Roswell Inks Deal With Artist To Install Sculpture at New Fire Station

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The Roswell City Council last week hired an artist who will bring a creative streak to the city’s new fire station.

Council members authorized the mayor and/or city administrator to sign a contract with Seattle-based artist Peter Reiquam to create public art at the new Fire Station No. 4 in an amount not to exceed $76,000.

Reiquam will create the “Bucket Brigade” sculpture that will sit on the lawn at the station, which will open Old Alabama Road and Market Boulevard near the Publix shopping center.

A request for qualifications was issued for the project, and 53 responses were received by the city. Roswell’s Public Art Selection Panel met Sept. 2 and chose three finalists who gave oral presentations in early November.

Following those presentations, the panel recommended the city commission Reiquam to create the “Bucket Brigade” artwork.

City documents show Reiquam describing the artwork as the following:

“Based upon a simple fire fighting method involving a team of people passing water-filled buckets, hand-to-hand, to be thrown onto a fire, Bucket Brigade illustrates this idea using a series of buckets as individual frames in a sort of stop-motion animation or pages of a flip book.”

The sculpture -- a free-standing work of art anchored on engineered concrete footing -- will be placed on the lawn between the southwest corner of the building and the corner of Old Alabama Road and Market Boulevard.

It will be visible to pedestrians and motorists, and will be visible during daylight hours and after hours with the inclusion of integral LED lighting, city documents show.

Roswell will use $76,000 from the 2013 bonds fund to pay for the project. 

Roswell leaders broke ground in October on the new fire station, which will replace the current facility on Holcomb Bridge Road.

The 15,000-square foot, two-story building will house sleeping quarters on the top floor and living quarters of the ground floor and will feature three drive-through bays.

The station is set to be completed by December 2016.

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Image via Shutterstock