Mark di Suvero: Keepers of the Fire

1980 · painted steel in the St. Joseph River

The work: The city's signature piece of public art is thirty-two feet of red-painted steel standing in the St. Joseph River by the dam outside Century Center: Keepers of the Fire (1980), by Mark di Suvero, the American sculptor whose monumental I-beam constructions stand in museum grounds and cities across the country. The artist's studio catalogue gives the work its full title and date — Keepers of the Fire, 1980, painted steel and stainless steel, thirty-two feet high, in the collection of Century Center; local usage often shortens the title to the singular, Keeper of the Fire. The name honors the Potawatomi, the keepers of the council fire of the Three Fires Confederacy, on whose ground the city stands.

The commission and the argument: The sculpture came to the river through the Committee for Art in Public Places, a citizens' committee chaired by Andrew W. Nickle, which led the effort that brought the di Suvero to South Bend. It was controversial from its unveiling, and the argument aged with it: a quarter-century on, in 2005, the South Bend Tribune was still running the piece as hotly debated. Workmen cleaned and painted it above the dam in 1985. Since May 22, 2015, it has stood inside the South Bend River Lights' field of color, lit nightly with the cascades it overlooks.

Sources:

1. Spacetime C.C., the artist's studio catalogue — Keepers of the Fire, 1980, painted steel and stainless steel, 32 feet, St. Joseph River, South Bend, collection of Century Center.
2. South Bend Tribune file accounts, as carried in the Michiana Business Review & Life and the Tribune's photo archive — the Committee for Art in Public Places and Andrew W. Nickle's chairmanship, the 1985 cleaning and painting, and the 2005 retrospective on the continuing debate.
3. PLSN (Projection, Lights & Staging News), "The South Bend River Lights" (January 2017) — the sculpture's place in the River Lights installation and the 1980 unveiling.