The brushed-stainless-steel, Embrace, should be installed at one of Hamilton’s main intersections in about two weeks.
“We’re a couple weeks out from when we’re going to install it.” said Taylor Stone-Welch, of the City of Sculpture organization, which arranged for the installation to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hamilton being named a City of Sculpture. “We have the foundation, so we’re getting close.”
The non-profit organization privately raised money for the 25-foot-tall sculpture, being created by Hunter Brown, of Little Rock, Ark., for the intersection of Main Street with Eaton and Millville avenues.
The artwork is intended to represent more than one entity interacting and creating something better, and more interesting, than each would have been on its own. That coincides with a slogan Hamilton recently has adopted, of “We > Me,” or We is greater than me.
“I wanted to make something that would be some forms that were simple, but interact with one another to kind-of make a stronger overall piece together,” Brown said of the piece last year. “They may not be real interesting as one, but together, they make something special. I think that’s iconographic for the community, maybe, these forms working together for a greater cause or a greater good.”
Then-Gov. Bob Taft in 2000 declared that Hamilton was a “City of Sculpture.”
Thanks to help from state funding, the city recently reconfigured the intersection of Main, Millville and Eaton, which was a high-crash area, and from 2008-2010 had 50 wrecks, ranking it among Ohio’s “Top 100 Non-Freeway Fatal and Serious Injury Locations.”
By decreasing the intersection’s sharp angles to ones that are perpendicular to each other, construction crews made it easier for drivers to see oncoming traffic, increasing the safety.