Residents will gather Saturday in a scenic Minneapolis neighborhood for an annual ritual—the sharpening of a gigantic No. 2 pencil. The 20-foot-tall pencil was sculpted out of a mammoth oak tree at the home of John and Amy Higgins after the beloved tree was damaged in a storm a few years ago and fierce winds twisted its crown off, per the AP. Neighbors mourned, but the Higginses saw it as a chance to give the tree new life. The sharpening ceremony on their front lawn has since evolved into a community spectacle that draws hundreds of people to the leafy neighborhood on Lake of the Isles, complete with music and pageantry and people dressed up as pencils and erasers.
In the wake of the storm, the Higginses knew they wanted to create a sculpture out of their tree. They envisioned a whimsical piece of pop art that people could recognize, but not a stereotypical chainsaw-carved bear. Given the shape and circumference of the log, they came up with the idea of an oversize pencil standing tall in their yard. "Why a pencil? Everybody uses a pencil," Amy Higgins said. "Everybody knows a pencil. ... It's just so accessible to everybody ... and can easily mean something, and everyone can make what they want of it."
The couple enlisted wood sculptor Curtis Ingvoldstad to transform their damaged tree into a replica of a classic Trusty brand No. 2 pencil. To keep the point pointy, they haul a giant, custom-made pencil sharpener up the scaffolding that's erected for the event. And, like a real pencil, this one is ephemeral: Every year they sharpen it, it gets a bit shorter; they've taken anywhere from 3 to 10 inches off a year. They haven't decided how much to shave off this year, but they're OK knowing that they could reduce it to a stub one day. This year, the hosts will commemorate a Minneapolis icon, the late music superstar Prince, by handing out purple pencils on what would have been his 67th birthday.
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