Sculptor Larry Anderson has long been a favorite of ours and this sculpture is yet another of his pieces displayed in Tacoma.
"In front of Old Town’s historic Slavonian Hall (located at 2306 N. 30th St.) stand a pair of bronze figures: a man and a woman in old fashioned clothes who are together in what passers-by might interpret as a dance-like stance.
This sculpture, “Ribarski Pripovijest (A Fish Story),” is the work of Larry Anderson, a Tacoma native whose other bronze figures are no doubt familiar from encounters in Wright Park, Fireman’s Park, Union Station or one of the local college campuses.
Unveiled in 2002, “Ribarski Pripovijest (A Fish Story)” was commissioned by the Slavonian American Benevolent Society to memorialize the lives of early Croatian immigrants who were among the first European settlers of Old Town where they built a fishing village. The Slavonian American Benevolent Society celebrated its centennial in 2001.
Anderson’s “Ribarski Pripovijest (A Fish Story)” captures a happy moment in the household of a Croatian immigrant family. The bronze couple is done in a chocolate-brown patina. The man has returned home from a fishing expedition and his duffel bag is crumpled at his feet where he has dropped it. With one hand wrapped around his wife’s waist, he presents a big salmon that he has caught, his fingers hooked through its gills. The woman has one hand pressed against the man’s heart.
The two are dressed in period costumes (Anderson is meticulous in his research into the costumes of his figures). The woman wears an apron, a flowery dress and a pair of pointy shoes. They couple gaze smiling into each other’s eyes as the man presents his fish, the bounty of the sea that is the source of their livelihood."
- excerpt from the Tacoma Weekly