Reflective poles added to McEuen sculpture to increase illumination

COEUR d'ALENE — Sunlight glinted off Randy Pettyjohn's sunglasses as he was hoisted on a boom several feet in the air.

"Good thing it's a nice, cool day today," he joked Friday afternoon. "It's a little hot, but I'm enjoying it. I don't think I'm going to the gym tonight."

He stretched skyward with a piece of lightweight PVC pipe, slit on one side, to snap onto the cables of the "Under the Rainbow" sculpture at the entrance of McEuen Park at Fourth Street. Pettyjohn and his boss, Sam Carlino, had a big job ahead of them: to brighten the "Rainbow."

"You see how skinny those are? And they’re gray," Carlino said, motioning to the cables that stretch across the sculpture. "There’s zero reflective value to them, so no matter how much light, it’s not going to show."

Carlino, owner of CW Wraps and Marketing, said he was approached by the city last winter to find a way to make "Under the Rainbow" the bright, illuminated piece of artwork it was expected to be when it was installed as McEuen Park was preparing to open in 2014.

"It's never really performed the way it's supposed to," said Sean Holm, the city's liaison to the Coeur d'Alene Arts Commission. "We were asked to enhance it the way it's meant to perform."

"Under the Rainbow," a $110,000 city public art investment, was supposed to be a vibrant, welcoming structure at the gateway between downtown, the lakefront and the grand new park. Instead, many were disappointed by its lack of illumination, so the Arts Commission contacted the artist, Howard Meehan, to discuss its underperformance and work on rectifying the problem.

"When I first saw it before, it was like, ‘Why are there like, poles connecting to each pole?'" said Danae Christy of Sandpoint, a visitor who strolled by on Friday. "I didn’t know what it was supposed to be."

"It just looked like a couple big chopsticks sticking up in the air," Carlino said.

Carlino, whose company has worked with the city on several projects, including wrapping Coeur d'Alene Police vehicles and electrical boxes throughout town, was asked to innovate a way to brighten the sculpture. He dreamed up the solution — wrapping half-inch round indoor/outdoor PVC pipes with a white reflective vinyl and attaching them to the 3/16th-inch cables to provide more surface area and reflective value for when the pipes are struck by the LED lights at the base of the cables. He said the test piece really brightened up things.

"It’s not that it’s going to be this gorgeous, beautiful thing during the day, they’re just white poles," he said. "But at night, when those things hit, it will show up much, much, much better."

"No one's ever done anything quite like it before," Holm said.

Carlino said the city recently installed higher-intensity LED lights to assist with the sculpture's brilliance. His goal is for the lights of "Under the Rainbow" to be visible throughout the area and from anywhere people can see the structure. As of Friday evening, Carlino said twilight visitors should be able to see a shining difference.

"It would be a lot prettier," said downtown visitor Jesse Young of Post Falls. "The lights, when you did notice them, they were pretty, but if they’re brighter and stand out more, it will make it a little bit nicer."