In 1970, Tom Askman got an incredible urge to create a sculpture, even though the painter and art instructor hadnt done any sculpting before.


I decided I wanted to do it back in Wyoming, where he had been raised, Askman now says. I wanted it to be an enigma that was all about questions, something that emerged from the surrounding ranch land without explanation, prompting people who stumbled upon it to wonder why it was there and what it meant.


He created what he called a Monument to Art Enigmas, a 20-foot-high, concrete-and-wood sculpture, which is there to this day, he says.


While the notion of public art wasnt on many radar screens at that time, the experience taught Askman that, I really loved working outdoors and working on large-scale objects, he says. I really enjoyed the process of fabricating and building big things.


Today, he and his wife and business partner, Lea Anne Lake, own Enigma Lake Art Co., which creates major public-art installations nationwide. Askman also teaches fine arts at Eastern Washington University and is chairman of the studio-arts department there.


Enigma Lake, which is located in the Fancher Bridge Business Park, at 5805 E. Sharp, works on two to four public-art projects a year, Askman and Lake say. They decline to disclose the companys annual revenues, but say the cost of the public artworks it specializes in range from about $20,000 to $800,000 each.


Askman started what was then called Enigma Art Co. more than 30 years ago, just after he completed graduate school in Colorado. He joined the faculty of Eastern Washington University in 1972, but it wasnt until some time later that he seriously started looking at the possibility of getting commissions to create large-scale installations, he says.


Fortunately, that jibed with a trend under way for government agencies to earmark funds for public art; Seattle was the first city in the country to do so, with a One Percent for Art campaign that decreed 1 percent of the budget of each city construction project had to be devoted to artworks for the site.


Askmans first permanent outdoor installation was at Riverside High School, in Chattaroy, in 1986.


Lake came to the world of sculpture by an equally circuitous route.


Ive lived in lots of different places and had lots of different jobs, she says, but through it all, Ive always been pretty much an art-oriented person. She took up sculpture after meeting Askman and joined the company seven years ago, at which time it became Enigma Lake. Now, the two work independently on designs, sometimes competing against each other to land a commission, they say.


Currently, Enigma Lake is creating 12 life-size, bronze figures and five bas-relief panels that will be part of a $5 million tribute to entertainer Bob Hope, to be erected on the San Diego waterfront. Enigma Lake designed the entire installation, although other companies will create the granite and marble elements that will complement the artwork, Lake says.


The installation is a tribute to Hopes longtime service to the United Service Organizations (USO), which provides entertainment to military personnel. It features five statues of Hope at different times in his life to commemorate the five military conflicts in which he served, and is being funded by a group of military veterans.


Enigma Lake currently employs five people on a contract basis to help create the Bob Hope figures, but its work force fluctuates depending on the number and complexity of the companys commissions, Lake says.


The other jobs the company is working on also have historical themes, but are quite different in form. Askman is creating a 6-foot-tall, metal horse for a light-rail station in Dallas, playing off of old-time references to railroads as iron horses. In addition, Lake and Askman are just finishing up eight 10-foot-tall, lighted sculptures that will be mounted on a bridge in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard. Each sculpture will reflect some portion of that neighborhoods heritage.


The variety of what Enigma Lake creates is both the challenge and the reward of working in the public-art realm, Askman says.


We do every kind of public art using any kind of material. The challenge for us is to make something thats interesting and responsive to the site, and to the desires of the client. We also like to include some of our own sensibilities into the stuff, which Askman says for him is humor and Lake says for her is spirituality.


Enigma Lake gets public-art commissions by submitting photos of past work to slide banks, which are repositories that public agencies and other clients can consult when looking for artists, as well as by submitting ideas to competitions held by government entities.


It also has gotten a number of commissions based on positive word-of-mouth from earlier works, Askman and Lake say.


Enigma Lake, for example, has designed artworks for a number of fire stations across the country, based on Askmans earlier work for three Seattle fire stations and especially on a 1992 installation he designed for Spokane Fire Department Station No. 3, on West Indiana at North Ash. That piece looks like fire hoses bursting through the stations brick walls.


Its the kind of thing where you have an idea thats original enough that it spawns numerous other commissions, he says.


Askman says that whenever possible, Enigma Lake prefers to create site-specific works, which are designed with a particular project in mind, taking into account the shape, history, and use of the building, the slope of the land, and pedestrian traffic patterns, he says.


The thing thats most interesting is when you can totally transform a site by what youre bringing to it as an artist, he says.