The impetus for Jody Pinto’s Fingerspan, 1987, her first permanent large-scale public sculpture in the United States, was a Fairmount Park Art Association project begun in 1980. The association invited artists to propose public art projects for this Philadelphia park that would, in the sponsor’s terms, “be utilitarian, site-specific, and integral to community life.” Pinto’s original proposal for a triple, split-tongued pier to snake out over the Wissahickon Creek in Fairmount Park proved infeasible for technical/environmental reasons. Eventually, at the suggestion of local citizens, the site