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Aug. 3--ith his arm stretched upward, clutching a star, the young boy is a clay sculpture in the North Sacramento studio of artist Numan Huseinbegovic.
About a year from now, the young boy will be a bronze statue atop a stairway reaching 13 feet into the air.
His permanent home will be a median along Del Paso Boulevard between Arden Way and West El Camino Avenue.
The statue is "symbolic of unlimited opportunity," Huseinbegovic said.
It seems an appropriate symbol for Del Paso Boulevard, an aging commercial corridor undergoing a revival fueled by the dreams of city officials, business owners and artists such as Huseinbegovic.
The boy reaching for the stars is one of six large sculptures Huseinbegovic will create to be placed along the boulevard.
He is one of four artists selected by the Sacramento City Council to provide the boulevard with an outdoor museum of sorts:
-- Yoshio Taylor will create a 28-foot-tall clock tower at Del Paso Boulevard and Arden Way.
-- Larry Meeks will create two gateway projects, one at each end of the revitalized boulevard between Arden Way and West El Camino Avenue.
-- Taylor Gutermute will create five sculptures ranging in height from 7 to 13 feet to be placed in front of Plaza Del Paso.
The massive artistic under-taking is part of Del Paso Boulevard's ongoing transformation, which includes developing the median, erecting modern streetlights and changing street-side parking from parallel to diagonal.
New businesses are opening, and property owners along the boulevard hope to make it a new destination point in the city.
The City Council in June approved the $460,000 budget for the artworks. The project and its funding was proposed by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency for the Art in Public Places program administered by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.
Other works from the artists may be found throughout the city and county of Sacramento.
Huseinbegovic, for example, produced a statue of a firefighter holding a child. The sculpture is in front of Fire Station 5 on Broadway, one of three new fire stations the city has opened within the past couple of years.
"It was an emotional sculpture," he said.
An artist with 35 years of experience, Huseinbegovic and his wife, Jasmina, lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina before living in Germany for more than eight years. They came to Sacramento six years ago.
Full-size drawings of some of the six sculptures he is working on line a wall of his Del Paso Boulevard studio.
He and the other artists have a year to complete their works.
Huseinbegovic's sculptures for the boulevard will include that of a full-size horse and other figures.
The 28-foot clock tower will feature bricks at the base and panels reflecting the boulevard's history, according to a written report from City Manager Ray Kerridge to the City Council.
Kerridge said in the report that most of the clock tower will be metal with some bronze elements. The tower will have a clock face on four sides and be lighted at night.
Meeks will have two projects along the boulevard -- a larger one at the El Camino intersection with Del Paso Boulevard and a smaller one at Highway 160.
The El Camino project will have a stainless steel element 18 feet high and bronze plaques noting the area's history.
Gutermute's five portal sculptures will be in the median near Plaza Del Paso and reflect the history and cultural diversity of the area, according to the report to the council.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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