David Middlebrook, a San José State University sculpture professor and 30-year Los Gatos resident, won a nationally advertised competition for a work of public art to be installed in a Milwaukee park. Middlebrook was one of five finalists for the award, and he was eventually selected to create the work for the city's Gordon Park.

Though Middlebrook was initially chosen based on his portfolio of previous work, it was his proposal for "Tip," a giant arch featuring natural and cultural representations of the area, that won him the commission.

At first glance, the sculpture may look a bit disjointed. A tree branch and an anvil sit atop a towering marble iceberg. The tip of the branch just barely touches a framework of cultural icons perched above a stone column bearing giant thumbprints.

But as Middlebrook explains it, the arch captures Milwaukee's geological and ethnic history quite adequately. He says he got the idea for the iceberg half of the arch on the plane ride to Wisconsin.

"When flying in, I saw the banks of Lake Michigan," he said. "I got this instant image of the last ice age."

The artist explained that Lake Michigan, which borders Milwaukee to the east, was likely carved out by icebergs at the end of that ice age. The anvil represents the "forging" of the country and the industrial revolution that was rooted in Milwaukee and other Midwestern cities. The seemingly fallen branch is "a metaphor for the constantly changing environment" of the world.

The other side of the arch represents the people of past and present Milwaukee. The thumbprints are enlargements of actual prints made by neighbors of the park. The framework, which Middlebrook calls a "culture kit," is supposed to look like the part of a model car kit from which accessory parts are removed. It contains representations of various cultures—a bag of groceries for the French influence on cuisine, ballet shoes for Russians' contributions to dance and art, microphones and a baseball glove for African American achievements in music and sports, and about a dozen more.

Vince Bushell, who publishes a newspaper for the Riverwest neighborhood surrounding Gordon Park, said he and other members of the selection committee chose Middlebrook for his strong, dynamic work.

"I came into the judging committee with a prejudice against choosing anyone from California," he said. "But I was convinced that this was the best proposition we received, and that David was an artist who could deliver something memorable."

Middlebrook not only wanted to create something park visitors would remember, but something they could learn from. He said that on his first night in Milwaukee, he talked to some teenagers and young adults in a restaurant not far from the park and was surprised to learn that they knew very little about Milwaukee's history.

"I thought, here's a whole generation of kids who don't know anything about where they live," he said.

That gave him the idea to include the cultural images and to gather thumbprints of nearby residents from all ethnic backgrounds.

Bushell said Middlebrook did a great job of incorporating Milwaukee's history and people into the sculpture.

"It expresses Milwaukee and its citizens and its workers over time," he said. "It's a tribute to the workers that worked here and built this city and...[it represents] the mix of ethnicities that we have in this place we call Riverwest."

"Tip," the title of which references both the tip of the iceberg and Middlebrook's tip to Milwaukee not to forget its past, will be packed up and shipped in the next week or so. And though the artist is already working on the design for his next project—a memorial fountain for a young girl who was murdered in Southern California—Middlebrook said it might be a bit hard to part with the sculpture. He and his wife, Leta Reynolds, were recently married under the arch.

"Technically and aesthetically, this is probably the most challenging work I've done," he said, adding that it would not have been possible without the help of his assistant and several graduate students.