Metal eagle sculpture at home at OXARC
Broadway Avenue just west of the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center is an industrial area lined with one business after another – including a trucking company, an industrial park and a construction company.
Though attractive for the economic vitality of the community, this area is not exactly the visual showcase of Spokane.
But then there’s the eagle – the “Freedom Eagle,” to be exact. It’s a bright aluminum sculpture of an eagle, some 9-feet by 8-feet in a soaring pose above 12-foot-tall basalt columns, just inside the fence at Oxarc Inc., 4003 E. Broadway Ave.
This is a work by David Govedare, whose better-known pieces include the “Joys of Running Together” series of metal sculptures by Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane and “Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies” high above the Columbia River near Vantage, Washington..
Govedare has said it is important that art is appropriate to its site, and an added advantage is if it surprises you – both criteria clearly met with the runners and the horses. As for the eagle, beautiful art outdoors in an industrial setting is certainly a surprise, and Govedare maintains the location is right, too, though it may seem like an odd fit at first.
Greg Walmsley, president of Oxarc, tells the beginning of the story. “I had graduated from Mead High School and just started working in the warehouse here when in comes this long-haired hippie guy from California who wanted to buy a welding torch and welding supplies.” He’s been friends ever since with Govedare, who had come from California to work on one of the pavilions at Expo ’74 – and then never left.
Govedare has been buying supplies from Oxarc for several decades now and has made for the company various metal versions of its logo Plasman, an artistic representation of a welding helmet (made humanoid with its own hands and feet). One version stands at the base of the Freedom Eagle – holding a laptop computer. And Govedare also has works in steel, aluminum and copper along a wall inside one of the Oxarc buildings – all depictions of noted landmarks in Spokane, including the Clocktower and Monroe Street Bridge.
Walmsley said that a few years ago when the company expanded and took over adjacent propertyOxarc asked Govedare to create a work of art to showcase for the public what can be done with metal.
They both agree that the result had the additional benefit of helping to beautify that stretch of Broadway.
“These guys are suppliers for the industrial trades and I know them to be patriotically focused people,” Govedare said. “I came up with the imagery, an eagle with stars from the American flag in its wings, and Greg liked it.”
“It ended up being a tribute to how we feel toward life in general,” Walmsley added. “We have a lot of vets who work for us, so it’s also a thanks to them and all our vets, who soar like an eagle for all of us.”