ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) — At Tingley Beach, there’s a globe-shaped sculpture made of steel fish. The piece found its home next to the catch-and-release pond nearly twenty years ago, but the inspiration came long before that with an artist’s North Dakota upbringing and an overseas trip.
“I grew up in a tiny town, so I could go anywhere I wanted from a young age by myself, with catchments, and frogs in the creek, and everything that goes along with that,” said Colette Hosmer, the artist behind Fish Globe, who now resides in Santa Fe. “My whole early history in the art world had to do with natural things… I really didn’t expect anyone or any gallery to be interested in the kinds of things I was doing. I was proven wrong.”
In the coming years, Hosmer was invited to China 10 times for art-related trips. It was there she created a piece featuring fish pouring out of a large pipe. And when she was invited to submit a proposal for a piece along Tingley Beach in 2001, she decided to take the concept to the next level with a large sphere consisting solely of fish.
“I’d build sculpture with tens of thousands, likely millions of minnows that I would dry and arrange in specific, themes… I would use a white picture varnish on them,” said Hosmer. “I just enlarged ideas of what I’d been doing for the decade before, and came up with the fish globe. I also liked the idea of art being so global and widespread, and the fact that people from other countries and languages and nationalities understood the work I was doing. It wasn’t unique to just being in the art world in the United States.”
Hosmer explained that with help from her daughter and son, she was able to submit her final presentation to the public art department the day before she left for China. From there, Fish Globe was officially approved, and the work began. The 12-foot structure of 450 steel fish measuring at two-and-a-half feet each required a crane to assemble. Hosmer’s son, Scot Ferguson, played a major role in the fabrication…