Freya’s breezy beauty

When the Freya Street bridge opened for traffic earlier this week, commuters got something other than train cars to look as they drive the busy north-south arterial.

Local artist Roger Ralston created three brightly colored, bannerlike sculptures which are set close to the top of the lights on the bridge, somewhat like flags atop a ship’s masts.

“They are actually wind vanes, so they will not always point in the same direction,” Ralston explained. “Our wind here is so consistently out of the west that it may look like they aren’t moving, but they can and they will.”

It’s actually a 30-year-old idea of Ralston’s that’s finally found a home. He went to graduate school in Baton Rouge and while there drove miles and miles on flat crossways over swamps and marsh.

“It’s not unlike driving from here to Ellensburg over this vast expanse of nothing,” said Ralston. “I kept thinking, ‘We should put something on those lampposts, something to look at.’ ”

Ralston has created public art for Liberty Aquatic Center and Spokane Community College among many other places. He was selected for the Freya Bridge project through a bid process where artists begin by submitting letters of interest, and one person ends up getting the final job.

“You send in your resume and references and a letter about why you are excited about the project, and then you wait,” said Ralston. “Frequently, you don’t get it, and you don’t always know why not. But I got this one.”

The new Freya Street bridge, just north of Broadway Avenue, replaces two side-by-side bridges with a single bridge. Construction began in August and the bridge was finished in time for Memorial Day traffic, on budget, just a few days ahead of schedule by Garco Construction.

“Carlson Sheet Metal did the fabrication work, they are right there by the bridge,” Ralston said. “They bent over backward to help me and make it right. So did the engineers.”

The Washington State Department of Transportation had codes and regulations that had to be met.

“I couldn’t just start drilling holes in the lampposts, and they are shaped so we couldn’t just slide something down over them,” Ralston said. “It took a good seven months before the engineers were comfortable that my sculptures wouldn’t pull down the lampposts in a 100 mile per hour wind.”

In the end it all worked out and Ralston is very happy with the project.

“It’s been exciting to work on this project,” he said.

The new bridge cost $7 million and was funded in part by the state’s freight mobility board and the city of Spokane. It is the last of five projects completed over the past six years to rebuild the Freya Street corridor.

“I think Ralston’s sculptures are a wonderful, playful thing,” said the city arts director Karen Mobley. “I think people will get a big tickle out of it.”