There’s a new addition to the sculpture park taking shape at One Normal Plaza. A bronze figure by Bloomington artist Herb Eaton is a nod to the area’s circus roots. Titled Who’s There, it’s latest in a collection of public art pieces to be placed along a newly constructed, curvilinear walking path along the circle drive outside the Normal Community Activity Center.
A goal of the sculpture garden was to better highlight another bronze cast statue that has been on the grounds since 2008. Called Circle of Friendship, the piece evokes a group of children holding hands in a circle, installed as a tribute to the property’s original purpose as the Illinois Soldiers and Sailors Children’s School.
The school and group home, originally meant for children orphaned by war, operated in Normal from 1869-1979, with remnants of its history still visible on the grounds.
On Saturday, alumni will gather for their annual reunion at the Normal Community Activity Center, built on the footprint of what was once ISSCS’s administration building. It will be the first time they’ll get a glimpse of the newly refreshed grounds and sculpture garden, of which the Circle of Friendship is a prominent feature complemented by native grasses and blooms.
Who’s There, a ring leader-type figure place atop a columned pedestal, joins two pieces already installed on the western edge of the garden, nearest Mulberry School, a nonprofit Montessori school located at One Normal Plaza. Nearby is Bartonville artist Jeremy Budette’s 2023 carbon steel sculpture called Happy, Happy, Happy, and In and Out of the Blue, a baby blue, sittable stained cast concrete piece first made by Normal’s Dann Nardi in 1997.
The garden’s east side has two pieces unveiled in August: Whorled, a tornadic-shaped spiral of stainless steel and colored glass by Chicago artist Nicole Beck, and American Kestrel, by Champaign’s Shawn A. Hensley. The latter is a large representational piece made of stained concrete and steel, depicting North America’s tiniest falcon breed atop a wooden-like perch.
The garden is part of a push from Normal’s Cultural Arts Department to put more public art in the town, after responses to a 2023 survey indicated overwhelming support for it. The project at One Normal Plaza is the first of two projects to come to fruition. A long-planned mural on the walls of the future Uptown Underpass is the other.
Eventually, the sculpture garden is slated to have up as many as 10 pieces. Four of these first five were purchased by the Town of Normal for just shy of $70,000. Eaton’s 2025 piece, Who’s There, was donated by the Fund for Public Art, a program of the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation.
The location at One Normal Plaza was chosen not only for its historic significance but proximity to Route 66. That gives road-trippers another option for stopping in Normal [with Sprague’s Super Service and Normal’s three-year-old photo op close by]. An interactive feature invites visitors to upload photos to a platform called Chronolog, to document the garden as it changes over time.
