Sculpture Tour People's Choice Award Announced

Briana Novacek |

Remember those awesome sculptures that cropped up all over Eau Claire this year?  Well, after a summer of voting, we have a winner.  The victor of the second-annual Sculpture Tour Eau Claire People’s Choice Award is…“The Blind Spot,” a whimsical, daydreaming frog that was situated at the corner of Lake Street and Barstow in downtown Eau Claire. Dan Massopust created “The Blind Spot” and is a local artist who lives right here in Eau Claire.  He also submitted a sculpture last year, called “Lunchtime” that featured a diving otter.  How did Dan think of such a fun sculpture idea?  He says, “I didn’t just want a frog sitting in a standard frog pose, so I decided to make a dreamy frog. A frog so entangled in his dreams that he knows of nothing else going on around him. To exaggerate even further the frog’s dreamy state, I placed a giant bronze fly in the middle of his back- in his ‘Blind Spot.’”  That lazy frog weighs in at 2,500 pounds of sheer concrete! This was all started by Sculpture Tour Eau Claire, a nonprofit organization that wants to make our downtown area even more spiffy with about 30 new, fantastic sculptures each year.  The Eau Claire Community Foundation is a financial sponsor of Sculpture Tour Eau Claire.  The current downtown sculptures will be displayed until May of next year.