The Effigy Tree returns to its home on Lake Monona
By David Medaris
Isthmus
Friday June 26, 2009 - The Effigy Tree has come home to HudsonPark. The installation of a bronze casting of the Harry Whitehorse sculpture concludes the latest chapter in the saga of the storied tree.
Carved by Whitehorse in 1991 from the stump of a hackberry tree that had been shattered by a lightning strike at Hudson Park on Madison’s east side, the tree stood sentinel overlooking Lake Monona at the site of what had been one of the Ho-Chunk nation’s most sacred clusters of effigy mounds before European settlement.
Since its original dedication, the Whitehorse sculpture had become a point of pride in the neighborhood surrounding the intersection of Lakeland and Maple avenues and a centerpiece of Madison’s public-art collection, marking the site of a surviving effigy mound and drawing the attention of cyclists, joggers, Sunday drivers and other passersby. But it had also suffered the ravages of time and weather. The relentless assault of repeated freeze-thaw cycles led to the sculpture’s restoration in 1997, but 10 years later it was once again showing grave signs of deterioration.
Urgent discussions involving Whitehorse, neighborhood partisans and the Madison Arts Commission led to the tree’s removal for yet another restoration at the artist’s studio, and a campaign to raise funds for the sculpture’s casting in bronze.
Executed by Milwaukee’s Vanguard Sculpture Services, the bronze casting was installed Thursday morning. Guided into place by a crew from Ideal Crane, it settled onto a new pedestal of Texas red granite architectural stone.
If the Effigy Tree has become a neighborhood centerpiece, it is also now a Madison landmark. This is borne out by the breadth and depth of support for the Whitehorse sculpture’s restoration and casting. Among those donating money and services to the project and its maintenance endowment: Ho-Chunk Nation, the Whitehorse family, Madison Arts Commission, Madison Community Foundation, the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission (with additional funds from the Overture Foundation and Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation), Goodman Community Center, Ken Saiki Design (who is contributing landscape services to the project), Robert Kalhagen of Ideal Crane, Jim Durham of Quarra Stone, the Food Fight Restaurant Group, Jenifer Street Market, Ald. Marsha Rummel, former state archeologist Robert Birmingham, architect Ed Linville, Joe Krupp of Krupp General Contractors, and Isthmus publisher and associate publisher Vince O’Hern and Linda Baldwin, who hosted a celebratory fund-raiser for the maintenance endowment fund Thursday at their home across the street from the sculpture.
Formal dedication festivities (were held) Saturday, September 12, 2009.
Photo: Dave Medaris