Several years in the making, the project was no flight of fancy — but the final product certainly gives rise to the concept.
Friends of the Kearny Public Library and River Terminal combined to fundraise for “Journeys to Imagination,” a 110-pound bronze statue of a boy gliding on a paper plane.
The Friends contributed $5,000 and River Terminal kicked in $10,000, according to Josh Humphrey, director of the Kearny Public Library.
“It’s been a long time coming,” he said.
The statue is supported by a 5-foot-tall pedestal designed and executed by North Arlington-based monument maker John Burns.
Unveiled last week, it stands outside the Main Library in the reading garden.
Inscribed on the pedestal’s base is a quote of Cicero, the famed orator of ancient Rome, reading: “If you have a library and a garden, you have everything you need.”
The Friends, the Library Museum Board and the Kearny Mayor and Town Council selected the artist and his product.
The sculptor, Gary Lee Price, of Utah, says on his website that the piece “represents the freedom and the joy for life that so many of us lose sight of in our busy and responsible lives. The mail-order glider, paper airplanes and pogo sticks become symbols of our dreams and aspirations.”
Additionally, Price said, the notion of flight “represents freedom and rising above our problems and gaining that all so important ‘perspective’ on life.”
— Ron Leir
