Lucinda Breeding

The city of Denton installed its newest piece of public art Wednesday afternoon.

When officials gathered to unveil the renovated South Branch Library, a busy outlet of the Denton Public Library, a bronze sculpture was unveiled, too.

Book A Day is the second life-size bronze sculpture by New Mexico artist Rosie Sandifer.

Sandifer cast two children: a boy lying on his side in what looks like a Boy Scout kerchief and a girl swinging her legs over the bench they share. Both of them are absorbed in books. She’s holding a pocket-size book, and she looks like she might be imagining the scene she’s reading.

If you passed them and saw them in the corner of your eye, you might mistake them for two real children — children who couldn’t wait to get home to test the treasures they got from the shelves.

DRC/Lucinda Breeding

Book A Day, a bronze sculpture by Rosie Sandifer, was dedicated Wednesday at South Branch Library, 3228 Teasley Lane.

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The sculpture is the latest in a series of community art meant to stamp the identity of a creative culture on public spaces in Denton. The Public Art Committee makes recommendations to the parks department, which manages most of Denton’s city-owned property, though it tipped a hat to the library system with this installation.

Sandifer uses a lot of texture in her work, and in this piece she leaves the pages looking blank. It’s the viewer’s job to imagine the books they knew and loved — Robinson Crusoe, Iggie’s House or, over the last decade, Harry Potter.

The latest sculpture joins four other pieces commissioned by the city:

•  Historic Quakertown, a brick sculpture by Denton artist Paula Blincoe Collins in the lobby of Denton Civic Center, 321 E. McKinney St. The piece pays tribute to the black men and women who were forced to move their lives and houses from the pretty patch of ground at Quakertown Park to Southeast Denton. The sculpture was installed in February 2008.

•  Above All Integrity, a bronze sculpture by Aubrey artist and retired Denton art teacher George Cadell in front of the Denton police and municipal offices at 601 E. Hickory St. The complex sculpture is a monument that begins with the rise of Texas from agricultural center to an industrial and educational pulse-point. The obelisk-shaped sculpture moves upward to the bust of a man — hand near his heart and gaze locked on something distant. It was installed in June 2008.

•  November Devil, a bronze sculpture by Sanger artist David Iles located on the Locust Street sidewalk on the downtown Square, 110 W. Hickory St. The piece is a tornado of leaves, twigs and nuts native to Denton County. Denton guitarist and co-founder of the NX35 music festival Chris Flemmons has a guitar pick hidden in the sculpture. Installed October 2008.

•  O Be Joyful, a bronze sculpture by Sandifer in a garden at Quakertown Park, 321 E. McKinney St. Two girls, one older than the other, twirl around, faces turned to the sky, arms out. Installed in December, the piece was donated to the city by the Denton Festival Foundation. The foundation stages the biggest annual event in the city, the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival.

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.