Loveland’s Largest Sculpture is Being Dismantled for I25 Expansion

The five-story-tall, 13-ton sculpture depicting three horses galloping across a span of rails at Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 34 is being taken down to accommodate a redesign of the interchange.

Pieces of Equinox, the work of a three-member team of Loveland artists who erected the sculpture on the site in September 2014, will be stored until a new location can be selected.

The largest and most prominent piece of Loveland’s public art inventory, Equinox features three steel horses, each 24 feet long and 12 feet high, and a 100-foot-long curved arch of railroad track, making up the biggest public art project in Loveland’s history. A Colorado Department of Transportation System Enhancement grant in the amount of $163,000 funded most of the project, with the remaining $62,000 from Loveland’s Art in Public Places fund.

The work is inspired by the art of Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne Plains Indians and is the collaborative endeavor of three Loveland residents – figurative sculptor Jack Kreutzer, structural engineer and artist Doug Rutledge and artist and philanthropist Doug Erion.

Each horse is unique: One bears a stylized hand, symbolic of community volunteerism, along with a meandering section of the Big Thompson River. Another is branded with a stainless steel mobius heart, alluding to the Sweetheart City. The third depicts a printed circuit board, along with a railroad network, symbolizing Loveland’s present and future high-tech economies and its romantic past.

Dismantling the sculpture will require a crane to lower its pieces to the ground, and removal of its supports from the footings composed of 54 tons of concrete. LPR Construction, the Loveland steel construction specialist that worked with the artists to install the sculpture, will provide the expertise and equipment needed for its removal.