Clayton Leiker, with Belger Cartage Service, aligns a 30-ton concrete sculpture while it is being lowered by a crane to the ground after a cable broke. (Mike Hutmacher photo)

How do you move a 30-ton piece of art? Very carefully Workers have their hands full in trying to erect heavy sculpture at its new home. By Beccy Tanner The Wichita Eagle Workers on Tuesday tried to put an east Wichita landmark in its new home but ran into problems and will try to finish the job Friday. The "Hands of God and Man" sculpture that had been in front of the Reformation Lutheran Church near Woodlawn and Kellogg for more than 40 years turned out to be too heavy for the crew trying to lift it into a meditation garden at the church's new home on 13th Street west of Rock Road. As the Belger crane lifted the 30-ton block higher and higher, a cable snapped and the concrete artwork rocked precariously back and forth a few minutes before work crews gently laid it back down again -- to rethread cables -- only to find that a small, one-foot chunk of the 35-foot tall sculpture was broken off. "There was a couple of nicks, but everything should be OK," said Loren Deines, chairman of the Reformation Lutheran Church's sculpture committee. The bas-relief concrete sculpture was created in 1952 for the church by the late Kansas artist Bernard "Poco" Frazier. Five years ago the church moved to 13th and Broadmoor, making way for the expansion of Kellogg, and the sculpture went with it. But the artwork has been lying in the dirt, waiting for church members to raise enough money to finish the meditation garden. Dora Timmerman, co-chairman of the local Save Outdoor Sculpture program, said it was a tribute to the church congregation that the statue was saved. It cost the church nearly $75,000 to move the sculpture and build the garden. "They wanted to build a meditation garden with walkways so that anyone in the neighborhood could go and sit on benches -- it took them five years to raise the money," Timmerman said. Originally, the statue was going to be destroyed until the art community stepped forward and helped the congregation see what an asset it had, Timmerman said. Deines said church members raised the money for moving the sculpture and for the garden through fund-raisers and private donations. "One of the questions we had when we moved was what are our treasures -- what do we take with us," Deines said. "The older members, particularly, had a lot of emotional attachment to the sculpture. Many of them remember when it was dedicated in the old church." Frazier, the artist who designed the sculpture, died in 1976. A nationally recognized artist, he taught for several decades at the University of Kansas. His largest work was the swirling 24-by-70-foot tile mosaic, "Be Still and Know That I am God," on the front of the First United Methodist Church, 330 N. Broadway. Friends University, the Wichita Center for the Arts, City Hall and the Halstead Hospital also have pieces of his work. The sculpture was placed on the Wichita Register of Historic Places in 1996. © 1999 The Wichita Eagle, with permission. Any copying, redistribution, or retransmission of any of the contents without the express written consent of The Wichita Eagle is expressly prohibited.