Kansas bison sculpture newest addition to downtown Topeka’s pocket parks - Topeka, Ks. - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

This bison is a striking addition to the downtown Topeka landscape. Topeka has created several pocket parks in the downtown area as a refuge to the hustle and bustle of the area. This pocket park features a white limestone bison, the Kansas state Mammal. Here is the article regarding the installation.

While a 9,000-pound limestone bison was being lowered Friday onto a downtown Topeka sidewalk, Alan Tollakson felt like he was saying goodbye to a member of his family.

“I really am going to miss him,” the Emporia artist said after the bison was placed in the Security Benefit pocket park at S.E. 9th and S. Kansas Avenue. “I put a lot of my hard energy into it.”

After having worked on the bison since May 2016, Tollakson said because of the cold weather, he’s been working on the sculpture inside. He said seeing his work in the bright, warm sunshine on Friday was simultaneously gratifying and bittersweet.

“I’m already sad to see it out of my shop,” he said. “Every morning I’d come in to brush the dust off and I felt like I was grooming my pet.”

Even though he had encountered some glitches while working on the sculpture for the past 10 months, Tollakson said the past two months of the project have been “thrilling.”

“Because everything came together and that’s kind of the process of stone carving,” he said. “Nothing shows up until the very end. I’ve been ecstatic working on it — the last month especially.”

Tollakson said his work on the sculpture, while satisfying, was all-consuming and he’s looking forward to spending time with his family again.

“They’ve missed me for quite a few months now,” he said. “I’ve been going nonstop on this. The last three months have been seven days a week, 12-hour days. I just put everything I had into it. They’ve been without me for quite a while and I miss them. You lose something and you gain something back.”

His 13-year-old daughter, Anya — an eighth-grade student at Emporia Middle School — said she also feels she’s saying goodbye to a family member. She said she gave the bison a nickname: “Appa.”

“We got to help carve it, so we really know how he did it,” she said. “We saw how painstaking it was. It’s just been a really big part of our lives.”

Anya said she’s looking forward to seeing the sculpture on her trips to Topeka for years to come.

“Twenty years from now, we’ll be able to walk by and say, ‘I was here when it was installed, I got to experience it and now it’s a historical monument.’ It will be pretty cool.”

Vince Frye, president and CEO of Downtown Topeka, Inc., said the bison sculpture is an “iconic” addition to the downtown pocket parks.

“It’s unique,” he said. “People will bring their kids here and they’ll climb on it and people will take pictures with it. Every single block has something unique.”

Lisa Stubbs, education market relationship manager for Security Benefit, said the company’s CEO, Michael Kiley, wanted a Kansas symbol as part of the pocket park and that’s why the bison sculpture was chosen.

“He wanted to honor the Kansas roots of Security Benefit,” she said. “We pretty much only looked at Kansas symbols when we were looking at what was going to go into the pocket park. We think he did a great job in blending the new and modern with the stoic and the traditional. It’s kind of the best of both worlds for us.”

The placing of the bison is in addition to artist Anthony Howe’s Chief II, a kinetic, wind-driven art piece in the Security Benefit pocket park dedicated in June of last year.

- Capital Journal Online Website

Type of publication: Newspaper When was the article reported?: 02/17/2017 Publication: Topeka Capital Journal Article Url: [Web Link] Is Registration Required?: no How widespread was the article reported?: regional News Category: Arts/Culture

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