Several members of Main Street of Fremont were driving home from a Nebraska Main Street-sponsored training on public art projects when they had an idea. It sounded fishy at first, but it turned into an outlet for local artists to display their work and raise money for a downtown streetscape project.Now support your Down Town and kindly tip your hat
To the biggest fish, yes, the biggest fish of Nebraska’s River Platte
That’s the refrain from “The Biggest Fish of Nebraska’s River Platte,” the theme song for the “Fremont, Big Fish of the Platte” public art project which featured more than 30 brightly painted six-foot fiberglass catfish which adorned street corners throughout the eastern Nebraska city. A subcommittee of the Main Street board was formed to tackle the project. The Chicago company that started much of the national street art craze, Cowpainter’s Inc., happened to have a number of catfish that had been destined for a project in an Illinois community that had dropped the plans. Hence, the first fish blank to arrive in Fremont was dubbed “Quincy.” He became the poster child for the project. The committee hooked up fish artists with sponsors as the project finally began to float. Many were local, but several were done by high school students from Pawnee City in southeast Nebraska. The advertising manager for the Bellevue newspaper did “Fill-er-up” as a gas station attendant from the era of the heyday of the Lincoln Highway. “Sole of the Platte” was commissioned for the owners of Buck’s Shoes in downtown Fremont and featured a fish adorned with whimsical footwear and begged the question, “can you teach a fish to heel?”Imagine having fun while raising money to do a project that will benefit all the residents of a community by enhancing the downtown where they live.
