Clear Lake council approves full-sized sculptures of Holly, Valens, Big Bopper as part of Surf District project

CLEAR LAKE — The Clear Lake City Council last night approved a $198,000 proposal from a Minnesota company to create a memorial sculpture of the headliners from the 1959 Winter Dance Party to be a part of the city’s Surf District Destination Iowa project.

Brodin Studios of Kimball Minnesota has a wide range of experience creating bronze sculptures for law enforcement, fire departments, military organizations, cities and independent artists. Among their portfolio includes the Prince Memorial Statue in New Ulm Minnesota, the Herb Brooks Statue at the Xcel Center in St. Paul Minnesota, and the soon to come Duke Slater Statue in Clinton. The “Three Stars Sculpture” would honor fallen rockers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson together with full-sized sculptures.

City Administrator Scott Flory says something like this is well overdue.  “You know there are other sculptures of them around the country, but I’m not aware of any full-sized, larger-than-life sculptures of all three performers together, which of course really is an embodiment of the Winter Dance Party itself, to have all three of them, inasmuch itself as what that represents.”

Flory says there are many examples of what sculptures like this bring to something like a museum setting.   “You look at many things, you’re familiar with Winterset and they have the John Wayne Museum and Interpretive Center there. Of course Meredith Willson right in front of the center in Mason City. There are so many of these examples where you’re able to kind of combine the sculpture with an interpretive center, in our case an immersive center, really make — I think the sky’s the limit for this, and I do think this is going to be a tremendous attraction for Clear Lake.”

The sculptures would be completed by the summer of next year.