When the Puzzle Tree at the Grand Marais Library was spotted on the ground following an extremely windy night it was assumed that the wind had knocked it down, which was not the case. The Puzzle Tree had begun to lean, and Steve Harsin, the library director, then asked city crews to take it down so it wouldn’t fall and hurt someone, or become damaged if the pole bent any more.
City crews came with a boom truck and took down the 20-foot-tall Puzzle Tree at the Grand Marais Library on Tuesday, January 3. It is currently resting on the ground near where it stood.
“It (the puzzle tree) was leaning a little bit, so I called the city to have it taken down for safety reasons,” said Grand Marais Library Director Steve Harsin. “We didn’t want it to fall and hurt someone or damage the sculpture,” added Harsin.
Tom Christianson, the well-known Lutsen artist who created the colorful piece for the library, assisted city workers in taking the sculpture off of its base and laying it on the ground.
“Tom came right away and helped. He had wired the sculpture for lights in the event that we light it someday,” Harsin said. “He didn’t want to see anything get damaged when the work was being done.”
The artwork was commissioned in the fall of 2014 and funded through the Legacy Amendment allocations made to the Arrowhead Library System, the regional coordinating body for public libraries in northeastern Minnesota.
The entire sculpture weighs just over 200 pounds. The pole and pieces are aluminum that was welded together by Christianson and two other artists who helped with the project at his Last Chance Fabricating studio in Lutsen.
The puzzle pieces were layered with five coats of different colored Rustoleum, which have weathered well over the last two years since it was erected on the library lawn.
Once the snow leaves and the ground isn’t wet the Puzzle Tree will be put back up, said Harsin.
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