Whitefish meandering their way up the side of the new City Hall building.

That’s the basic concept for a public art piece planned for along a column on the new municipal building set to be completed this spring.

Stumptown Art Studio is creating the art piece, which is being paid for by donations.

Near the entry into the building, a space has been saved between the red bricks where fused glass tiles and patina steel are planned to placed in a mosaic background. Six bronze-cast three-dimensional whitefish about a foot is size will swim up the background. The 18-inch wide column will be lighted, giving the art a different look in the day and night as the glass reflects the light.

Stumptown Art Studio is creating the art piece.

Artist Charity Flowers created the concept for the design with the intent of making it a “symbol of the community.” She looked at a number of influences into the heritage of the community and presented a series of sketches to the City Hall design committee, which narrowed down the concept to the whitefish.

“This is what makes the community,” she said of the artwork. “I wanted it to be a graphic representation of the community.”

About $10,500 is needed in donations to pay for the art piece.

Whitefish City Councilor Richard Hildner is spearheading fundraising efforts. He said he has pledges for all but $500.

“It’s a public building and having public art be a part of it is important,” he said. “This is part of downtown and will be there for 100 plus years and we want to honor that with a public art piece.”

Melanie Drown, executive director of Stumptown, said the studio is glad to be a part of a piece of artwork like this.

“It’s thrilling for a nonprofit like us,” she said. “We’ve been here for 22 years and a lot of people still don’t know about us.”

The final elements of the artwork will be a community collaboration.

Flowers created the original concept and will sculpt the whitefish so that they can be cast in bronze by Kalispell Art Casting. Drown and other Stumptown artists will be creating the glass tiles and Pacific Steel & Recycling will be providing the steel.

Flowers and Drown say they want art to be accessible to everyone and the whitefish piece will be just that.

“It’s great to have public art,” Flowers said. “Maybe this will get the discussion going even more about what else we can to do to have more public art in Whitefish.”

Donations can be made to Stumptown Art Studio, 145 Central Ave, Whitefish, MT 59937.