Sculptor Jim Sardonis' "Whale Dance" is to be installed on land near Exit 4 in Randolph, Vt., in late spring or early summer 2019. The 16-foot-tall bronze-cast sculpture is on land conserved by the Preservation Trust. (Courtesy Vermont Community Foundation)
Sculptor Jim Sardonis' "Whale Dance" is to be installed on land near Exit 4 in Randolph, Vt., in late spring or early summer 2019. The 16-foot-tall bronze-cast sculpture is on land conserved by the Preservation Trust. (Courtesy Vermont Community Foundation) Credit: Courtesy of Vermont Community Foundation

Randolph — It’s no fluke: Interstate 89 travelers will soon be able to see not just one, but two pairs of giant whale tails adorning Vermont’s scenic farmland.

That’s because, nearly 20 years after a private transaction caused Randolph to lose the original 13-foot-tall sculpture to Chittenden County, nonprofit groups have commissioned a replacement public art installation to anchor a recreational trail system on newly conserved farmland just off Exit 4.

Randolph sculptor Jim Sardonis, who made the original tails in 1989, has a new design that promises to be more dynamic, more intricate, and, at 16 feet tall, even bigger than the tails that now sit on a hillock between Exits 12 and 13 in South Burlington, just north of the Williston town line.

The groups behind the project — the Vermont Community Foundation, the Preservation Trust of Vermont, Castanea Foundation, Exit 4 Open Space, Conservation Law Foundation, and the Vermont Natural Resources Council — don’t typically do public art.

“We actually don’t,” said Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, which announced the project this summer. “This is a first for us.”

But, explained Bruhn and VCF President Dan Smith, their organizations are prepared to be flexible to meet the needs of a community.

“In our view, our mission is to bring resources and people together to make a difference in Vermont,” said Smith.

After a lengthy battle to prevent development on the Randolph site, the conservation groups purchased 172 acres of land from developer Jesse “Sam” Sammis.

In conversations with the community about what to do with the land, Bruhn said, the conservationists consistently heard a sense of loss over “Reverence,” the original 6-ton sculpture, which sat on the same parcel until Randolph businessman David Threlkeld sold the land to Sammis, and the sculpture to Technology Park in South Burlington.

“When they were moved … there were a lot of people in Randolph and around the area who were very sad about losing the whale tails,” said Bruhn.

“I’m excited for that to come back,” said Jessica Taffet, who is leasing the land with her partner, Camden Walters. “It was a source of community identity.”

Taffet and Walters are working out the details of an agreement to purchase the land, and are in the process of creating an orchard from a mix of grafts and new plantings.

Bruhn said the Preservation Trust, which will maintain ownership of the sculpture, is looking for ways to formalize its intent that the new sculpture be permanently sited in Randolph.

“Any change in ownership would have to be approved by the Vermont Community Foundation and we hope to have an agreement with the town that they also would have to approve,” Bruhn said. “We built in a lot of safeguards to ensure that the sculpture will stay right there.”

Trading on the whimsical notion of whales diving beneath a sea of grass, Reverence, based on a design that Sardonis created as a submission to an Alaska-based arts competition, has become a Vermont landmark. Sardonis sells other pieces, such as jewelry and glass table bases that are on the same basic theme.

The new sculpture, “Whale Dance,” will be cast in bronze, and should be installed in the exact same spot as the original in early spring or summer of 2019.

“It will be very different, since it will be done in bronze, and more massive than the original ones,” said Bruhn. “And it’s fitting that a sculpture of whales’ tails will be returned to Randolph.”

The work of Sardonis, who began sculpting while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy in the 1960s, is scattered throughout the region, including at Norwich Public Library, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Gifford Medical Center.

“I am constantly trying to find ways to use my work to raise awareness about the kinship and interconnectedness of all living things and the importance of environmental conservation,” he writes on his website.

The connection between whales and landlocked Vermont seems tenuous in the modern age, but railroad workers famously uncovered the skeleton of a beluga whale in 1849 in a farmer’s field in Charlotte; in 1993, the 11,500-year-old skeleton, which is on display in the Perkins Geology Museum at the University of Vermont, was declared the official state fossil.

Bruhn said the trails on the Randolph property will connect to a larger trail system, and will have full public access.

Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.