Walter Pierce

Public art hoisted, heaved and hauled to safety

by Walter Pierce

An eight-ton piece of public art and relic from Lafayette’s commercial past is safe in a city warehouse today after a crew used cranes to gently hoist the concrete sculpture onto a flatbed trailer and take it safely away.

Until Wednesday, Robert Wiggs’ Twisted Loop, along with a line of broken bricks and clawed-up earth, was the only evidence left of the dilapidated LBA Savings Bank drive-thru on Vermilion Street between the old Lafayette Hardware Store building and the Acadiana Center for the Arts downtown. The  drive-thru was demolished to make way for a theatre expansion to the AcA.

According to Wiggs, a retired UL art professor, the piece was commissioned in 1970. Wiggs, with the help of friend Mike Stansbury, constructed the sculpture on-location. Twisted Loop will be relocated to the traffic island on Congress Street between the Lafayette Public Library and the IberiaBank building within the next few weeks. For more on this historic preservation project, read “Saved from the wrecking ball: Downtown public art spared” (March 31).