Bronze wildlife sculptures find homes on — and in — the Fox River

A unique public art project almost two years in the making came to fruition Friday when crews hoisted bronze statues of native wildlife onto concrete pedestals in and along the Fox River between East and West Dundee.

“This is a new one for us,” said Christopher Habel, vice president of TOR Construction & Parkway Forming, charged with installing the sculptures on top of display platforms built over what had been ice barrier pillars.

The pillars offered the perfect bases for the new art pieces: a pair of herons, a pair of cranes and a buck with a doe, said East Dundee Village Board Trustee Tricia Saviano, a member of the village’s Arts Council.

“As far as I know, no other community on the Fox River has sculptures standing in the river itself,” Saviano said. “Using the old ice boom pillars as pedestals in the water is what makes this installation unusual.”

On Wednesday and Thursday, TOR crews poured 20,000 pounds of concrete into reinforced wooden boxes on top of the existing concrete pillars to create 4-foot-tall pedestals, project manager and general superintendent Patrick Cordes said.

To reach the middle of the river, a truck with a cranelike arm of more than 200 feet was used to pump concrete into the pedestal structure. The 100-pound sculptures were bolted to the pedestals Friday.

The project concept dates back to February 2025, when the East Dundee Village Board directed the Arts Council to move ahead with plans to install statues on two riverbank pillars, which are partially located in the water, and one in the river itself. All are located near the footbridge between East and West Dundee.

Arts Council members had been looking for ways to bring more public art to the riverfront, and the concrete pillars were sitting there unused, Saviano said.

“The Arts Council saw them as ready-made pedestals for artwork celebrating the wildlife that lives along this stretch of the Fox River,” she said.

Council members initially reviewed proposals from local and out-of-state artists to create custom art, but the cost was too high, she said. In June 2025, they instead chose three pieces for village board approval from Randolph Rose Collection, a family-owned business in Yonkers, New York, that’s been creating bronze sculptures since 1975.

The premade designs, fitted with custom bases, made the project affordable, Saviano said.

“With the river the boundary between (East and West Dundee), this also was an opportunity to bring the towns together through art. West Dundee became a partner, and the two villages entered into an intergovernmental agreement to install and maintain the sculptures together,” she said.

East and West Dundee split the $35,424 cost for the sculptures and the $38,800 bill for installation.

West Dundee Village Board member Cheryl Anderley said that while not all of the members of her board were as excited by the project as she was, she saw it as a chance for the towns to work together.

Anderley said she was a fan of the Habitat for Humanity of Northern Fox Valley’s 2025 fundraising public art project, which saw globes, butterfly benches and bees painted by local artists placed throughout the area — some of which now are on permanent display in East Dundee.

The wildlife sculptures were delivered to East Dundee in July, but installation hit a snag because of high water levels and Fox Valley flooding.

According to a village memo, “staff noted that installation of the sculptures on the existing piers would have resulted in the sculptures being under nearly 3 feet of water during high-water events. This would have subjected the sculptures to significant water, currents and, most problematically, large amounts of debris.”

The plan was modified to add to the pedestals and increase the height.

With the artwork now installed, Anderley said she’s eager to know the community’s response.

“I hope this will draw people to the villages, much like Cows on Parade (public art initiative in 1999) brought tourists to downtown Chicago,” she said.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The (Elgin) Courier-News.