Johnnie St. Vrain: How many of those ‘101 Faces’ remain? - Longmont Times-Call

Dear Johnnie: Once a upon a time, longer ago than I’d like to admit, there were 100 faces along Left Hand Creek. Then many of the old cottonwoods were removed for flood mitigation, luckily, because a few months after work was complete the flood of 2013 hit. How many of the whimsical faces remain?

— A curious resident

Dear Curious: I remember those faces. I’ve actually written about them before, though quite a long time ago.

There are actually “101 Faces” — the name of the piece — and they’re in a lot more places than just trees. You can find them on rocks, bridges and even under the waters of the creek.

To be honest, I find them a bit more creepy than whimsical — especially the ones peering up from the creek bed — but I always appreciate public art, and the story of how the local artist, Jerry Boyle, created them is pretty interesting.

Apparently he studied the landscape and the faces of folks that use the trail and greenway before casting the concrete faces and placing them around.

Back to the topic at hand, though, your question reminded me that I hadn’t seen these faces in quite a long time, so I decided to take a stroll along Left Hand Creek. After about an hour-and-a-half of looking down at the creek bed trying to find one, I finally spotted a few up in some trees near Left Hand Creek Park, so it seemed to me that at least some remain.

To find out the totality of the situation, though, I decided to reach out to Rigo Leal, a spokesperson with the city, who then got me an answer from Angela Brill with Longmont’s Art in Public Places program.

It turns out the cottonwood removal you’re referring to began a few years before the floods, and the project may have protected a number of the faces.

“Luckily, 101 Faces by Jerry Boyle acquired in 2004 are concrete castings and are not faces carved into trees,” Brill wrote in an email. “In 2010 the large cottonwood removal project came about and the artist removed 3/4 of the faces and reinstalled them in new locations – which arguably saved a vast number of the work from the flood in 2013.

“At last recorded count, surprisingly, only 14 of the 101 faces were unaccounted for and likely lost to the flood.”

I guess Boyle will have to rename it “87 faces.”

Brill added that the Art in Public Places program has been working with folks from the Public Works and Natural Resources department on the Resilient St. Vrain project to remove and reinstall a number of different public works of art.

“Of course, as the Resilient St. Vrain project continues to progress some of the works may be relocated in the same area,” she wrote.

Are you facing a question that has you stumped? Email me at johnnie@times-call.com.

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Johnnie St. Vrain: How many of those ‘101 Faces’ remain? - Longmont Times-Call
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