Bridgeport's historic tree sculptures deteriorating beyond repair, council pivots to save remaining art

BRIDGEPORT – At its March 19 meeting, the city council hired Moses Lake contractor Storwick Specialty Services to perform restoration work on many of its deteriorating tree sculptures, particularly the oldest located along the north side of Foster Creek Avenue coming into town. 

Public Works lead Matt West delivered some bad news at the April 16 council meeting: core boring attempts by Storwick on those old sculptures revealed that many are past the stage where restorative intervention can save them.

“There is nothing there to take a core sample from,” said West. “What you see is just a shell; there’s nothing on the inside. Maybe the art, at best, we could preserve,”

West recommends that the city use the funds allocated to preserve the north side sculptures and apply them to the south side sculptures before they are all lost.

“Those are still intact, but every day that they are in contact with the soil is a day that they are going to be rotted,” said West. “The other ones we are going to have to take down and explore some ways forward…there is no way to preserve them like we were hoping to.” 

A Jesus tree sculpture located in front of Faith Baptist Church at 325 12th Street has already fallen over and it was carved more recently than those on the north side of Foster Creek Avenue.

Revitalization Committee chair Leslie Robb once visited Nova Scotia, where the trunk carving idea originated and recalled that the 47 sculptures she saw then are now all completely gone despite efforts to preserve them.

The council discussed and discarded several options before agreeing to prioritize saving the south side sculptures.

West recalled a suggestion from Revitalization Committee member Ryan Allstot to find a company with a 3D scanner to capture images of the irreparable sculptures and, from those images, produce exact plastic replicas. The replicas could be airbrushed or painted to reproduce the colors of the originals. The replicas could then be mounted on pedestals in place of the original carvings.

Councilmember Mike Bjornstad recommended that the city begin a search for imaging services to reproduce and replace the unsalvageable sculptures.

Mike Maltais: 360-333-8483 or michael@ward.media