Artist defends rainbow

COEUR d'ALENE - The artist who created the "Under The Rainbow" sculpture in McEuen Park said he will work with the city to enhance the piece.

Howard Meehan said in an interview Thursday that he felt a little blindsided by the city's Arts Commission when he received a letter last week criticizing the performance of his $110,000 sculpture.

"I asked if there were any problems with the piece when I received my final payment," Meehan said, adding that the city's Recreation Director, Steve Anthony, only had one question concerning programming of the lights for special events. "Then I get a call from him last week saying the piece was under-performing."

Anthony said at the time the city made the last payment to Meehan, the sculpture had only been erected for a couple of weeks.

"We didn't have any complaints at the time," Anthony said. "But when we started getting comments, the commission put it on the agenda for the July meeting."

Anthony said the arts commission members wanted to thoroughly review the project before contacting the artist with their concerns.

Compounding the problem, Meehan said, was the media coverage of the under-performance issues that went viral. Then people were making rude comments on social media sites.

"All those negative comments made my wife cry when she read them," he said. "I think I am getting stomped on. It is as bad as it was when I first came up there with the name."

The arts commission sent Meehan a letter last week detailing some of the concerns with the project, and the artist sent a pointed response back to commission.

In his response, which he said could have been a little more tempered, he addressed each issue and agreed to work with the city to resolve them. He also encouraged the commission to improve its communication process in the future.

Meehan said Thursday that there are a number of reasons the piece appears to be under-performing. One of the major issues, he said, are the high-output street lights located across the street and around his sculpture.

"We had no idea there would be that much ambient light around the sculpture," he said, adding he has been talking with Joe Berman, who helped him with the engineering, to come up with a solution to enhance the lighting.

"Upon reviewing lighting options and assessing costs Joe and I could put together the costs associated with making these lighting enhancement," he wrote in his response to the commission. "The city or appropriate agencies would have to find the funding for these enhancements.

"I'm prepared to work with any and all the people of Cd'A to make this a successful public art project the city can honor," he added.

Anthony said he is also talking with Meehan's engineer who is likely to come back to Coeur d'Alene to assess the issues and offer alternatives to the arts commission.

"We really want to approach this from the positive side of things," Anthony said. "This is something that will continue to progress over time."

Both Anthony and Meehan said they think they will get the issues resolved soon.