Indiana Bicentennial Sculpture

A circle indicates unity and wholeness. A passage or portal is often used as a symbol for moving from one place to another, from the known to the unknown. By extension, it symbolizes moving from the past into the future, with the present or the moment between the two.

A metaphor often used in association with time is water or a river. Time is like a flowing river, always moving, ever changing. A cross cultural image of water is a serpentine line.

A square is a symbol of stability, the material world and the earth itself. The square, the ring and the serpentine line are all universal symbols. The psychologist Carl Jung called them “archetypal” symbols, they are root images used throughout the world.

At its heart, the wealth of Indiana has been its fertile earth, the water that nourishes that ground, and the people that populate the land.

At the southeast corner of the plaza within a carved square planting area is a live dwarf tulip poplar, the state tree of Indiana. On its own this tree acts as a time capsule. Planted during Indiana’s Bicentennial it will mark the passage of time as it develops and grows.

Near the southwest corner of the plaza is a square stone at seating height. Carved into the upper face of the stone are depictions of the major waterways that travel through and in some cases delineates the boundaries of our state. The carved images include waterways shared with surrounding neighbors.

Here, our state is defined by the life blood of the land. Toward the southwest corner of this stone is the juncture of two major rivers that influence our state, the Wabash and the Ohio. That juncture visually moves onto the pavement at that point and spirals back around the entire carved stone of the state rivers moving outward from the confines of the plaza.