters.

“It’s quite simple,” he said. “In design work, less is more, and if it’s too much, it loses its charm.”

The arch will be 36 feet wide and have a clearance of 13 feet. “Sand Creek” will be scribed in cut out letters above the main arch.

To add color and make the design rust proof, Boren opted to recycle highway signs for his fish — all trout.

The fish and lettering will be illuminated with interwoven rope lights.

“The sign at night will be a silhouette,” he said. “It ought to look really cool.”