SPOKANE — The Spokane Arena lost some spring in its step after one of the two bronze sculpture legs outside the venue went missing a week ago.
The art piece, dubbed “Leap,” is comprised of six bronze figures on the exterior stairwell on the east side of the Arena created by the late artist Phillip Levine.
The figure on each stairwell landing represents the sequence of movements in an “athletic” leap, according to a 1995 Spokesman-Review story, with two lower legs and springs sprouting out of them. The legs are cemented to the top of the stairwell.
As of Jan. 10, one of the legs is missing.
Karen Mobley, a contract public art consultant for the nonprofit Spokane Arts, said the leg disappeared the night of Jan. 10, which is when the Lewis and Clark-Ferris Rubber Chicken high school basketball games took place at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena.
She said one of her thoughts is someone associated with the high school games that night may have been messing around, broke the sculpture and took it.
Mobley said the sculpture was more prone to break when impacted because of the cold weather.
Spokane Police Department spokeswoman Julie Humphreys said police responded and took a report on the missing sculpture.
Mobley said the Spokane Public Facilities District, which owns and operates the Arena, sent emails to metal recycling and salvage operations to be on the lookout for the art piece.
“I’m quite optimistic, perhaps naive, but optimistic that the leg will be returned,” Mobley said.
The district directed media inquiries to Mobley because of her knowledge of the piece.
Mobley said the art is “beautifully crafted.”
“I think it’s, to be honest with you, one of the most popular pieces in the community’s public art realm,” Mobley said.
Mobley said the sculptures were installed when the Spokane Arena was built in 1995.
She said the art piece starts out in a representational manner with articulated facial features and physiques, but transitions to symbolic sculptures as one walks up the stairs, including a headless figure before the two (now one) legs at the top of the stairs.
“This is a human figure in action at an athletic facility where there’s lots of humans in action,” Mobley said.
Spokesman-Review correspondent Elinor Block said in the aforementioned story that Levine’s new work “drew a considerable amount of attention and comment” from fans at a Saturday night hockey game Block attended in 1995 at the Arena.
Many fans did not realize what the figures represented and were startled by the “headless” figure, Block wrote.
Levine completed several powerful figurative bronze sculptures over his art career in the Northwest, said Mobley, who called the artist “one of the greats” in Washington.
Levine died in 2021 in Seattle at the age of 90, according to the Seattle Times.
The Washington State Arts Commission said Levine’s sculptures are realistic but with “exaggerated or minimized elements,” like long limbs. They often play with the aspects of balance and movement.
Levine has more than 30 sculptures in public places in Western Washington, half a dozen more in Eastern Washington and others across the country. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the University of Washington in 1961.
“All my life I had heard ‘The figure is dead,’ “ the commission quoted Levine as saying. “But I was always drawn to it.”
