2023: the sculpture park and the coach — the ledger's biggest year

2023 · Ironworks Plaza and Marvin's Garden

Five sculptures at Ironworks Plaza: On 17 June 2023 the city's Ironworks Plaza — the ice rink, amphitheater and event ground built into Beutter Riverfront Park on the old industrial riverfront — was completed with a sculpture park of five luminous sculptures designed, fabricated and installed by James Brenner Sculpture, the Minneapolis studio of the sculptor James Brenner. The works are light instruments as much as objects: the lighting designers Schuler Shook, whose design for the plaza won in the Outdoor Light Art Installation category of the LIT Lighting Design Awards, describe an interactive fog garden anchored by one of the five, and sculptures that hold varying presence by day, dusk and evening, their animated light making focal points around the skating and the viewing. A city that had added public sculpture one bronze at a time for thirty years here commissioned a five-work ensemble in a single project.

The coach at the walk's east end: On 5 October 2023 the Riverwalk's east extension was dedicated at Marvin's Garden, the park that closes the walk's east end as Kate's Garden closes its west. The garden honors Marvin "Marv" Wood — the Milan coach of the 1954 "Milan Miracle," who moved to Mishawaka in 1969 — and its centerpiece is a larger-than-life bronze of the coach by David Layman, the City Hall Columbus sculptor of 1992, re-enacting the Hoosiers scene in which the coach has his players measure the Hinkle Fieldhouse rim: ten feet here, ten feet there. The dedication was attended by the 1954 Milan team, by Bobby Plump, and by the coach's widow, Mary Lou Wood, whose remark the contractor's account preserves: "I don't remember Marv being so tall." The garden's full course stands in Parks & River; the bronzes stand here as the ledger's 2023 second act — the local figurative tradition and the imported light ensemble arriving in the same season.

Sources:

1. LIT Lighting Design Awards, winner's entry, "Ironworks Plaza Skate Rink and Sculpture Park" — client City of Mishawaka; completion June 17, 2023; Schuler Shook, lighting design (lead designers Michael Cohen, Alex Peck); the five sculptures and the fog garden as described.
2. James Brenner Sculpture, press record (October 25, 2021) — "James Brenner Sculpture is Designing, Fabricating, and Installing a Series of Five Sculptures in Mishawaka, Indiana."
3. Larson-Danielson Construction, "Mishawaka Riverwalk Extension complete" (October 10, 2023) — the Marvin's Garden dedication of October 5, 2023; sculptor David Layman; the bronze of Coach Wood and the measuring scene; Mary Lou Wood's remark; the $4 million extension begun June 2022.
4. This build's Parks & River section — Marvin's Garden and Kate's Garden as the walk's bookends, cross-referenced.