If you visit Redding or the nearby Coleman National Fish Hatchery, you’ll have a hard time missing John Martin Streeby’s art talents on display. At first, there was a series of migrating salmon heading up Cypress and Market Streets toward a waterfall. Then there were giant salmon greeting visitors at the Coleman hatchery. This was followed by an array of salmon and eagles lining the new Highway 44 Bridge near the Turtle Bay Museum. There could not be more symbolic representations of California’s wild heritage than these metal sculptures.
John Martin Streeby followed a circuitous route to reach this point as an accomplished artist. He was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1951 — at the time, in his words, “a small cow town.” He says you worked either in a packing plant or a stockyard. He did both. After a stint in the army as a surgical technician in Vietnam, he returned to Iowa, where he got interested in horses, working, as he puts it, “in the very interesting and exciting and very low-paying horse industry.” So he went to horseshoeing school to make more money. Schooled in this trade, he followed horse jobs all over the country: Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Maryland, Florida, and New Mexico. In New Mexico, he joined the Southwest Artists Blacksmith Association and got interested in sculptural ironwork. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s, after moving to El Paso, Texas, that he began serious work on his own designs, mostly abstract sculptures. His new wife, Michelle, who had been working for the local newspaper, was transferred to Redding’s Record Searchlight in 1998. John and his transportable sculpturing skills thus landed in Shasta County. Within a year, John was awarded a commission by the newly formed Redding Arts in Public Places program to complete a series of metal sculptures depicting migrating salmon. John’s creative representations of this precious resource inspired the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to hire him to create similar images for the grounds at the Coleman hatchery, first a 9-foot sculpture, then a 12-footer.
In 2010, John did yet another salmon installation, this time for CalTrans, the first time it ever had placed artwork on a bridge. It began with a 55-piece installation, followed by another 16 pieces. These two projects, on the Highway 44 Bridge and the off-ramps to Turtle Bay, include salmon, eagles, and turtles — all iconic species for this region. In addition to these massive projects, John has created abstract fountain sculptures and other pieces for local restaurants, businesses, and homeowners.
John says that “art is a process of exploration and discovery, and for me, it has been a process of self-discovery. I sometimes end up rediscovering the wheel, too, but even so, sometimes one needs a wheel, so it all works out.”
My wife and I have benefitted from John’s talents. At first, we commissioned him to do a salmon sculpture for placement in a planter that overlooks the Sacramento River. Then, after I dragged up a chewed-up wooden frame from the river, we had him fashion a heron in the frame, which now hangs in our front hallway atrium. And after we had fruitlessly searched in Palm Desert for a metal piece of our favorite desert bird, the roadrunner, my wife had John create one as a present to me. It sits in our garden.
Next time you’re heading up Interstate 5, take a moment to cross the Highway 44 Bridge in Redding or to drive down Cypress Avenue and have a look at John’s metal creatures. You can also inspect another artwork while you’re at it — Santiago Calatrava’s nearby Sundial Bridge. Who would have thought Redding would become a center for art!
