Wednesday, Jul. 01, 2009

Chiawana High gets wings with 3-D sign

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

PASCO -- A mighty riverhawk with talons outstretched went up on the front of the new Chiawana High School on Tuesday, where it's expected to welcome Pasco students for decades to come.

The three-dimensional sign, which weighs nearly a ton, was hoisted into place with a Lampson crane. Earlier, a riverhawk with the same design was painted onto the center of the new school's basketball court.

Take more than a cursory look and you can see the school's initials, CHS, in the bird's wings.

The bird is the creation of Larry Kessie, a senior architect for Bechtel National at Hanford and the husband of new Principal Teri Kessie.

But the only advantage being related to the principal gave him was a tip that Pasco's second high school would hold a contest to design the logo for the new school. His design was selected from other entries submitted without names to a selection committee that did not include the principal.

The head of a riverhawk designed by Travis Hunt, an engineering technician for the city of Kennewick, was picked to be the smaller logo that will be on sports uniforms, and Larry Kessie's design was picked for the sign outside the school and the basketball court.

His reward was the satisfaction of knowing that "when my wife takes over as principal, I've contributed to the community that she's going to work in," he said "That's a big thing for me."

Over the last year his design morphed to become less docile, he said. He and school officials wanted a raptor that was "a little more aggressive -- aggressive toward learning," he said.

It's finished in metallic colors to offer a shiny, smooth contrast with the rough texture of the school's concrete masonry walls. The aluminum sign is constructed in layers to be "more sculpture than sign," he said.

One of the toughest tasks was transferring the hand-drawn design to computer to make a template to stencil the gym floor and run a water jet to precisely cut the metal for the sign.

The 16-foot-tall sign was cut out, assembled and painted by Gemini in Decorah, Iowa. Then Larry Kessie and a representative of Great Graphics and Signs drove a truck and trailer 3,480 miles to bring the sign home to Pasco, he said.

After a year of work he could see what he had accomplished Tuesday afternoon. As the sun moved across the sky, the shadows cast by the five layers of metal gave the bird a slowly changing look.