The Southern Colorado Coal Miners Memorial and Scholarship Fund Committee, in keeping with an ongoing community project, commissioned a design for a sculpture to compliment the work that began in the late 1980's, with the bronze memorial honoring coal miners of the area. This exsisting sculpture, depicting three coal miners at work, was the first phase of a three phase project. The final phase is projected to be a bronze sculpture depicting mules, which were used extensively in the coal mines of the era.

The second phase, an historically symbolic sculpture, represents the cages of canaries that were carried by coal miners into the mines throughout the 1800's and into the 1920's to detect toxicity in the air.

Water is also symbolic to the mines , as it contributed to the natural formation of the coal mines, therefore the reason for the inclusion of a fountain as part of the sculpture.

The bronze canary represents the "modern-day" Bacharach methane detector, also known as the "canary".

I am very honored to be the artist asked to create in bronze, " the little bird"  that gave it's own life to save so many others.