(COLORADO SPRINGS) — If you’ve driven on I-25 toward Denver, you’ve probably noticed a steel sculpture, leaping toward the sky on Colorado Avenue.
With gills, fins, and tentacles, the statue is of a woman meshed with a sea creature and sits atop a downtown building in Colorado Springs.
“In 2007, I was watching a lot of Nature Planet, like Blue Planet… and simultaneously reading a lot of comic books,” recalled Trace O’Connor, the Sculptor behind Iscariot.
O’Connor is a metal artist in Southern Colorado. “This sketch just threw itself on the page,” he said of the night he drew what would become an art attraction downtown.
The name, Iscariot, comes from a popular band. “I was importing the Smashing Pumpkins album Pisces Iscariot at the time, and I was like ‘Oh Pisces, fish, Iscariot… like a cool, nebulous word,’ and once I decide on a name for something I don’t go back on it.”
Much of the art you see downtown is because of the Art On The Streets organization, and Iscariot was bought in 2018 as part of its 20th anniversary celebration.
“One of the things that public art does that’s so amazing is, that it’s accessible 24/7, so you get to see it all times of the day,” said Michelle Winchell, the Executive Director of Downtown Ventures.
Created in Greensboro, North Carolina during a heatwave in the summer of 2008, Iscariot took nearly 1,000 hours to create. At 12′ high, and 19′ wide, the creation weighs 4,200 pounds. It’s made from metal and sits atop the Traffic Management Center.
O’Connor says making the creation took cranes, crews of volunteers, trailers, and road closures.
The statue has been reassembled six times before its current and final resting spot.
“I’m excited for it to have the placement it does in the Springs, I’m equally as excited to never have to move the thing again,” O’Connor laughed.
Currently, O’Connor is working on a piece about human connection. Finalization on the piece is expected by the Spring of 2024 when it will be installed in Fort Collins.
